Opinion
The Comfort Of Faith, The Insurgency Of Hope, And The Promise Of Success
Published
1 year agoon

By
Toyin Falola
When I speak to young people, it is always a delight because it is an avenue to cultivate their minds and leave a lasting impact on them. Thus, I was overjoyed at the recent opportunity to speak to students at Fountain University, Osogbo.
These students have burnt the proverbial midnight candle in the past few years to get the best of education and real-life training. I believe this education is potent enough to change their lives positively and give them an edge in life as they begin to live up to their potential. However, they are currently confronted with the same problems as the average Nigerian, and they are likely to be filled with doubts about what the future holds for them, about whether they can truly make a difference and succeed in the face of the country’s existential challenges. In light of this, I spoke to them passionately and honestly about how having faith and hope can illuminate their paths and help them succeed in their different fields of endeavour.
Faith and hope are not terminologies of the religious world alone. They are two concepts crucial to any nation’s development, especially in Nigeria, where traumatic levels of crises and underdevelopment have been endemic. Conversely, despair, gloom, and hopelessness are euphemistic terms to squelch and denigrate the state of mind of the average Nigerian towards the country’s state of affairs. Nigerians from all corners of the country feel a great sense of hopelessness about the utterly miserable life that most citizens live. This dejection causes many to take on life-threatening journeys to migrate to other regions, searching for greener pastures and relief. While many may condemn this egregious display of desperation and recklessness, we can reasonably say that the present situation is dire enough that many undertake even the most outrageous of measures to escape their circumstances.
READ ALSO: In Understanding Modern Nigeria, Falola Directs Our Noble Cause
Truly, Nigeria’s problems are so gigantic that providing a microcosmic overview of the various problems and crises the country is battling would be difficult. This is due to the precariousness of the issues and how interwoven, interconnected, and closely knit the problems are. However, we must talk about these problems if we are ever going to proffer solutions. So, what are the problems being faced by the Nigerian state? Throughout the chequered history of Nigeria, there is not a single period when the country has been completely peaceful. Even the early sixties were relatively calm, with the country fresh out of colonialist occupation for close to a century. Many placed hope in the future greatness of the newly independent country, and its citizens waited eagerly for its potential to be unveiled. Unfortunately, the independence reverie did not last long, as a myriad of political discontents and disagreements germinated into violent conflict, causing chaos and shaking the foundations of the nascent nation. These struggles and instability culminated in the advent of military governance, which no one can say were beneficial to the country.
Tribal rivalry and injustice arising from the military’s incursion into power ushered in one of the most important intra-national conflicts in twentieth-century Africa. The eviscerating civil war resulted in the loss of millions of lives, wanton destruction of properties beyond reasonable conception, and the sowing of seeds of discord that germinated and have refused to die to date. During the war, desperate tactics were adopted by the warring parties, with formal military rules being largely abandoned. After the war, many civilians-turned-combatants were not properly demilitarised, and their weapons were confiscated from the public. This brought about an unprecedented proliferation of lethal weapons, with many falling into evil hands.
Violent intentions and capabilities, as well as rising social and economic inequality, political problems, and a decaying society, brought about an increase in stolen arms and weapons. These conditions set the stage for a new kind of insecurity in the country, which surfaced just as the nation was healing and recuperating from the bloody rivalry that lasted almost three years. Between 1970 and 1976, there was a staggering 900% increase in armed robbery, with well over 100,000 cases reported in 1976 alone. It should be noted that this sobering situation led to robberies and killings that have continued to this day in different parts of the country.
