By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Nigerian leaders must be taken to task for making the country look quite small through their clannishness.
The powers-that-be of Nigeria take great pleasure in describing the country as the “Giant of Africa.”
A towering giant is not expected to have very small-minded leaders.
A giant with the feet of clay is an object of derision.
A little mind can hardly ever make great things to happen.
If ever Nigeria is to reach the range of its potentials the country must enjoy a leadership as large as her ambition.
Obviously the country has become a butt of jokes across the globe because of the lack of quality in the headship of the dear country.
The late leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, had once described Nigeria as a “big-for-nothing” country.
Crude nepotism is now being brandished as merit or competence in Nigeria.
The political appointments made in the past many years by the presidents of Nigeria are a pathetic slap on the face of integrity in governance.
Apologists of the governments have had a very tough time trying to convince astonished Nigerians that these presidents mean well for the country.
The lopsided appointments are tilted too dangerously towards provincialism and crude tribalism. Some blokes are putting up the defence that Nigerians must perforce accept the crudity of the so-called “turn-by-turn” leadership as per tribal Nigeria.
There is the proverb that says: “A freeborn given the job of a slave should at least do the job with the work ethics of a true freeborn.”
Injustice has always been at the bottom of Nigeria’s problems.
The sad reality is that Nigerians are more divided today than even during the evil years of the civil war.
The noise about a contrived “Southern Solidarity” cannot mask the gravity of the injustice and inequity taking centre-stage on the national stage in this perilous day and age.
Back in 1987, Prof Richard Joseph published the seminal book, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria.
It is a grave matter that the country has gotten much worse in bowing the knee to prebendalism in the highest echelons of power.
Presidents have been in the odious battle of fighting to outdo one another in abominable provincialism.
Things have so degenerated that changing the names of streets and bus-stops in Lagos is taking centre-stage as though it were the source of all of Nigeria’s problems!
Tribal hate is being promoted with gusto such that you may risk being killed if you do not have the new normal of correct tribal marks!
The way to go is the spirit of the female national team, the Falcons, who played with the true Nigerian spirit to defeat Morocco 3-2 without minding the tribes of the players.
The Nigerian team was down 2-0 in the first half, but the players bonded like blood sisters, fighting for each other against the onslaught of the Moroccan fans and their players, before winning the 10th WAFCON title as African queens.
These girls were as large as Nigeria unlike our presidents who are perniciously smaller than the country.
The prayer is that some Saturday, for sure, Nigeria will produce a pan-Nigerian president, a leader as big and large as the dear country.
A president that has the true mandate of the people will not get involved in parochialism because he would not need the rigging of elections to be in power.
In the words of Walter Rodney, “Ethnic differences exist; of course they exist on the African continent. They are not necessarily political differences, however. They don’t necessarily cause people to kill each other. They become so-called ‘tribalism’ when they are politicized in a particular framework. And in post-independence Africa they have been politicized largely by sections of the so-called African elite.”
Evil tribalism is the badge on our presidents, and it smacks of lack of civilization.
Nigeria is such a big and endowed country that needs to parade big leaders and presidents respected all over the world.
The sad matter is the oddity of the smallness of the size of our presidents, as best illustrated through the image of the manchild of Aboliga the Frog in Ayi Kwei Armah’s novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born:
“Aboliga the Frog one day brought us a book of freaks and oddities, and showed us his favorite among the weird lot. It was a picture of something the caption called an old manchild. It had been born with all the features of a human baby, but within seven years it had completed the cycle from babyhood to infancy to youth, to maturity and old age, and in its seventh year it had died a natural death. The picture Aboliga the Frog showed us was of the manchild in its gray old age, completely old in everything save the smallness of its size, a thing that deepened the element of the grotesque. The manchild looked more irretrievably old, far more thoroughly decayed, than any ordinary old man could ever have looked.”
It is a great pity that Nigeria has been reduced to the smallness of the little minds.
Great leaders all over the world preach inclusiveness.
A complex country such as Nigeria cannot survive without the accommodation of all the ethnicities.
The parochial preaching of hate and dividing the country as per tribal support base is crudely reckless.
Repackaging the heavily endangered Nigerian democracy as per tribal triumphalism definitely cannot stand because oppression has never triumphed throughout the history of the world.
For now, there is no country to crow about.
Someday, Nigeria will have a leader big and large enough to fulfil her manifest destiny.
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, is the author of God of Poetry.
