July 9, 2010
Growing up as youngsters, there were countless times when we were re-directed by our tireless school teachers on the folly of hitching the cart before the horse. We were quite familiar with the push-truck, the cart’s closest cousin, which is pulled and pushed by stout men, but not the cart itself. I still recall that in those days, for reasons that derived from our lack of familiarity with both the horse and the cart in our everyday life due specifically to (a) the absence of the cart and (b) the exoticism of the horse in our Igbo culture, we hardly related concretely to both objects even though we made quite logical sense of the wisdom inherent in our teachers’ oft-mouthed wise-crack. In fact, the first real horse I ever beheld on the grounds of the Divisional Police Post, Abo, didn’t look healthy at all.
In time, I learnt that the abundance of the tse-tse fly in the thick ever-green rain forest ecological zone where Igboland is located makes it difficult for horses to thrive there. All the same, it was not lost on us from the story books we read that in cultures where they abound, the cart and the horse are functional labor-multipliers when they are hitched properly in the correct order. Otherwise, they can be rendered dysfunctional.
Over the years, several instances of experience have given me cause to infer that much of the dysfunction that characterizes public life in the geo-political space that became Nigeria derives from the proclivity of especially many individuals from there for succumbing to the folly of hitching the cart before the horse, even when their desire is to make the place function properly. Any wonder the place is ever mired in dysfunction of the highest order?
I was in the thick of the campaign to actualize the mandate which Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s annulment of the June 12 presidential election smashed before it could be claimed rightfully by MKO Abiola, the beneficiary. Some of us got involved in that campaign, which sadly failed to rise to the level of a struggle, on the conviction that it opened a much-needed avenue to achieve the true state building process amongst the nationalities that British intervention brought together as Nigeria. You can imagine the enormity of pain and hurt that some of us felt in 1999 when many amongst us in that campaign jumped ship to embrace Abdulsalami Abubakar’s bogus transition charade. Those ship-jumpers simply refused to hear us out even as we reasoned with them that they were falling for bare-faced efforts to hitch the proverbial cart ahead of the horse. When you think of it, nothing unusual was in play in Abubakar’s joke: There was Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo an erstwhile military dictator who was being drafted as president to run a unitary decree in the name of Constitution. Well, we all witnessed that the disaster in the Nigeria project deepened even more when Obasanjo climbed into power again. Apart from the masterpiece speech written for him by the late Stanley Macebuh, which he badly delivered after he took the oath of office that afternoon in 1999, nothing else turned out different from the usual. In the absence of a legitimate state and proper institutions of state, Obasanjo’s second time foray in power was eight years of mal-governance that ran amok. He was so emboldened that when he neared the end of those eight years, he even tried to extend himself in power. He got away with all the malfeasance that he condoned and inflicted because there are no proper institutions that could function to check his excesses.
Again, as was the case during the campaign to actualize June 12, the mobilization to stop Obasanjo from extending himself in de facto mal-governance abruptly aborted itself right after he retreated from his intention. As usual, victory was declared by the protagonists of that campaigned even as Obasanjo moved on to his next act to install the walking corpse, Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua to succeed him as president. The enormity of mal-governance that manifested under Yar’Adua is still too recent to rehash here. The paucity of legitimacy associated with the state in the Nigeria project is so evident that it was literally impossible to cart off Yar’Adua’s corpse from the seat of power in Abuja. Yet, the only mobilization that manifested itself in the land at the time saddled itself simply with the task of ‘saving Nigeria’. To what effect? To install a bumbling Jonathan Goodluck as president and leave the shadow of a state untouched for him to also have his own turn to mal-govern?
When some well-intentioned individuals summoned themselves on the auspices of a shadow parliament in New York recently, they tasked themselves merely with monitoring the elections slated for next year. Would that be all? Another attempt to place the cart ahead of the horse right there for you!
Just this week, the latest cart-placed-ahead-of-the-horse effort that was blown up in the air is this Nuhu Ribadu for president chant. I do not know Mr. Ribadu from Adam. I would clearly state here also that I do not have the least personal animosity against him. However, I will be damned if I fail to raise my voice to proclaim that to simply make him president and declare victory will hardly shift the Nigeria project from the historical crisis that bedevils it. That crisis derives from the paucity of legitimacy in the ramshackle state in the Nigeria project. I am not inventing that.
I cannot question Mr. Ribadu’s genuineness and commitment either. But it doesn’t seem like he truly gets it. I’ll still opine that if he wants to become relevant this time around before he makes another foray into public service, he must begin by tasking himself with a clear understanding of the proper diagnosis of the evident crisis in the Nigeria project. There is the absence of a legitimate state here. Why not make its realization the prior task here? To be drafted by the motley of groups of political jobbers that masquerade as political parties is a false start, which will at best produce an outcome similar to the one from his foray as Mr. Obasanjo’s chairman of the EFCC. If Mr. Ribadu truly believes that whatever resulted while he was in-charge of the EFCC translates to progress, well, his definition of progress is indeed out of the ordinary.