READ ALSO: Conversations On The Impacts Of Private Universities On Public Universities In Africa (2)
Another of Nigeria’s mainstay issues is ethnoreligious based disputes. Nigeria is a country where people of sometimes completely different ways of life are coerced to live together under a single federation, leading to clashes with ethnic and religious colourations. Although Nigeria is no stranger to religious and tribal violence, incidents have increased in ferocity, intensity, and frequency in the past few years. One of the most common dimensions of this issue is the herder-farmer crisis, which has reached genocidal proportions. At another end is the malignant Boko Haram insurgency. This insurgency has been a bone hanging in the throat of the Nigerian state for as long as anyone can remember. On the wings of the promise of absolving this organisation of insurgents, among other things, Muhammadu Buhari rode to win the Aso Rock seat in 2015. However, we have seen a consolidation of the Boko Haram menace by kidnapping bandits, secessionist threats crises, and other issues. Kidnapping has become a common denominator in the Nigerian scene, to the point that even protected government officials are kidnapped or killed.
Now more than ever, sections of the Nigerian state feel the need to disintegrate themselves from the whole to protect themselves and pursue the interests of their people. There have been reinforcements in the agitations of the Indigenous People of Biafra and protests and moves for the Yoruba nation by Chief Sunday Igboho and his fellow activists. One thing to note is that many of the crimes perpetrated against citizens do not have ethnic or religious backgrounds though they have grown in recurrence, persistence, severity, and cruelty in recent years. As many of these crimes involve the lives of youth in society and result in some economic gain, it is not difficult to understand the circumstances surrounding their occurrence. Unstable economic conditions, mainly caused by the apparent lack of industrial productivity, have ravaged the nation for many years and trickled down to current generations facing unemployment and underemployment in a rapidly progressing world.
Furthermore, the lack of economic productivity contributes to Nigeria’s foreign exchange woes. Underproductivity caused damage to the country’s foreign exchange viability by leaving the country’s foreign exchange earnings to be derived from a particular extractive commodity that is subject to eternal fluctuations in price. Forex instability also details export earnings, and the industrial downturn in Nigeria and its forex challenges have made it non-attractive to the international investing community as foreign direct investments (FDI) have fallen off a cliff, with no promises of recovery soon.
Another set of mountainous problems bedevilling the republic is the government’s failure or outright lack of access to basic infrastructural services for the people. Almost all Nigerians consider the gross absence of the necessities of life as normal. The country lacks basic amenities that its citizens should be enjoying, such as an excellent and smooth road network, stable electricity, water supply, a strong healthcare system, among other things. The availability of these amenities in good working order will not only benefit citizens but will also contribute to the increase in the country’s average standard of living by facilitating trade and other beneficial economic contributions.
All the problems and crises expounded above, from religious and ethnic-induced insecurity to alarming unemployment rates, are traceable to several existential developmental challenges that the country is battling without any sign of a slowdown. It is a given that these challenges must be resolved for Nigeria to experience real, effective progress. A former British Prime Minister once described Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt,” a moniker that notarises a plight known all too well in Nigeria, in both the public service and the private sector. Corruption is endemic to Nigeria, and one of the things that have helped this epidemic fester and spread malignantly is that Nigerians are more interested in talking about it than actively seeking ways to mitigate it. We have been talking about corruption in Nigeria and the need to eradicate it since yesterday, and we may as well continue to talk about it till tomorrow without being able to solve the problem. If everyone is talking about corruption and asking the government to solve the problem without truly admitting their role in the corrupt system and committing to taking a path towards change, we may never see that change. If everyone acts sanctimoniously, who then is corrupt? The truth is that corruption does not live amidst the politicians alone. It is everywhere, and the earlier we realise it, admit our individual complicity, and decide to turn a new leaf, the better.
Aside from the developmental issues of corruption, Nigeria faces the absence of the rule of law, justice, and equality. The government and private citizens involved in law-making and its enforcement are known for their egregious abuse of the rights and privileges of others, almost always with lewd immunity and abandonment. It is not uncommon to find powerful people employing the state’s security apparatus to punish the less fortunate. Public servants and those with a higher socioeconomic status can disobey and ignore court rulings, especially regarding human rights issues. There is already a gaping divide between the everyday realities of the so-called average person and the people at the upper echelon of politics, society, business, and the economy. As a result, they can afford the basic amenities that the government seems incapable of providing for the wider populace, and access to compulsory governmental services is often enjoyed by the “highest bidder.” The amalgamation of these conditions fosters a society where discontent festers, engendering violence and mutiny against the state.
