By
Biko Agozino
Did
General Olusegun Obasanjo plagiarize his so long a letter from Achebe’s There Was A Country without crediting
the author? Obasanjo cited an academic research paper on allegations that
Nigerian politicians are protecting an indicted drug dealer who is a member of
the ruling Peoples Democratic Party even after the trial and appeal courts
ruled that he should be extradited to the US for trial. This unusual reference
to an academic source in Obasanjo’s self-opinionated lambasting of an
administration that he helped to arrange is the only content that appears
original compared to the contents of pages 243
to 258 of There Was a Country, a book
that Obasanjo pretends not to have read or heard about. According to Achebe in part 4 of the book:
‘The post Nigeria-Biafra civil war era saw a “unified” Nigeria
saddled with a greater and more insidious reality. We were plagued by a
home-grown enemy: the political ineptitude, mediocrity, indiscipline, ethnic
bigotry, and corruption of the ruling class. Compounding the situation was the
fact that Nigeria was now awash in oil-boom petrodollars, …. A new era of great
decadence and decline was born. It continues to this day’ (p. 243).
If Obasanjo's ghost writer had done basic
literature review for his term paper-like letter, he would not have tried to
reinvent the wheel of Achebe and he would not have placed all the blame on one
individual party leader, President Jonathan. Achebe saw the problem as a task
not just for the politicians but also for the followership and especially the ‘intellectuals, particularly
writers’ who faced the ‘conundrum’ and tried to find solutions instead of blaming
the problem on ‘our complicated past and the cold war raging in the background.’
He charged the intellectuals with the task of developing a new program, from the grassroots, through
which to rescue the nation. But Obasanjo atomized the problem by blaming it all
on one man. To Achebe, Nigerians needed to fight this enemy with every means at
our disposal rather than abandon it to the rulers as Obasanjo seems to suggest.
Of course, Obasanjo appears to be in agreement
with Achebe that the first task for Nigerians is to ‘identify the right leader
with the right kind of character, education and background.’ But whereas
Obasanjo focused on Nigeria almost chauvinistically, Achebe saw the problem as
one that faced all of Africa – the problem of ‘where Africa had been, and where
it needed to go’ (p. 244). Goodluck Jonathan is not the president of every
state in Africa but the problems identified by Obasanjo do not apply
exclusively to Nigeria. Achebe correctly identified the problem as that of the
second struggle for libration: ‘For the second time in our short history we had
to face the disturbing fact that Nigeria (and Africa by extension) needed to
liberate itself anew, this time not from a foreign power but from our own
corrupt, inept brothers and sisters!’ (p. 244).
Achebe confessed that after waiting
around for a while, he and other intellectuals decided to enter into partisan
politics to see what difference they could make from within. He and others
(such as Eskor Toyo, Bala Mohammed, Wole Soyinka, Bala Usman and S.G. Ikoku) joined the ‘left-of-center
Peoples Redemption Party’ of Malam Aminu Kano and Achebe was elected the Deputy
National President. Their goal was to stir Nigerians into asking critical
questions such as how to conduct a free and fair election, how to elect the
right kinds of leaders who would not seek to prolong their tenure or turn into
a dynasty as Obasanjo attempted in his Third Term bid and as he now accuses
Jonathan of planning to attempt. Achebe concluded that his 'sojourn in politics'
was completely disappointing and that he was frustrated to realize that despite
the fact that some upright politicians like Aminu Kano existed, the vast
majority of the politicians were there for selfish greed (as Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
predicted in his 1983 essay on ‘Entreeism’). The intellectuals had grand ideas
all right but Nigeria lacked the ‘strong leader’ who would implement them, an
idea that Obasanjo echoes in his long-winded letter.
Unlike Obasanjo who obsessed with
one single leader in his letter, Achebe declared that the problem of leadership
exists at every level from the local government council to governors and all
the way to the presidency. As a dictator, Obasanjo may be more accustomed to
thinking of the leader as a maximum superhero who swoops down from Asokoro
Mansion and takes care of his cronies but that is proof that he does not understand the
extent of the systematic problem that Achebe analyzed. Achebe specifically
identified the problem of godfatherism as one that Nigerians must get rid of
from the political process but Obasanjo still fancies himself a godfather of
sorts and asked Jonathan to forward his open letter to some other godfathers who allegedly share his concerns. Achebe used the model of Igbo democracy to illustrate the emphasis on
achievement as opposed to ascribed monarchical privileges and challenged
Nigerians to deepen democracy as the very antithesis of military rule whereas
Obasanjo warns of the possibility of return to military dictatorship based on
his understanding that it is one Ijaw man, rather than the ‘ruling class’ that
Achebe fingered, who is destroying Nigeria, warning that he may be the first and last Ijaw man to rule the country. Why?
