I’ve related this anecdote before, but it is so
pertinent to the malaise bedeviling Nigeria today that
it bears repeating. This sad, saddening encounter took
place in 2002 at the University of Lagos where I
taught as a Fulbright lecturer. While discussing the
theme of post-independence disillusionment in African
fiction, I drew my students’ attention to the
pervasive corruption in what was then fashionably
dubbed Nigeria’s “nascent democracy.” I then shared my
view that electoral hanky panky represented the worst
species of corruption, and that it often spawned other
brands of unethical conduct.
Seeing a raised hand, I invited the student to speak.
“Sir,” he began, “is it not wrong to criticize people
in power? As I believer, I know that God puts every
leader there. He chooses the people he wants to use
and installs them. Only God gives power.”
My initial reaction was that this was a galling
attempt at a joke. This was, after all, a class of
third year students, not a gathering of unlettered
peasants. Yet, I had the sneaking suspicion that the
student’s intervention issued from conviction rather
than fancy—indeed, that he spoke in deadly earnest
instead of whimsy. My intuition was soon bolstered by
the observed response of many in class. They nodded in
seeming approbation of their colleague’s contention.
“How many of you believe what this guy just said?” I
asked the class, curious. By my rough estimation, more
than two-thirds of the hands in class went up. Stunned
by the amazing count, my mind quickly weighed
different options for repudiating this baffling creed.
Should I ask the students to reflect, for a moment, on
the caliber of public officials who had run, and
ruined, their nation? Perhaps, I meditated, I might
shock them out of their complacent credulity by asking
a pointed question: “What sin have we all committed
that God should inflict on Nigerians a relay of
mediocrities, nonentities and fakeries?”
I thought about all the atheists and even rabid
anti-theists who have held political power or wielded
enormous economic or cultural influence. I recalled
the old Soviet Union as well as the communist regimes
in China whose apparatchiks not only denied the
existence of God but also went to every length to
repress, and reform, those within their polities who
expressed any form of religious faith. Did the God
these students invoked engage in the suicidal act of
handing power to men who would brutalize his devotees?
If God were in the business of dispensing power, would
He not seek out candidates of exemplary piety and
impeccable devoutness?
At last, I settled on a question whose simplicity, I
hoped, would suffice to open the students’ mind to the
folly of their position. “I’m going to ask you to
consider a simple scenario,” I told the class.
“Imagine there was an election in which two candidates
ran. Let’s say that Candidate A received by far the
majority of the votes cast, but that Candidate B
bribed the electoral officers who then declared him
the winner. In that event, would you still insist that
God gave power to Candidate B?”
I had hardly finished framing the question before a
multitude of hands volunteered to offer an answer. I
called on a female student this time. “Yes,” she said,
with dogmatic certitude, “God must have given power to
Candidate B. If God didn’t want him to get power, God
could have easily killed him.” This response invited
approving hoots, murmurs, and fervent nods.
I was shocked. The retort struck me as appalling, and
yet powerful in an oddly peculiar fashion. Part of
what it said was that, by avowing warped values and
living them, the society had made its youth—the
nation’s best and brightest—susceptible to crazed
notions and toxic ideas. When university students are
wedded to the idea that power is given by God, then
how might they catalyze change or reshape society?
If such a patently wacky idea could take root among
university students, then what sector of the populace
would be immune to its contagious power? If supposedly
enlightened citizens succumb to the lure of such inane
thought, then where was the hope for Nigeria’s future?
Where was the social stratum to stand as a bulwark
against the advance of such pernicious faith?
I came away that day with a sense of the depths, not
necessarily of ignorance, but of a fundamentalist
faith willing to fasten upon divine determinism,
however moronic. There once was a time when only a
tiny portion of the society (and usually among the
unlettered) subscribed to the idea that every facet of
individual and social life conformed to God’s will.
Today, unfortunately, that misshapen idea has become
rampant and deeply triumphant, permeating every level
of society.
It’s provided one of the most oft-deployed cants of
the current post-election season. The spree to festoon
winners of ghost mandates with shameless
congratulations has begun in earnest. There’s a
carnival buzz around Umar Yar’Adua, the PDP’s
presidential candidate and, by a large margin, the
biggest beneficiary of INEC’s vote allocation. There
are smaller carnivals around the persons of the
various governors-selects. The horde of political
pilgrims are determined to “show face” to the
“winners.” This rash of self-interested felicitations
proceeds even as most Nigerians are still in a dazed
state, reeling still from the “shock and awe”
confection that passed for elections. We’re talking
about a tragedy in which several hundred citizens lost
their lives, and President Olusegun “I-dey-kampe”
Obasanjo dishonors their memory by describing the
electoral travesty as a uniquely Nigerian way of
holding polls.
Nigerians live in a time when, to invoke William
Butler Yeats, the vile are full of passionate
intensity. Coming off an election that’s destined to
enter the record books as the canonical case of how
not to conduct an election, a steady stream of
“prominent” Nigerians have inaugurated a self-debasing
bazaar of bestowing congratulations on farcical
victors. Some of these contortionists justify their
treachery by appealing to the demands of pragmatism.
Others seek to burnish their expedient choice by
reifying the imperative of “moving the nation (or
state) forward.” Of course, none of the croakers of
this mantra would be honest enough to admit the
near-impossibility of moving a polity forward on a
foundation of injustice and treason. Nor are they
capable of recognizing that a collectivity animated by
disgraceful values can only be moved forward towards
the precipice—indeed, in the direction of disaster.
The ultimate prize for infamy belongs, I suggest, to
those who routinely ascribe their unconscionable deeds
to God. It has become the trademark of a broad class
of Nigerian politicians, men and women whose conduct
is observably ungodly but who feign piety. They revel
in exploiting the ignorance and superstition of a
growing number of citizens who buy their facile
rhetoric. President Olusegun Obasanjo is a practiced
master of this art, and a notorious invoker of God to
cover awful actions. In the wake of the recent
electoral charade, many a priest, pastor, imam and
“royal father” has seen fit to dust up the God ruse.
Those who engage in this deceit, and those who know
better but are too craven to vigorously repudiate this
illicit doctrine, are sowing seeds whose germination
is bound to engender widespread skepticism about
democracy and its electoral rituals. Every few years,
millions of Nigerians stand in the sun or rain to
exercise the civic function of choosing those they
wish to run their affairs. At each turn, a cabal that
claims to be clued in on divine decisions works to
thwart voters’ desires and dreams. If God decides who
wins and who loses an election, then why were
Nigerians put to the trouble of going to vote at all?
Why did the electoral commission spend billions of
naira on a needless prank? Why did hundreds of
Nigerians have to lose their lives, and hundreds more
their limbs? All the electoral officials needed do was
invite reporters to a press conference where they
would have heard God reading out the names of the
anointed candidates as well as their margins of
victory.
Instead, we’re left with the paradox of “landslide”
mandates that have produced, not communal elation, but
a palpable sense of bereavement and catatonic rage.
How many more times can a people stand to be so
cruelly raped by a few claiming divine connection
before they awaken and proclaim: “Enough! Destroy this
bloody temple!”
The majority of Nigerians are visibly in an ashen
mood. They are aghast. Questions quiver on their lips.
Will this impunity be let stand? How do we confront,
and combat, the small band of leeches determined to
suck and suck until the nation slumps, comatose? The
carnival is on, but the dispossessed seethe in a
thundering, gathering rage. When they rise, their
oppressors stand to reap hell. As James Baldwin would
say: It’s the fire next time!
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