If one factor could encapsulate all these issues, it is the fact that institutions in the country are weak and excessively incapable of carrying out their responsibilities. The laws themselves grant enough power to the institutions and the officers designated to oversee them. However, in practice, these officers cannot perform the functions they are assigned by the law due to a plethora of superseding interests in which the welfare of the general society, which they are expected to serve, is relegated to the background and parochial goals gain precedence. This creates a state where the average Nigerian does not have a genuine emotional connection to the country, or in cases where such a connection exists, it is only perfunctory.
READ ALSO: Partnering For Greatness: Rethinking University Education In Africa
To face the fact, the current state of Nigeria is traumatic. For the average Nigerian, it is always a struggle for daily survival. The environment that Nigeria’s insecurity and crises have created is facilitating discouragement in people’s minds, influencing the behaviour of the sparingly motivated, and leading the ambitious to find escape routes – legal or illegal – from the country. For the rest of the people still in the country and those planning to emigrate, we must find solace in faith and hope while we wait to fulfil the promise of development. In situations like this, when things become turbulent for the commoner, we must not throw in the towel or resign to fate. Instead, we must learn from the strength and patience we gain from believing in the Almighty, which has taught everyone to hold on even to the last breath of life. If we all decide to do this, there is a certainty that the fulfilment of promises is lurking around the corner and is just about to manifest. Besides, as patriotic citizens, if we remain in this country, we can find assurance in the hope of a better future and exercise faith in the belief that all that has to be done to achieve development in the country will be done.
We cannot find love and mutuality among the people close to us anywhere else.
Therefore, while we expect that things get better, the least we can do is maintain a positive outlook. We must cultivate a mindset that reflects the possibility of a better nation, sees the current crises and underdevelopment as a surmountable mountain, and expects the people to blossom in the euphoria of a better Nigeria. We cannot abandon what belongs to us and build another man’s land. For the Nigerian society to experience lasting and far-reaching transformation, a change in its members’ cognition (thinking) and values is required, which may be regarded as the crux of quality social engineering. We should note that social engineering, in this instance, should not be erroneously conceived as an attempt at indoctrination or propagandism. Regardless of our political, religious, and ethnic affiliations and philosophies, certain tenets of human living appeal to almost anyone and can be adjudged as desirable to everyone.
Even in the face of the current challenges, we must live in the optimism that Nigeria will one day get to the state we have always hoped for and morph into Africa’s true giant. Only by doing this, fueled by faith and hope, can we bring Nigeria to a new level of attainment commensurate to what the nation needs.
.Part of the speech Prof Falola delivered during the 10th/11th Convocation of the Fountain University, Osogbo, on January 13, 2022.
Falola is a Nigerian historian and professor of African Studies. He is currently the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin.
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By Tony Afejuku
These past three weeks have been three supreme weeks of supreme value to all of us who have been gluing ourselves to this column for the right reasons: No room for lying; no room for deceits; no room for propaganda; no room for vanity. No room, no room, no room for what should not be here. Thoughts of the streams, thoughts of the spheres, music of the streams, music of the spheres enhance the column in diverse ways.
