Wole Soyinka
First, let us not simplify the challenge. There
are no blacks and whites. It is not a contest between saints and
demons, not one between salvation and damnation. If anything, it is
closer to a fork in the road where uncertainty lurks - whichever
choice is made. Someone in the media has called it a choice between
the devil and the deep blue sea, another between Apocalypse and
Salvation. The reasons are not far-fetched. They are firmly lodged in
the trauma of memory and the rawness of current realities. Well, at
least one can dialogue with the devil, even dine with that creature
with the proverbial long spoon. With the deep blue sea however,
deceptively placid, even the best swimmers drown. The problem for
some is deciding which is the devil, which the deep blue sea. For
most, instructively, the difference is clear. There are no
ambiguities, no qualifications, no pause for reflection - they are
simply raring to go! I envy them.
Let all partisans of progress however constantly
exercise self-restraint in assessment and expectations. Facts remain
facts and should never be tampered with. Verification is nearly
always available from records and – the testimonies of witnesses.
Yet memory may prove faulty, so even those who were alive during any
political regimen should exercise even greater caution and not get
carried away by partisanship in any cause, however laudable or
apparently popular. In the interest of truth, embarrassing though it
is, we are obliged to correct all such tendencies openly, since
revisionism is a travesty of history, and never more treacherously so
than in a time of critical democratic choices. I apologize in advance
to the authors of the instance that I must now use as an example,
apologize because it does not come close to the most atrocious
revisionist stances propagated in the past few weeks. However, it is
one of the most recent, is born of noble intent, but serves to remind
us of the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
From that same origination however also came a corrective, and that
very adjustment offers us optional routes in the way we deal with
historical facts, especially when we find ourselves on the same side
of commitment to the positive in a political cause.
In recalling, or commenting on any event that
involves victim and violator, there is a difference between “It
never happened” or “it was the accepted norm for the time” etc.
etc. on the one hand, and, on the other, “we have forgiven what did
happen”. Both positions converge at the point of “moving on”.
One, the first, however disparages and trivializes the suffering of –
in this instance – victims of the abuse of power, dead or alive. In
so doing, it also desecrates the memory of these and other victims.
The second approach insists on its entitlement to justice, waives
that right by drawing on a store of magnanimity and even – places
the violator on notice! Its example also challenges the adamantly
unforgiving, challenges them to join in an exercise of their own
capacity for obliterating the past, acting in the collective
interest, and perhaps attaining closure.
When I read the statement attributed to a scion of
a political family that his father was “not jailed” but was
merely “invited for interrogation as required by military tradition
and policies then”, I felt deeply offended, but mostly saddened.
For this adjustment of reality provided evidence of yet another
lesson unlearnt. Exoneration through denial, and without evidence of
remorse or restitution by a violator is a serious lapse in public
accountability, and an invitation to a repeat by the offender – or
other aspiring emulators. In any crisis, it is not unusual to find
oneself in bed with ideologically embarrassing partners. Let it be
understood that this does not require that we actually begin to dress
them in saintly robes.
What makes our situation especially galling is the
fervid intrusion of some opportunistic sanitizers who bear direct,
sometimes even originating responsibility for the plight in which a
people have been placed. These are individuals who should be doing
penance, walking from one corner of the nation to the other covered
in the equivalent of ‘sackcloth and ashes’ for their role in
bringing the nation to its lamentable condition. Yet they insist on
remaining obsessively in the public face, preening themselves up for
recognition as the primary forces behind a nation’s renewed efforts
to redeem and re-determine itself. They are the promoters –
actively or by default – of the current national trauma of a Boko
Haram malignancy, the anti-corruption rhetoricians who however
believe that they have literally got away with murder. Rather than
make reparations in any number of unobtrusive ways, they impudently
exploit a permissive, and despairing atmosphere for regaining
relevance. The nation should watch out for their antics, even while
exploiting them to the hilt for the overall remedial purpose. They
owe the nation. We must ensure however that they are incapacitated
from making more mischief. I am consoled that not all the Nigerian
electorate is as simple-minded and gullible as they believe.
