Nigeria, we fail thee!

As one surveys our nation’s pathway, littered with the remnants of our dreams and the hollowing out of our ambition, I am struck by the realisation that from Amalgamation, we have been in the grip of one existential struggle after another. Our failure to articulate a raison d’etre and consequently, a raison d’etat, has left us perpetually teetering on the edge of being and becoming; our national conversation such as it is, congenitally stifled.

It comes as no surprise that we find ourselves constantly grappling with questions such as, Who are we? What are we? and Why are we? Nations whose coming into being can be traced through centuries of struggle and counter-struggle do not ordinarily contend with the kind of elemental crises of identity that we seem perpetually seized with; though of recent, given Little England’s lurch into the past, such an assertion cannot be unequivocal.

Nigeria needs to have its own conversations (I am obliged to YC for sharing perspective on this nomenclature) and in so doing, come to terms with uncomfortable truths long demonised, evaded and further compounded. While the experiences of prior nation-states are of comparative value, they do not afford a template given our distinct narrative. We are the only ones that can divine our reason for being and our reason of state and we must do so to enable our journey into a more perfect nationhood.

National conversations are by their nature robust, with many a sharp elbow and other intrusive extremities; red lines may be decreed but they cannot be decreed. Any attempt ab initio to introduce exclusion clauses is futile, bespeaking a failure to grasp why we require national conversations. While Britain, our perpetual paragon, looks again at what once made it great – and what manner and degree of inclusion with its continental neighbours best guarantees its place at the high table – we encircle the wagons and make a shibboleth of our imprisonment.

In an age in which men have been to the moon and look next to Mars, our narrative is stuck in claims that our continued national being in its present form is non-negotiable. What tripe! When suzerains so assert, one can empathise – theirs’ is the cry of self-preservation; not so the rest of us. The only thing that’s non-negotiable is getting out of this life alive.

We are duty bound to diagnose our distemper and actively seek and promote a prognosis. The conversations we must have are many, their outcomes far from inevitable. To be of enduring value however, they must be conversations of the informed rather than of the loudest.

None but those hidebound in self-interest and historical legitimacy seek support for averments that have failed so abysmally. Often I hear commentators say that the affairs of a nation are akin to that of a corporation; it is a gross oversimplification but one that may be usefully adapted. For a corporation to succeed it must first articulate its reason for being and then proceed to organise its affairs in a manner that best advances that raison d’etre.

That approach would serve well, save that nation-states are never constituted on a tabula rasa. We must make the best of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, though largely self inflicted, taking advantage of our experiences. In this way we can navigate a pathway to a new and reinvigorating expression of our nationhood. We must learn from our experiences rather than deploying them to perpetuate new myths and old mistakes.

We are fortunate, we live in an age of knowing; whether that morphs into one of knowledge lies in our hands, as expressed through our representatives, and in concert with them. The conversations we must be informed or they cannot inform the road ahead. Nigeria has no shortage of well intentioned and informed people, as well as people capable of being better informed. It also has a surfeit of charlatans and the self interested. The challenge is what it has always been, to be able to gather the former and discount the latter.

An acceptance of the self destructive manner we have hitherto exploited our social, ethnic, political, economic and religious cleavages is a necessary precursor to conversations that can enable new thinking. If new thinking is founded in honesty, all else can be beneficially arrived at.

It may well be that one does this supposedly reformist administration a grave disservice in failing to discern in its words and deeds it’s Big Idea. Buhari’s failure to articulate an overall vision of the nature of the Promised Land he would lead us to and that we could hold him to has vitiated the Change agenda. This administration came into office ill-prepared to govern. Offering the excessive time it took its brains trust to unearth the facts resident in the office as an excuse for policy paralysis is at worst lame, at best an abdication.

That failure to share with Nigerians where he wishes to lead them, at what cost and to what end reinforces that there was and remains no vision thing. That conclusion is reinforced in the President’s inability to rise above the prism of the sectional, alongside the need to peer into the looking glass of a second term. That failing is the single most acute reason for the reality of an administration mired in expectations its own claims engendered.

To ask a nation of 180 million people that has wandered directionless for over a century to gird its loins and go into an economic wilderness with little more than platitudes was wishful thinking. We are a nation that has yet to resolve our crises of identity and it is impracticable for any party or persons to effectively govern without regard to that narrative.

If indeed one is inaccurate in saying this administration’s vision thing does not go beyond the Obamaesque catchall of Change, those charged with demonstrating the contraire must manifestly evidence their affirmative clarion call. Merely saying you wish to usher in an age of integrity and transparency cannot suffice a people weaned on dishonest politicians peddling false promises. Neither will a moral crusade selectively applied.

President Buhari squandered his honeymoon and the marriage between his version and our vision of Change now looks decidedly distant. To recalibrate we must look beyond Buhari to the cardinal issues his second coming has helped crystallise. Are we truly willing to walk the democratic road, with its benefits and burdens? Do we truly believe in a meritocracy? Are we agreed that good governance must not only enable as many people as possible to attain but also provide for those least able to rise to the challenge of our modernist aspirations?

The interconnectivity of all things means that the questions our national conversations will throw up will be diverse and at times divergent. The old fault lines of left and right, free market and welfarist, progressive and feudal, north and south, Christian and Muslim, are increasingly redundant or will soon become so. The truth is that we never step in the same river twice and must prepare our nation for a world in which nations live by a multitude of warrants.

To date we have been unable to think beyond the confines of our birth pangs.

In our journey to a renewed national identity we must look at our collective with renewed lenses, which see both forest and trees.

Muhammadu Buhari cannot lead this odyssey, he can only symbolise it. Leadership of the new Nigeria requires passion and energy he can no longer render; and not merely because of the vicissitudes of aging. The father of the man is the child and our President, nurtured in places far removed from the places we must advance upon, is increasingly challenged by the dynamics of this 21st century world. We must not fail Nigeria again by allowing our visioning to be distorted by the ghosts of Nigeria Past!

Phillips lives in Lagos