Our debaters for the past three weeks have demonstrated this. Each of the professors (all of them, in fact) has demonstrated this in the geometry of their presentations, in the minds of their geo-biographies, in the arithmetic of their convictions and persuasions. They in varying degrees did not support the will of INEC in the presidential election, even though the INEC chair is one of them, a fellow professor in the sphere of the humanities. In going over the longitude and latitude of the flow of our professors, of our debating professors, in their authentic and responsible sphere of spheres the clarity and precision of the geo-biography and nature of patience moved towards me. This may not be the right way of putting it, but I found and still find each debater to be a patient debater. Goodness! How a patiently patient listener and presider over the debate Professor Olu Obafemi was/is! The rhetoric of his ears or of his eyes or of his tongue was/is the rhetoric of the sage. If I imagined this, I imagined it well. His rhetoric was/is not the creation of this recorder, but it is the rhetoric of the music of the shaping of the debate and the words of the debaters who like him are fellow writers and creators.
Now I present to our readers the summation of Professor Olu Obafemi who presided over the reported affairs of the literati:
“This debate has gone on very well and quite enlightening. I have learnt quite a lot from the various positions eloquently proffered here. I like to chip in this bit: (1) there will not be much ideological departure from PMB to BAT. We will still operate a neoliberal economy, fraught largely with parasitism and consumerism. It is very likely, from his experience in investment, creative commercialism/commodity consciousness and cosmopolitanism in governance, Tinubu will be a lot more distribution-prone, more productive, and more people friendly than his predecessor; (2) having operated in comprador praxis in the US, Tinubu will engage globalization with discretionary envisioning (these are loaded, unconventional concepts that may require greater elucidation in future; (3) having not operated unitarist governance strategy that we have had since Ironsi till date, and with his governance experience in Lagos, including standing up to OBJ to run a well-structured State in Lagos, BAT will be more of his own man who will surround himself with talent rather than a cabalistic instinct (I am talking here about power delegation as opposed to power relegation); (4) we have good reason to believe that Tinubu will not go for a winner-take-all, conclave-prone governance and will strive to deliver goods and services— democracy dividends more generously/humanely. May the future be better and more tolerable for our people and all of us in this country, and all our fellows and compatriots in foreign lands, that is, the diaspora.”
But the pastor-spirit as well as the track of traditional culture in him elicited from Professor Ademola Da Sylva what amounted to a kind of vote of thanks to Professor Olu Obafemi and the co-debaters in the literati.
“Many thanks, Baba O.O., for your thoughtful, clinical and lucid interventions; and IBK’s, (and others’) too! So palpable and infectious are the feelings of hope, and delight of the innocent, that you have demonstrated in your concluding postings, and my silent response was a loud A-m-e-n! Then I turned to God the Almighty, and said, “Baba-God, these genuine feelings expressed by these great minds, aggregate what is uppermost in the mind of the Nigerian people at this point of our history. Can you, please, do this one last favour for the masses of this country? I believe it is not beyond what you as the Almighty can do for an otherwise potentially great country like Nigeria! Simply protect BAT, from the powers that have constituted themselves into human principalities in the corridor of power; completely and permanently seal the mouths of those demonic lions labelled as Cabals in Aso Rock that have, thus far, truncated Nigeria’s destiny! AMEN!” Perhaps we should remind ourselves that our hope was this high when many Nigerian voters, including yours truly, trouped out to vote in Buhari as President! Now, I remember, “demonic forces” written about by Reuben Abati during the Presidency of GEJ, unfortunately, like some nameless hydra monsters they always rear their ugly heads with every new administration, these Aso Rock principalities. PMB has his good share of them in the Abakyaris, and very familiar ones, for obvious reasons, like the Ngiges, et al, never for once did they allow PMB to be! They took advantage of his visibly infirm state, to take over the reins of governance in what could be described as a “civilian coup” and ran-over the ship of the country crashing against the Aso rock! The reason we are where we are, right now! BAT like PMB, also has a visibly infirm visage/characteristic unless we pretend to not acknowledge it, a new set of cabalistic demons would join forces with the existing ones, after all, it is still the same Political Party, to take advantage of BAT’s current clinical status! BAT of 20 or 10 years ago, isn’t the same BAT today on account of age and health. Yes, unless God Almighty does something about these principalities through His human agents, they might yet soon take over the affairs of Nigeria under BAT too, to do what they know best: to steal, to kill and to destroy, and ensure that the status quo remains as it has always been, in the spirit of Ted Hughe’s very famous poem, ‘The Eagle’!”
