July 4, 2010
The spirit of dogma bred the madness of religious and ethnic wars in the minds of men. The seeking spirit- not fanaticism or orthodoxy built civilizations and enriched human life. The defense of dogmas and the expansion of nations and empires had been the enemy of progress. Our situation in Nigeria now is akin to Voltairism- the reach for knowledge and the shared experience of civilization in the age of the French revolution revealed the significance of what I would call ‘ the treasure of sierra Madre syndrome.'
The spirit of dogma bred the madness of religious and ethnic wars in the minds of men. The seeking spirit- not fanaticism or orthodoxy built civilizations and enriched human life. The defense of dogmas and the expansion of nations and empires had been the enemy of progress. Our situation in Nigeria now is akin to Voltairism- the reach for knowledge and the shared experience of civilization in the age of the French revolution revealed the significance of what I would call ‘ the treasure of sierra Madre syndrome.'
In that unforgettable tale by B. Traven, men meet by accident and join together in their search for gold. They take mortal risks for one another in their community of search.
However, when they find the gold, they were filled with suspicion and end up murdering each other and loosing their treasure in the process. The movement toward revolution in France also had drawn the distraught Parisians together in their search for justice. However, having defined, dogmatized and fanaticized their find, they destroyed themselves with guillotine of reason. The way of dialogue was a special way of seeking that valued the spoken word and gave a secondary role to writing. Today, the thinker is a writer, then, the thinker was a speaker.
Socrates explained that just as a painting, unlike a living person, cannot respond to questions, so too the written word is lifeless. Nevertheless, the spoken word, an intelligent word graven in the soul can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent. The living word of knowledge has a soul of which the written word is no more than an image. So the thinker will not seriously, incline to write his thoughts in water with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others. At his trial, Socrates was not charged with being a member of a sect or the author of subversive writing. But he heard ‘voices’ and was accused of unorthodox teaching in his interview with the Athenian youth. The irony of the trial and death of Socrates still challenges Nigeria as a nation and Nigerians as a people.
He had repeatedly risk his life on the battlefield, fighting for Athens in the great Peloponnesian war. Yet we had become the gadfly of the state and then outraged citizens by asserting the superiority of individual reason over conventional wisdom. Moreover, he gave his life willingly in deference to the laws of his little community.
Under the present circumstances, most of these regional champions chanting the rhyme of zoning, quota, rotation and marginalization crap that is steering the nation on the road to perdition are people who were on board not long ago and have taken advantage of their positions as either government officials or party stalwarts in the previous governments to amass wealth. Their actions before now, their connections and whole approach to life openly show their commitment to wealth and the means of accumulating more. The few who were dislodged long ago and therefore not carrying much weight metamorphosized to become an opposition in the form of G this G that, Front, Forum and all those mushroom pressure groups.
A perfect bargain arena, should the government opt for ‘unity government’ or reconciliation! Indeed our constitution and previous governments that entrench the parasitic affluence of the few in this constitution both civilian and military have debased representation to the level of tokenism. A representative in Nigeria today is not regarded as somebody who, who in practice, identifies with the conditions and interests of the people, who is accountable to them and can be summoned and disciplined by them in an even though informal but systematic and organized manner. A representative in Nigeria today is simply anybody who perpetuates the illusion that there is somehow competition and conflict for the allocation of scarce resources going on at the top, and he is a champion of one part. His representativeness begins and ends with ethnicity, religion and the appropriation of the ‘scarce resources’, into his pockets.
This notion of the brutal fact on the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ consisting of a tiny class comes out clearly in the sordid squabbling over the sale of the so called indigenized companies. This squabbling was indeed revealing. In the part of the country I came from, we used to hear about how important it is that the ‘North’ is not cheated in this allocation of shares. When you ask who exactly constitutes this ‘North’, which is going to benefit from private acquisition of shares, you get a nasty look and names calling. Elsewhere it is the ‘South’, ‘West’, ‘East’ , ‘Central’, ‘Muslims’, ‘Christians’, Majorities, Minorities who have to be protected from being cheated.
Any simple question about who actually constitutes those entities and how all of these are going to gain from some starkly rich tycoons privately acquiring shares and accumulating profits is dismissed as childish, communistic or academic .But the question has to be raised, answered and we should painstakingly go on tackling it. In which way for example does a peasant in Kano, Gboko, Umuahia, Ekpoma, Oshogbo, Warri, Kurfi, Yola, Kaita, Birnin Kebbi, Mafara, Minna or Nwewi benefit because a business man or bureaucrat from any of these mentioned places has bought shares in PAN, Cadbury, Sterling, Hilton, Julius Berger, MTN or BCC?
This transaction, financial and private, does not improve the physical capital stock of this country from which this peasant might even be conceived to benefit indirectly. It is simply a financial transaction in which money cornered in various dubious and illegal ways is laundered abroad, since most of the proceeds are transferred abroad, which is home to these multinational monopolies. In addition, we lose the foreign exchange and they gain greater and more stabilized control of the companies that remain the branches of these giant monopolies. The peasant from Barikin Ladi, Oron, Jibia, Owweri, Ajagunle, Kogoro, Kafanchan or Makarfi does not only fail to benefit in any way from this purchase or acquisition of shares by his ‘Kinsmen’, but actually loses in three major ways.
In the first place, these companies and their agencies are more effectively exploiting him through lower wages paid to his son that is just a cleaner or clerk in the factory, hoarding, shoddier goods, since they have richer and more powerful and qualified ‘indigenes’ working for them.
Secondly, these companies are more effectively manipulating and milking this peasant by looting the public wealth through tax evasion and foreign exchange rackets, because people who are their shareholders run the public institutions.