Whereas Obasanjo cited the Central
Bank of Nigeria in accusing the Jonathan administration of not accounting for a
mere $7 billion in oil revenue,
Achebe quoted the World Bank as estimating that Nigerian rulers had stolen $400
billion from the public since independence. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
immediately attempted to correct the accounting of the Central Bank of Nigeria
and suggested that, ironically as Fela Kuti put it during Obasanjo’s military dictatorship
when $12.2 billion went missing and they set up an enquiry that concluded that ‘money
no loss o, them dabaroo everybody’, naming Obasanjo personally as the conductor
of what Fela called a system of International Thief-Thief; NNPC suggests that no money is missing today.
Achebe indicated that Nigeria was
ranked at number 14 on the Failed States Index in 2011 and while Obasanjo
openly accused the Jonathan administration of running a killer squad, Achebe
concluded that; ‘In many respects, Nigeria’s federal government has always
tolerated terrorism’ by turning a blind eye to ‘ferocious and savage massacres
of its citizens – mainly Christian Southerners; mostly Igbos and indigenes of
the Middle Belt and others – with impunity’ (p. 251). Achebe saw the solution
in the dismantling of the 'conveniently incompetent' Nigerian federal government
and its culture of mediocrity through the democratic political process. Obasanjo’s
solution appears to be that of entrenching his own discredited political party
in power by humiliating the figure head out of office for a candidate of
Obasanjo’s choice to enter and use what he called 'carrots and sticks' to fight insecurity rather than rely mainly on the militarist strategy of the present administration, a strategy that Obasanjo himself fashioned and implemented in his previous administrations.
It is welcome to know that President
Jonathan has avoided a public mud-slinging response to Obasanjo’s letter and
opted to pay him a personal visit to discuss the important issues raised in the
letter. The president should thank Obasanjo for his rightful contribution to
the national conversation but remind him that the problem goes beyond any
individual and envelopes all Nigerians as Achebe pointed out. Obasanjo should
also be advised to avoid claiming that it is African leaders and foreign investors who
begged him to help the Nigerian government because it is his patriotic duty to
help his country given his position as a past president who is a member of the national security
council and also a leader of the ruling party. Obasanjo’s identification of quality
education as one of the solutions to what he called a ‘culture of hatred’, insecurity
and poverty is a solution that could have been lifted out of Achebe’s book
except that Achebe privileged free and fair elections as the foundation for all
the solutions, a foundation that Obasanjo failed to lay. Achebe concluded with a postscript in which he called on Africans to emulate the example of the great Madiba who was wronged but habored no bitterness and who relinquished power after only one term despite a claim recently by Obasanjo that he had tried to persuade Mandela to stay on in power.
Beyond Achebe’s focus on the ineffective
rule by an inept ruling class, Biodun Jeyifo, in his epic review of There Was A Country, has also called
attention to the exploitative nature of the economic system in the country as
deserving a transformation. Three good pieces of advice that Obasanjo gave to all
Nigerians, not just to Jonathan, are that those in leadership position should
not see critics as enemies to be eliminated, that the military alone cannot defeat terrorism and so by implication, some carrots need to be extended to the victims of terrorism as reparations despite President Jonathan having inexplicably ruled out reparations, and that leaders should not see
themselves as representing only their own ethnic groups. Such pieces of advice are
straight out of Achebe’s There Was a Country.
All Nigerians should be required to study Achebe's book and they will agree with me when I say that the answer to the question in the title of this blog is no, Obasanjo did not plagiarize from Achebe; some of his complaints are voiced by the masses in the country all the time. President Jonathan should respond to ex-President Obasanjo with humility, admit his short-comings and ask for even more constructive criticism from all Nigerians. Truly, Obasanjo has sinned (like all) and come short of the glory of critics but the testimony of a rogue who flips to become a prosecution witness against his accomplices remains admissible in a court of law and in the court of public opinion. Set a thief to catch a thief.
All Nigerians should be required to study Achebe's book and they will agree with me when I say that the answer to the question in the title of this blog is no, Obasanjo did not plagiarize from Achebe; some of his complaints are voiced by the masses in the country all the time. President Jonathan should respond to ex-President Obasanjo with humility, admit his short-comings and ask for even more constructive criticism from all Nigerians. Truly, Obasanjo has sinned (like all) and come short of the glory of critics but the testimony of a rogue who flips to become a prosecution witness against his accomplices remains admissible in a court of law and in the court of public opinion. Set a thief to catch a thief.
Dr.
Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech.
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