Well, well said, O debaters. But let the columnist-terminator and terminator-columnist have the last word. The time won’t be long to ask INEC this simple question: Did INEC lavish allegedly over three hundred billion naira to register the paltry figure or number of voters for the 2023 elections? Did the very small number (below ninety or so million) match the more than very huge sum of money that INEC got for registration of voters and for other election related matters, duties and responsibilities? How much money in millions upon millions did not allegedly go under and distributed to “principalities” and “demonic forces” hovering over Aso Rock and the Presidency of the presidencynologists? Any clear or unclear answers to these questions cannot or may not but tell us that the presidential election in particular was INEC’s will. Our debating Professors will not say on oath that they did not know. Did the presidential and other elections meet the expectations, wishes and will of the people generally? INEC has the answer. And our debating professors will bluntly tell the chairman of INEC this.
Because our professors are fellow writers, I must terminate the discourse by drawing their attention to the following poem “For the Consideration of Poets” by Haki R. Madhubuti (original name Don Luther Lee), the 81 years old African-American poet, author and publisher, and a native of Little Rock, Arkansas:
where is the poetry of resistance,
the poetry of honorable defiance
unafraid of lies from career
politicians and business men,
not respectful of journalists who write
official speak void of educated thought
without double search or sub surface questions
that war talk demands?
where is the poetry of doubt and suspicion
not in the service of the state, bishops
and priests,
not in the service of beautiful people
and late night promises,
not in the service of influence,
incompetence and academic
clown talk?
The above lines speak volumes. Let them stay glued to our memories day by day. And may INEC’s chairman become the poet and historian of resistance after finding time to read this!
Terminated for now.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
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By Promise Adiele
Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Waiting for Godot avails itself of multiple interpretative tools with a compelling grip on the moral imagination of the audience. As a timeless drama, it thrives on the hopelessness of the human condition dramatized by two vagabonds, Estragon and Vladimir who waited for a mysterious, titular Godot that never came. One of the features of the absurdist literary tradition portrayed in the play is the failure of language in the verbal context as a means of communication. The verbal exchange between the two vagabonds is evident of misinterpretation. One says one thing, the other interprets it differently. Thus, it calls to question the potency of language in the verbal medium as a means of communication. The preceding analogy reminds me of Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu and his purported insult to the good people of the Yoruba ethnic group. Perhaps, misinterpretation currently manifests as an inexorable content of Nigeria’s absurd credentials.
Last week, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, philanthropist, accomplished businessman, the Balogun Babaguwan of Yorubaland, Ahaejiejemba of Igboland and elder-statesman, while reacting to events that happened in Lagos during the last election when many Igbo people were bloodied and harassed, assured the world that “the Igbo and Yoruba are not at war”. On the heels of that statement came another one “they are Yoruba political rascals”. A syntactic analysis of the two sentences affirms that the Chief never meant to insult the entire Yoruba ethnic group. Rather, he was referring to rascals in Lagos who maimed, killed, and vanquished Igbos, non-Yorubas, and even some Yorubas with Igbo semblance, stopping them from exercising their voting rights during the election. He also said “we know them and we will deal with them”. Language scholars know that Chief Iwuanyanwu did not mean to insult the Yoruba. Sadly, some social nitwits, victims of acute cognitive impairment, went on a rampage to misinterpret and manipulate his statement to suit their treacherous, mischievous purposes. It is absurd.
