By
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!
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