Again, on the task involved in righting what’s inherently wrong with the Nigeria project, I say: there is the cart, and there is also the horse, two labor-multipliers. But their functional roles can only be realized when and only when they are hitched in the proper order. He, who has ears, let him hear.
● E. C. Ejiogu, PhD, is a political sociologist.
In time, I learnt that the abundance of the tse-tse fly in the thick ever-green rain forest ecological zone where Igboland is located makes it difficult for horses to thrive there. All the same, it was not lost on us from the story books we read that in cultures where they abound, the cart and the horse are functional labor-multipliers when they are hitched properly in the correct order. Otherwise, they can be rendered dysfunctional.
Over the years, several instances of experience have given me cause to infer that much of the dysfunction that characterizes public life in the geo-political space that became Nigeria derives from the proclivity of especially many individuals from there for succumbing to the folly of hitching the cart before the horse, even when their desire is to make the place function properly. Any wonder the place is ever mired in dysfunction of the highest order?
I was in the thick of the campaign to actualize the mandate which Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s annulment of the June 12 presidential election smashed before it could be claimed rightfully by MKO Abiola, the beneficiary. Some of us got involved in that campaign, which sadly failed to rise to the level of a struggle, on the conviction that it opened a much-needed avenue to achieve the true state building process amongst the nationalities that British intervention brought together as Nigeria. You can imagine the enormity of pain and hurt that some of us felt in 1999 when many amongst us in that campaign jumped ship to embrace Abdulsalami Abubakar’s bogus transition charade. Those ship-jumpers simply refused to hear us out even as we reasoned with them that they were falling for bare-faced efforts to hitch the proverbial cart ahead of the horse. When you think of it, nothing unusual was in play in Abubakar’s joke: There was Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo an erstwhile military dictator who was being drafted as president to run a unitary decree in the name of Constitution. Well, we all witnessed that the disaster in the Nigeria project deepened even more when Obasanjo climbed into power again. Apart from the masterpiece speech written for him by the late Stanley Macebuh, which he badly delivered after he took the oath of office that afternoon in 1999, nothing else turned out different from the usual. In the absence of a legitimate state and proper institutions of state, Obasanjo’s second time foray in power was eight years of mal-governance that ran amok. He was so emboldened that when he neared the end of those eight years, he even tried to extend himself in power. He got away with all the malfeasance that he condoned and inflicted because there are no proper institutions that could function to check his excesses.
Again, as was the case during the campaign to actualize June 12, the mobilization to stop Obasanjo from extending himself in de facto mal-governance abruptly aborted itself right after he retreated from his intention. As usual, victory was declared by the protagonists of that campaigned even as Obasanjo moved on to his next act to install the walking corpse, Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua to succeed him as president. The enormity of mal-governance that manifested under Yar’Adua is still too recent to rehash here. The paucity of legitimacy associated with the state in the Nigeria project is so evident that it was literally impossible to cart off Yar’Adua’s corpse from the seat of power in Abuja. Yet, the only mobilization that manifested itself in the land at the time saddled itself simply with the task of ‘saving Nigeria’. To what effect? To install a bumbling Jonathan Goodluck as president and leave the shadow of a state untouched for him to also have his own turn to mal-govern?
When some well-intentioned individuals summoned themselves on the auspices of a shadow parliament in New York recently, they tasked themselves merely with monitoring the elections slated for next year. Would that be all? Another attempt to place the cart ahead of the horse right there for you!
Just this week, the latest cart-placed-ahead-of-the-horse effort that was blown up in the air is this Nuhu Ribadu for president chant. I do not know Mr. Ribadu from Adam. I would clearly state here also that I do not have the least personal animosity against him. However, I will be damned if I fail to raise my voice to proclaim that to simply make him president and declare victory will hardly shift the Nigeria project from the historical crisis that bedevils it. That crisis derives from the paucity of legitimacy in the ramshackle state in the Nigeria project. I am not inventing that.
I cannot question Mr. Ribadu’s genuineness and commitment either. But it doesn’t seem like he truly gets it. I’ll still opine that if he wants to become relevant this time around before he makes another foray into public service, he must begin by tasking himself with a clear understanding of the proper diagnosis of the evident crisis in the Nigeria project. There is the absence of a legitimate state here. Why not make its realization the prior task here? To be drafted by the motley of groups of political jobbers that masquerade as political parties is a false start, which will at best produce an outcome similar to the one from his foray as Mr. Obasanjo’s chairman of the EFCC. If Mr. Ribadu truly believes that whatever resulted while he was in-charge of the EFCC translates to progress, well, his definition of progress is indeed out of the ordinary.
Again, on the task involved in righting what’s inherently wrong with the Nigeria project, I say: there is the cart, and there is also the horse, two labor-multipliers. But their functional roles can only be realized when and only when they are hitched in the proper order. He, who has ears, let him hear.
● E. C. Ejiogu, PhD, is a political sociologist.
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