Anyone who knows Chief Iwuaynanwu’s antecedent will never ascribe offensive rhetoric to him. He is soft-spoken, conciliatory and peace-loving. Like every sensible person around the world, not just the Igbo, he was aghast with lurid photos and video evidence of harm against the Igbo in Lagos during the last election. Unfortunately, people who ordinarily frolic in the whirlwind of ethnic hate have seized the opportunity to insult the Igbo ethnic group while using acerbic words on the revered Chief. These people, in their degenerate and diseased mentality, are trying to install a wall of hate between the Igbo and Yoruba. Let me state categorically that the Yorubas are wonderful people whose spirit of brotherliness, conviviality, and tolerance speaks volumes across the world. I have maintained over time that the Igbo and Yoruba share a cordial, interwoven relationship in marriage, business, friendship, association and neighbourliness. The two ethnic groups can never be involved in a conflict. Many Yoruba people have helped many Igbo people to their destinies and many Igbo people have helped many Yoruba people to their destinies too. An attempt for one ethnic group to harm the other will result in serious harm for the two. It is as implicating as that.
Since the presidential elections, keenly contested by different candidates from different ethnic groups in Nigeria, some people have desperately sought to reduce the entire development to an ethnic affair. It is myopic and at once condescending. Does Peter Obi represent the Igbo? Does Bola Tinubu represent the Yoruba? Does Atiku Abubakar represent the Hausa/Fulani? These candidates all have supporters across the country. Of course, they will have a preponderance of support from their ethnic base. That is the way of politics. Unfortunately, ethnic jingoists have, in the inerrancy of their bleak convictions, reduced the entire political discourse to an ethnic affair especially Yoruba vs Igbo. These people, stranded in the realm of ethnic hate and communal intolerance, have done everything within their powers to inflame ethnic tension to crucible dimensions. It is wrong for anyone to insult a whole ethnic group in whatever guise. In Chief Iwuanyanwu’s case, he has put the records straight by clarifying what he meant, insisting that he was quoted out of context. But the morbid and decadent will not hear of it. They insist that Iwuanyanwu and all Igbo should be roasted alive. As far as these simpletons are concerned, the Chief spoke the mind of all Igbos. How idiotic and harebrained can anybody be?
Recently, some people have also indulged in ethnic slurs. Unlike Chief Iwuanyanwu that clarified himself, Bayo Onanuga offered no apology and insisted on standing by his words. Onanuga spoke for himself and couldn’t have insulted the Igbo on behalf of the Yoruba. MC Oluomo, while registering his socio-political disorientation, spoke for himself when he threatened the Igbo on an election day and went on to make good his threat which the police shamelessly called a joke. FFK has also made inflammatory remarks which were his personal opinion and not the opinion of Yoruba. It is therefore, a function of disabled, primitive awareness for anyone to insult an ethnic group based on the comment of one person. Such insults and abuses expose the quiddity of phenomenal foolishness which, hitherto, was concealed in some people by the façade of education. No, these hate mongers belong to the stone age. Nobody should be deceived by their pretentious liberalism.
The question is, are there political rascals in Nigeria? Definitely yes! These are the particular people Chief Iwuanyanwu referred to concerning what happened in Lagos during the last elections. Of course, all parts of the country have their share of political rascals. It is not peculiar to one ethnicity. Political rascals are those who walk the streets, snatch ballot boxes, stab people due to their ethnic origin and prevent them from exercising their civic rights. They are not educated. They are thugs, street urchins and never-do-wells employed by politicians to advance nefarious objectives. There are also some educated political rascals. They don’t walk the streets, but demonstrate humane deficiency of unimaginable proportions using social media and sundry news outlets. They spread hate, provoke enmity and fan the embers of war. They incite the uneducated, urging them to bay for the blood of ordinary citizens. Their social media handles are replete with expletives and insults. Abusive engagement allows them to flourish. Another category of political rascals populate government establishments like INEC, the Police and different security agencies. These people compromise the electoral process in exchange for financial inducement and material gains. They are unconscionable, desperate and invidious. Are these people from another planet? No, they are among us. We know them.
