By Paul Odili
Posted to the Web: Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Enugu governor, Dr Chimaroke Nnamani, after what might seem a lull resumed at the lecture circuit last week Thursday, to canvass his opinion on current political development in the country. The Ibadan lecture, entitled: Regionalism, and challenges of national integration” under the auspices of the 2nd annual lecture series of The Westerner newspapers, had in audience Governors Aloa Akala, of Oyo state and Gbenga Daniel of Ogun state with eminent historian Prof Ade Ajayi, amongst others in attendance. 

Nnamani, who elevated the art of lecture to a state policy had previously traversed the length and breath of the country giving talks, most of which had been controversial, but which nonetheless had been no less engaging. With the pressure of governance in the last one year; there had been issues of third term debate, Southern leaders forum, agitating for justice and equity in power distribution, all of which Nnamani had been a prominent figure, it does appear that shelving public speaking, was inevitable. There is so much that can be crammed into one’s activities at anyone time.

And of course, apart from playing national politics, Nnamani, it appears had to also concentrate in completing some of his government programmes in his Enugu state. Eventually, his people are going to demand explanation over what he did with a mandate spanning eight years, if he overlooked them to focus on national politics alone. Although he is resuming his talks at the time election is around the corner, he could be suspected of getting back into giving lecture, as a political tool.  Being active in the lecture circuit had served him so well, and he has earned a reputation for his thought provoking lectures.

So, even if he has not said so, it is hard not to see that he is attempting to reap again undeniable benefits from what he knows how to do well.
Has anything changed about Nnamani’s lectures? Not much, except that somewhere along the line it became a little more like a political speech of endorsement for President Obasanjo’s policies and leadership style. It is hard to recall any past lectures, he had eulogized the President the way he did at Ibadan. So, the suspicion that his lectures might have political connotation is not far fetched. At another level, his views on Obasanjo retained the consistency he has been noted for, in interviews and press statements. The difference now is that unlike before, his partisan views which he kept out of such engagements are now entering his lecture.

 There is a danger in this. Aside from this, Nnamani’s language remains abstract and turgid, a style he has used in his previous presentations, and so both his listeners and readers of his publications in the press might well be prepared to read him in the same fashion they are used to.

And one other thing that has not changed and which will be become obvious in the course of reading this piece is that Nnamani’s battering ram, the elite, received their full dosage of his contempt for the type of politics they play. Consistency is perhaps one word Nnamani likes, and it seems his ideas about certain issues are firmly fixed. The outlined background is to prepare the readers for what to expect.    

It is in this context uncertain whether his larger audience at the Banquet Hall of Premier Hotel, Ibadan is that familiar with his ideas, and what to expect. Nevertheless, at the end of the day they got an earful and some real insights into Nigeria and political issues of the moment.

To buttress the origin of Nigeria’s regional affiliation and the politics that under girded this concept of regionalism, and why as an idea it has remained entrenched in Nigeria’s political culture, despite decentralisation through creation of states, Dr Nnamani, took his audience on a historical excursion to examine the forces that made it so, beginning with the colonial conquest, which came at a time the various sovereignties where maneuvering to undo each other.

He contended that: “ The setting of the series of annexation, pacification, conquest and intimidation of the other territories came in less violent but firm resolve of the British authorities to insist that its arriving political and military order, would neither tolerate nor invite the opinion of the local people, as typified by the admonition of gladiators like Sir Ralph Moor, who never minced words about the might of the imperial order in his threat never to brook any opinion. By way of sounding out his uncompromising posture, he had roared, November 14, 1901, that the natives must be made to understand that the government is their master and is determined to establish in and control their country.”

And so the process of suppression of the various sovereignties, which by this time had been on going proceeded with even greater vigour. With superior military might, this was accomplished ending the independence of states like the  Benin kingdom, the Sokoto empire, the Bornu emirate, Benin the Igbo stateless communities etc. The consequence Nnamani observed was a malformed nationhood, when compared with attempts in other climes that succeeded in creating a national spirit. “ We must also take into account the fact that as we missed out in the romanisation of that era, we did not have the chances of any russification. This, we all know, manifested in the sweeping of Eastern Europe into the communist regime and values of the recent past.”

Nnamani further lamented that in addition to this, there were issues of minority rights, which suffered due to colonial gerrymandering of the borders of the various borders of the communities without consultation. The hiving off or lumping of communities with minimal historical contacts, or reducing communities that shared much in common with one they shared little with was one of the perfidies of colonialists that sowed the seed of distrust and confusion in Nigeria.

Despite all these, Nnamani believes that, it was still possible for a cohesive Nigeria nation to emerge, if the leaders had put their minds to it. Somehow,  he noted, the regions that emerged even from these halfhearted attempts by the colonialists to create a cohesive national spirit, and the botched efforts by early political leaders to match forward did not stop the emergence of a competitive regional system, that was capable of propelling a progressive country. “As reported, the cocoa plantations of the West, the groundnut pyramids of the North, the palm oil and kernel in the East, emerged as stimulus, for erstwhile docile economies and the stage which was set had promised good results in bountiful political harvests, if only the emerging post-colonial elites had the right idea of how a competitive federal state should run. It was of course the failure to fully build on the competitive gains of this kind of regional structure that deliberate actions in negation emerged on the hints of earlier values of divisive ethnicism.”

 It was not just that the elite showed incompetence in maintaining a successful regional system, Nnamani called into question their judgments regarding the expatriate staff they retained or recruited into their bureaucracy. One example of this failure he cites: “ There was this practice in which the regions maintained recruitment outposts in London and these, unfortunately, offered the Europeans the field to fully manipulate Nigerians. A European seeking employment in the Northern Regional service, but got repudiated could get the same employment offered to him in the Western Regional office.

On arrival in Nigeria, this European had his mind made up against the North. It could be in a case with the East, or West or even against the Federal Central Service. So there was a beehive of European manipulative activities, such that were also manipulative of the era of first military government, and added to the precipitation of the civil war.”

Nnamani argues that these tendencies of the European should have been obvious to the post colonial leaders, if they were not so blighted in their politics, he says of them, “ the emerging indigenous elite should have filed these gaps posed by this missing link, but as shockingly revealed in our history, the hypocrisy and opportunism, I dare say, exhibited by the elite of that era, simply firmed up the birth ad foundation of the obnoxious perception which set to torpedo the gains of competitive regionalism.”

With the failed attempt at nation building by the civilian regime, Nnamani thought that the military had a unique opportunity because, it was perhaps, the only institution best poised to do so. In this regard, while he gives due credit to the founding fathers of Nigeria for their effort, Governor Nnamani, singled out for praise of all military rulers the leadership of General Olusegun Obasanjo, both as a military dictator and as a civilian ruler.

He says of Obasanjo, “ As a military head of state, his programmes in the expansion of the Nigerian airport system, the universities, the highways, the polytechnics, the petrochemical industries, the iron/steel industries, the sense of equity, equality and fairness and the perpetual strive to be seen to be working for the advantage of the length and breath of Nigeria all put together, gave birth to a leadership figure capable of inspiring the right kind, as well as level of hope, for the emergence of a federal nation state.”

Governor Nnamani, concluded his dissertation by turning  his attention to globalisation, a trend he urges all to get involved, because  idleness whether of  individual or state would be swept aside by this trend. He expresses the hope that notwithstanding current trends, “ Our great nation state, made of the various groupings, but ready to be fully wielded into the most striking economic force, via the running democracy of our time, would be on the steady rise.”