The nation finds herself at a critical turn, where
the wrong choice places it beyond all hope of remaining intact –
and by ‘intact’ I do not refer to breast-beating mantras such as
the “non-negotiability of Nigerian sovereignty”. I am speaking
here of the viability of whatever calls itself the Nigerian nation,
its functional proof, the ability to generate its very existence and
cater for the future. Since I still have some time invested in that
commodity, the future – with apologies to impatient Internet
Obituarists – it becomes impossible to refrain from direct
participation in the process of, or the encouragement of others, in
the process of making a choice. In any case, I am compromised by the
wiles of unprincipled campaigners whose pastime is to propagate a
choice I have never declared. It is meagre consolation that I am not
alone in being subjected to such fraudulence. Even the dead, who
cannot answer back, have not been spared. In and out of context, the
ongoing campaign appears to have appropriated any public figure as
free-for-all material, to be quoted out of turn, his or her
utterances mangled and distorted, forced into incongruous contexts,
and sometimes, even in a counter-productive manner, although such
desperate campaigners appear blissfully unaware of this. What is
being overlooked however is that, while facts remain constant, the
environment evolves, and may play a tempering role in the very
evocation of a record of the condemable acts of governance. I am not
speaking of time now – as a dulling agent of painful memory - but
of the very actualities of the present as an advocate of – at the
very least – remission.
The era of this election offers an
incontrovertible proof of that reminder. Let us leave aside for a
moment the parlous condition of the Nigerian landscape and look
outwards for some inspiration. We live in an era that we, on this
continent, may be forgiven for inscribing as the era of The Mandelan
example. Mandela’s life trajectory remains a lighthouse in any
voyage into uncharted waters – anywhere and any time that a
people’s history is cited. Confessedly, we can only adopt bits and
pieces of this Monumental Examplar. The bit that is called upon in
this instance is a virtue that is aptly designated civic courage, an
aspect of courage that enables one to make a leap of faith when
confronted with a near intractable choice.
Let me state, right on the heels of that
exhortation that the acceptance of this imposition by society demands
in its turn a massive reciprocity, a condition of individual moral
courage that manifests itself in the ability to express contrition
for the past, with its implicit commitment to an avoidance of such
acts as violated the loftiest entitlements of human existence such as
– freedom. We have no apology for declaring that our civic Muse is,
summatively - Freedom. The right of choice. Volition. The Right of
participation in the modalities of collective existence including its
rituals, the sum of which is routinely known as – Democracy. Its
antithesis is enslavement, and we who have undergone centuries of
enslavement and disdain from the imperious will of outsiders, have no
intention of changing slave masters, irrespective of race, colour,
religion, social pedigree, profession or political ideology. This is
why, apart from a few deranged species that have removed themselves
from the definition of humanity, we are united against the tyranny of
Boko Haram and other proponents of chains – visible and invisible -
as the rightful portion of their fellow beings.
Through participation, direct or vicarious, we
find ourselves landed within a system that has thrown up two choices
– realistically speaking, that is. Formally, we dare not ignore the
claims of other contestants. Of the two however, one is
representative of the immediate past, still present with us, and with
an accumulation of negative baggage. The other is a remote past,
justly resented, centrally implicated in grievous assaults against
Nigerian humanity, with a landscape of broken lives that continues to
lacerate collective memory. However – and this is the preponderant
‘however’ – is there such a phenomenon as a genuine
“born-again”?
It is largely around this question that a choice
will probably be made. It is pointlessly, and dangerously provocative
to present General Buhari as something that he provably was not. It
is however just as purblind to insist that he has not demonstrably
striven to become what he most glaringly was not, to insist that he
has not been chastened by intervening experience and – most
critically - by a vastly transformed environment – both the
localized and the global. Of course we have been deceived before. A
former ruler whom, one presumed, had been purged and transformed by a
close encounter with death, and imprisonment, has turned out to be an
embodiment of incorrigibility on several fronts, including a contempt
for law and constitution. Would it be different this time round? Has
subjection to police tear-gas and other forms of violence, like the
rest of us mortals, and a spell in close detention, truly
‘civilianized’ this contender? I have studied him from a
distance, questioned those who have closely interacted with him,
including his former running-mate, Pastor Bakare, and dissected his
key utterances past and current. And my findings? A plausible
transformation that comes close to that of another ex-military
dictator, Mathew Kerekou of the Benin Republic.Despite such
encouraging precedents however, I continue to insist that the bridge
into any future expectation remains a sheer leap of faith. Such a
leap I find impossible to concede to his close rival, since we are
living in President Jonathan’s present, in an environment that his
six years in office have created and now seek to consolidate. That is
the frightening prospect. It requires more than a superhuman effort
to concede to the present incumbent a springboard for a people’s
critical leap.