The ethnic hate narrative is a device enunciated by the political class to keep the people divided, breaking their rank and file to unite and fight a common enemy. The opposition LP and PDP are convinced that the election was marred by sharp, underhand practices and therefore have gone to court. Is going to court to challenge the outcome of an election a legitimate practice? If it is, why can’t detractors of equitable process allow the law to run smoothly? The call by some decidedly frustrated fellows in search of relevance and pecuniary patronage for the arrest of the opposition presidential candidates is from the pit of purgatory. The propaganda that there is a plan to disrupt the handover ceremony is a bundle of falsehood from the depths of Hades. Although many Nigerians regard the judiciary with a pinch of salt, people of goodwill should advocate for a peaceful resolution of Nigeria’s political challenges. Ethnic rhetoric should stop immediately. People should sheath their swords. Let us all close the road to Rwanda.
Adiele, PhD, writes from Mountain Top University.
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Opinion
Olaopa: The Self As A Patriotic Reformer – The Tales Of A Memoirist
Published
4 days agoon
March 27, 2023
By Adeshina Afolayan
Autobiographies and memoirs are very difficult to write. One of the reasons is that they place the autobiographers and the memoirist in a very difficult position that draws the attention, and even the ire, of the public. Once the volume is written and presented before the public, the writer can no longer control its reception. And some or even all of her certainties and verities are shredded by those who must approach the book from different perceptions. But there is an even more daunting challenge. Writing an autobiography or a memoir dances at the very edge of hubris and vanity. This is what Michel de Montaigne thinks. His understanding of the human self is dark and gloomy. According to him, “If others were to look attentively into themselves as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of emptiness and tomfoolery…. Our self is an object full of dissatisfaction: we can see nothing there but wretchedness and vanity.”Now, imagine an act of self-portrait emerging from such a dark view of the self.
In The Essays, Montaigne pens a paradoxical opening statement addressed to the readers of the volume who are not supposed to read it because it is a work of vanity: “Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell.” If the self is locus of emptiness and wretchedness, then any attempt at a self-portrait is doomed already; the autobiographer or memoirist thinks more highly of herself than she should. And yet, Montaigne subtly invites the reader to peruse the volume through a strategy of dissuasion.
In The Unending Quest for Reform, Tunji Olaopa faces the charge of hubris head-on , and persuades us to plunge into a narrative that connects the self with a larger space of meaning, struggle and fulfilment. This is an even more difficult endeavor since it goes beyond the self-portrait that embroils the self in its own dynamics of maturation. On the contrary, a memoir like the The Unending Quest for Reform, like Wole Soyinka’s The Man Died, connects the self to nonself, or to its Other. The autobiographer or the memoirist then invites the reader to weigh the significance of the self in relation to its other. Only those who have a strong sense of inner worth and significance can ever achieve such a courageous level of self-ascription.
I think a reformer deserves his memoir or autobiography. I have read the late Professor Akinlawon Mabogunje’s autobiography — A Measure of Grace. It details not only birth, historical trajectories and intellectual maturation, but also the agonies of a public servant eager to see some of his best ideas and insights inserted into the policy architecture of the Nigerian state. He met brick walls at every turn. In The Unending Quest for Reform, Olaopa typifies a more enduring courage to serve and confront the dysfunction of a system that had been rigged to be inefficient since independence.
The public service is not just another vocation. It embodies a double imperative. First, it is a service that transcends any consideration of self-interest. Within the service and its accountability dynamics, the self cannot be placed in contradistinction to what is required of it. The service is therefore a
selfless one that demands that the servant serves. Second public service is a service to public, the public. It therefore requires a different kind of spirit—public-spiritedness—that insists that the public servant must bow to certain logic of service that bend the will of the public servant to the will of the citizens. The task of a public servant therefore becomes a very arduous one: she must bend the self to serve the others. However, serving others becomes very onerous when the system that enables the service is inefficient and dysfunctional. When Olaopa first confronted this dysfunctional system, his first human instinct was to flee. But he did not. This was where his scholarly instinct—to learn, to reflect, to research, to rethink, to reorganize—kicked in. And he had a background in Plato and a mentoring acquaintance in Professor Ojetunji Aboyade to trim his fears and fuel his reform thinking.