Thirdly, the peasant is ultimately divested of his land, farm or even his house, because his ‘kinsman’ that is the indigenous share holder on his behalf has made so much profit through dividends and inflation that he puts him into debt, buys off his farm, house and land just to expand his large estate or farm stead resort, which makes this peasant both landless and unemployed. That is why when they were squabbling over these privatizations, I wondered who really made up this North and South that is suppose to benefit from this exercise.
If all these standard and conventional explanations for this pattern of events are false and mystifying, what then is its real basis? TO BE CONTINUED
[email protected]
In that unforgettable tale by B. Traven, men meet by accident and join together in their search for gold. They take mortal risks for one another in their community of search.
However, when they find the gold, they were filled with suspicion and end up murdering each other and loosing their treasure in the process. The movement toward revolution in France also had drawn the distraught Parisians together in their search for justice. However, having defined, dogmatized and fanaticized their find, they destroyed themselves with guillotine of reason. The way of dialogue was a special way of seeking that valued the spoken word and gave a secondary role to writing. Today, the thinker is a writer, then, the thinker was a speaker.
Socrates explained that just as a painting, unlike a living person, cannot respond to questions, so too the written word is lifeless. Nevertheless, the spoken word, an intelligent word graven in the soul can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent. The living word of knowledge has a soul of which the written word is no more than an image. So the thinker will not seriously, incline to write his thoughts in water with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others. At his trial, Socrates was not charged with being a member of a sect or the author of subversive writing. But he heard ‘voices’ and was accused of unorthodox teaching in his interview with the Athenian youth. The irony of the trial and death of Socrates still challenges Nigeria as a nation and Nigerians as a people.
He had repeatedly risk his life on the battlefield, fighting for Athens in the great Peloponnesian war. Yet we had become the gadfly of the state and then outraged citizens by asserting the superiority of individual reason over conventional wisdom. Moreover, he gave his life willingly in deference to the laws of his little community.
Under the present circumstances, most of these regional champions chanting the rhyme of zoning, quota, rotation and marginalization crap that is steering the nation on the road to perdition are people who were on board not long ago and have taken advantage of their positions as either government officials or party stalwarts in the previous governments to amass wealth. Their actions before now, their connections and whole approach to life openly show their commitment to wealth and the means of accumulating more. The few who were dislodged long ago and therefore not carrying much weight metamorphosized to become an opposition in the form of G this G that, Front, Forum and all those mushroom pressure groups.
A perfect bargain arena, should the government opt for ‘unity government’ or reconciliation! Indeed our constitution and previous governments that entrench the parasitic affluence of the few in this constitution both civilian and military have debased representation to the level of tokenism. A representative in Nigeria today is not regarded as somebody who, who in practice, identifies with the conditions and interests of the people, who is accountable to them and can be summoned and disciplined by them in an even though informal but systematic and organized manner. A representative in Nigeria today is simply anybody who perpetuates the illusion that there is somehow competition and conflict for the allocation of scarce resources going on at the top, and he is a champion of one part. His representativeness begins and ends with ethnicity, religion and the appropriation of the ‘scarce resources’, into his pockets.
This notion of the brutal fact on the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ consisting of a tiny class comes out clearly in the sordid squabbling over the sale of the so called indigenized companies. This squabbling was indeed revealing. In the part of the country I came from, we used to hear about how important it is that the ‘North’ is not cheated in this allocation of shares. When you ask who exactly constitutes this ‘North’, which is going to benefit from private acquisition of shares, you get a nasty look and names calling. Elsewhere it is the ‘South’, ‘West’, ‘East’ , ‘Central’, ‘Muslims’, ‘Christians’, Majorities, Minorities who have to be protected from being cheated.
Any simple question about who actually constitutes those entities and how all of these are going to gain from some starkly rich tycoons privately acquiring shares and accumulating profits is dismissed as childish, communistic or academic .But the question has to be raised, answered and we should painstakingly go on tackling it. In which way for example does a peasant in Kano, Gboko, Umuahia, Ekpoma, Oshogbo, Warri, Kurfi, Yola, Kaita, Birnin Kebbi, Mafara, Minna or Nwewi benefit because a business man or bureaucrat from any of these mentioned places has bought shares in PAN, Cadbury, Sterling, Hilton, Julius Berger, MTN or BCC?
This transaction, financial and private, does not improve the physical capital stock of this country from which this peasant might even be conceived to benefit indirectly. It is simply a financial transaction in which money cornered in various dubious and illegal ways is laundered abroad, since most of the proceeds are transferred abroad, which is home to these multinational monopolies. In addition, we lose the foreign exchange and they gain greater and more stabilized control of the companies that remain the branches of these giant monopolies. The peasant from Barikin Ladi, Oron, Jibia, Owweri, Ajagunle, Kogoro, Kafanchan or Makarfi does not only fail to benefit in any way from this purchase or acquisition of shares by his ‘Kinsmen’, but actually loses in three major ways.
In the first place, these companies and their agencies are more effectively exploiting him through lower wages paid to his son that is just a cleaner or clerk in the factory, hoarding, shoddier goods, since they have richer and more powerful and qualified ‘indigenes’ working for them.
Secondly, these companies are more effectively manipulating and milking this peasant by looting the public wealth through tax evasion and foreign exchange rackets, because people who are their shareholders run the public institutions.
Thirdly, the peasant is ultimately divested of his land, farm or even his house, because his ‘kinsman’ that is the indigenous share holder on his behalf has made so much profit through dividends and inflation that he puts him into debt, buys off his farm, house and land just to expand his large estate or farm stead resort, which makes this peasant both landless and unemployed. That is why when they were squabbling over these privatizations, I wondered who really made up this North and South that is suppose to benefit from this exercise.
If all these standard and conventional explanations for this pattern of events are false and mystifying, what then is its real basis? TO BE CONTINUED
[email protected]
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