I address only those who require no further
persuasion that the present is untenable and intolerable – and from
virtually every aspect of national life. All men and women of
discerning can separate actualities from their exaggerated rendition,
can peel off the distracting gloss that is smeared all over our
social condition by those who seek to blind us to an unjust and
avoidable social predicament. We have tasted the condiments of an
incipient police state. We recognize acts of outright fascism in a
dispensation that is supposedly democratic. We have endured a season
of stagnation in development and a drastic deterioration in the
quality of existence. We are force-fed the burgeoning culture of
impunity, blatantly manifested in massive corruption. We feel
insulted by the courtship and indulgence of common criminals by the
machinery of power. The list is endless but above it all, we
understand when there is a failure of leadership, resulting in a near
total collapse of society. We are now brought to a confrontation with
choice, when we must make a leap of faith, to open up avenues of
restoration.
Leadership is, I acknowledge, an often imprecise
expression, conveniently absolving those who invoke its absence of
the burden of proof. When I make that accusation, it is based on hard
instances for which proof is not only demonstrable in all spheres of
governance – and superabundantly so - but can be provided if
challenged by anyone, including the obscene convocation of the
cretinous, who even believe that they have earned the right to poke
their messy fingers into strictly family travails of a political
contestant, that the medical challenges within a family are matters
of public relevance or offer the slightest evidence of that
individual’s ability to discharge public responsibility. Some
tactics deployed in the process of this political campaign remain
some of the most vulgar and sickening that the nation has experienced
on its democratic journey. Perhaps it is just as well. The exercise
on its own offers warning of fascism in the offing if the wrong
choice is made, if the crucial leap of faith is rejected by the
faint-hearted! Of course, it has not all been one-sided, but let us
leave the exercise of assessment to every individual capable of
applying the most stringent objective yardsticks.
Has the campaign in itself thrown up any portents
for the future? Let all beware. The predator walks stealthily on
padded feet, but we all know now with what lightning speed the claws
flash into action. We have learnt to expect, deplore and confront
certain acts in military dictatorship, but to find them manifested
under a supposedly democratic governance? Of course the tendency did
not begin with this regime, but how eagerly the seeming meek have
aspired to surpass their mentors!
We must not be sanguine, or complacent. Eternal,
minute-to-minute vigilance remains the watchword. Whatever demons got
into a contestant to declare the spread of Sharia throughout the
nation his life mission must be exorcised – indeed, are presumed to
be already exorcised. Never again must any leader ban the discussion
of democratic restoration in the public arena. Nor must we ever again
witness the execution – even imprisonment! - of a citizen under
retroactive laws. This persistent candidate seeks return, but let him
understand that it can only be as a debtor to the past, and that the
future cannot wait to collect. If this collective leap of faith is
derided, repudiated or betrayed under a renewed immersion in the
ambiance of power or retrogressive championing, of a resumption of
clearly repudiated social directions, we have no choice but to revoke
an unspoken pact and resume our march to that yet elusive space of
freedom, however often interrupted, and by whatever means we can
humanly muster. And if in the process, the consequence is national
hara-kiri, no one can say that there had been no deluge of warnings.
The art of leadership is complex and unenviable.
Among its most basic, simple demands however, is the capacity for
empathy, since a leader does not preside over stones but palpable
humanity. Thus, in asserting a failure in leadership in a rivaling
candidate, I pose only one question, a question of basic humanism
that is directed at a leader who equally demands that a nation make a
leap of faith for him also, that a people presume his capability for
self-transformation. That question is this:
“If you had received news of your daughter’s
kidnapping, how long would it take you to spring to action?
Instantly? One day? Two? Three? A week? Or maybe TEN days?”
While we await the answer, the clock of Change
cannot tick sufficiently fast! - Wole SOYINKA
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