The Unending Quest for Reform details the long trajectory that took an Aáwé boy to the Presidency and then the very height of public service status as a permanent secretary. But in each of the fifteen chapters that make up the memoir, you are compelled to encounter and reflect on how ideas and insights emerged from Olaopa’s interaction and engagement with intellectual and administrative forebears, and how both
the forebears and the ideas molded his own original philosophy of reform—with a huge dose of providential intervention.
While Plato’s Republic maps the boundaries of the ancient Athenian city-state and its utopic possibilities, Olaopa’s
The Unending Quest for Reform delineates the circumferences of a
dysfunctional public service, and how it could be rehabilitated within a comprehensive institutional and governance reform blueprint that took years to design, and even many more years to attempt mounting for the benefit of making Nigeria work better. This is where he joins the community of suffering that Mabogunje, and many others, once belonged. At every turn, the system itself frustrated all his well-being intentions and yearning.
Olaopa carries the burden of a man driven by God’s purpose. Or how else does one understand the passion that
drove and still drives him to dedicate his research and professional life to a system that seems too dense to allow self-examination? As an expert-insider, he had to face the fundamental significance of whether the public service can reform itself. That query, for Olaopa, could not have been just an academic exercise; he must have had to face the suspicions and stubborn resistance of those who could have considered him “too know” and obnoxious. There are ways by which a
debilitated system punishes those who would claim diagnostic knowledge. There are several means by which those who benefit from the status quo impede the progress of a reformer. And yet, Olaopa kept at this onerous task, even after retirement,with a single-mindedness that belies any logical understanding.
It was not just Plato and philosophy that gave him inspiration. All through The Unending Quest for Reform, one sees him holding onto a deep understanding of the place and role of the divine in human understanding and trajectories. If God could save him from blindness, as he narrated, then he would dedicate his life to service, spiritual and institutional;
he would commit his expertise to Nigeria and her quest for a world class public service that will be able to transform the quality of life of Nigerians. He has not faltered in that commitment.
But we need to highlight the role of philosophy in Olaopa’s professional and intellectual maturation. Right from discovering Plato and the capacity of philosophy to reconstruct, Olaopa had
remained fixated on the potential of philosophy to both enlighten and enable. He had taken Plato’s Republic far more seriously than I have seen anywhere. The Republic gave him the basis
from which to reenact the possibility of reflecting on dysfunction and reconstructing the parameters for
utopia. While Plato’s Republic was entirely a thought experiment about what could have been, Olaopa’s philosophical, intellectual and administrative exertions were right within the context of an actually existing Nigerian state that combines what he calls “bureau-pathologies” and possibilities for greatness.
The Unending Quest for Reform is therefore not only a paean to the existential exertions and Sisyphean achievements of the self, but also a testament to what reform can make possible for the transformation of the
Nigerian administrative entity. With the memoir, Olaopa is reaching out to
Nigerians, and especially fellow public servants and aspiring institutional and governance reformers,with a manual for technocratic action. The memoir bristles with pain and optimism about the ascent of a self from the obscurity of a small town in Oyo State to the convoluted
bureaucratic spaces of the Presidency, from a struggle to master political science and political theory at the University of Ibadan to the urgency of deploying a range of ideas and ideologies to the understanding and operational optimality of the public service system. In The Unending Quest for Reform, the self and the nation merge in a struggle for realization. And the denouement of that titanic struggle is a finale that is yet to happen. And we will know it when
it happens because that would be the end the reformer has been waiting for. With the new administration, may we not arrive at a tragedy to the high drama of hope and possibilities Olaopa’s memoir has treated us to.
Prof. Afolayan is the Head of Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan
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