By Sunny Awhefeada
Africa’s postcolonial condition is driven by a sad irony which has painfully thrust on the hapless continent the antithesis of what the people yearned for in their quest for freedom decades ago. Colonialism, which held the continent down for over a century, was calibrated as the opposite of freedom.
The people fought thinking that they were fighting for freedom in the course of the anti-colonial struggle. The thinking that gave the struggle the impetus that routed imperialism was anchored on Kwame Nkrumah’s admonition that Africans should first seek the political kingdom and every other thing would be added onto it.
While Nkrumah’s Ghana broke the yoke of colonialism in 1957 as the first African country to do so, about eighteen other countries got their freedom in 1960, a year that has been codified as Africa’s year of independence. The hope that anticipated independence, the euphoria that greeted its dawn and the expectations of utopia faded away in no time. By the mid-1960s, the continent was hit by a tornado of crises.
Political instability, bloody military coups, dictatorship, wars and other frightening indices that made the people to look back at the colonial period as more desirable reared their ugly heads.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation that has been touted as the hope of the Black race has more than any other African country typified the frustrations of the continent’s postcolonial experience. Nigeria remains a basket case making one false start after the other. The net result being that the nation is marooned in the desert of underdevelopment.
To understand the African predicament, it has often been necessary to turn to African writers whose apprehension of our condition has imbued them with attributes associated with seers, philosophers, sages and visionaries. When Chinua Achebe authored Arrow of God, his 1964 novel, he must have thought that he was only depicting the rupture of traditional Igbo life as occasioned by the change wrought by the colonial intrusion. Achebe had in a moment of inspired wisdom observed that “whenever you see a bird dancing in the middle of the pathway you must know that its drummer is in the nearby bush”.
Africa, Nigeria and some of the many states that constitute the later have played the bird dancing to the drumming from the nearby bush. External forces have always beaten the drums to which Africa danced since 1960. Nigeria has not been inoculated against dancing to the drumming in the nearby bush. What manifests here is that interests other than what should meet the aspirations of the people are served to the detriment of the state and the citizens. What follows is a cycle of conflicts provoked by unending personal interests which inhibit genuine development.
The people remain the perpetual victims of this sordid order. So, while the political combatants, motivated by selfish interests, rock the boat of state and also infinitely benefit from the crises, the people remain the suffering and weeping victims. The people are left to their fate and denied the benefits of good governance anchored on their welfare and security.
What is presently going on in Rivers State, one of Nigeria’s richest states, reflects the inhibitive manifestation of our postcolonial condition. A new if not virulent twist is creeping into the matter with the recent Supreme Court judgment.
While good conscience should conceive of the judgment, for whatever it was worth, as a call to desist from crisis, embrace truce and walk the path of peace, some sang choruses that went viral in the social media praising God for “honoring” them.
As if God is a prompter of unrelenting chaos, they went back to strategize on how to deploy the judgment in undoing the incumbent Governor, Mr. Siminalayi Fubara. The recent act of legislative gung ho has seen the lawmakers issuing ultimatum to the Governor, commissioners and even ordering the arrest of an electoral umpire. Just two days ago, the lawmakers denied the Governor access to the House of Assembly to re-present the 2025 budget in compliance with the Supreme Court judgment! Haven’t the lawmakers gone too far? What were they hoping to achieve?
In truth, could these lawmakers try this when Mr. Nyesom Wike was Governor of Rivers State? Why are they not giving peace a chance with Governor Fubara’s rapprochements? Is the stance taken by the lawmakers the position of their constituents whom they represent? Is their stance a product of their personal conviction or they are like the proverbial bird in the pathway dancing to the drum in the nearby bush? And of course, we all know the drummer in the ongoing absurd dance.
The legislative sabre-rattling is a scripted directive to undo Governor Fubara and the drummer has been calling the tune.
The lawmakers should listen hard and hear what the people of Rivers State are saying. The streets, markets, schools, playgrounds, places of worship are all talking about the seeming impasse. The dominant thinking among the people is that Governor Fubara should be allowed to govern the State in peace. This is the consensus. The lawmakers should listen less to the drumming in the bush. It will do the State no good. The verdict on the streets, villages, hamlets and creeks of Rivers State is that Governor Fubara is delivering on what he was elected to do which is good governance. Is this what the lawmakers want to sacrifice for the drumming in the bush? Are they thinking about what posterity and history will say of them that they were just puppets who danced to the tune that was antithetical to the will and wish of the people? Will the lawmakers listen to just one man and jettison the will, hope and aspirations of their people, the people who elected them? Where is their reason? Where is their altruism?
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has made some statements that were neither here nor there. Why has he not given Wike a marching order to focus on his assignment at the Federal Capital Territory and allow Governor Fubara to govern in peace? Or has Wike become uncontrollable before President Tinubu?
Has President Tinubu not listened to videos of Wike insinuating fire and brimstone? So, why has he not called him to order, especially as he is his appointee? The Federal Government, Wike, the lawmakers and others involved in this looming imbroglio should take into account the thoughts of a philosopher who once said that “war involved in its progress a chain of unforeseen and un-supposed circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate its end”.
A worrisome dimension of Ijaw marginalization in Rivers State has crept into the crisis and Governor Fubara’s Ijaw brothers and sisters are watching. The lawmakers should have a rethink about the essence of democracy which is people-centered.
The people are rooting for Governor Fubara and it is time to ignore the drums of war and embrace peace. The Governor has never stopped talking about the interest of the people of Rivers State. He inserts the people into every sentence and this reflects his altruism and consciousness that governance is about the people.
This is what the lawmakers should embrace. The time is now. Rivers State needs peace. It needs development and not the impeachment of a Governor who has imbibed the credo of democracy. The leaders and elders of Rivers State should do more to intervene in order to stem the slide into anarchy.
Let the people’s will expressed in the mandate they gave to Governor Fubara reign supreme. The time has come for the lawmakers to ignore the drumming in the nearby bush.