Only democracy, even with all its imperfections, can resolve Nigeria's problems, Father Matthew Hassan Kukah, one of Nigeria's most respected leaders of civil society, tells AllAfrica. The Nigerian army, he warns, "still has a few people who if not properly checked can still spring a surprise." And he adds that Nigeria can move forward only if all its people realize that there is no one ethnic group responsible for all its troubles.
This is part two of an extensive interview. In it, Fr. Kukah talks about Nigeria's history, its future, and his book, "Witness to Justice: An Insider Account of Nigeria's Truth Commission."
Tell us about your book, which you wrote about your experiences with the panel which investigated human rights abuses in Nigeria.
It was one of the best schools I could ever hope to go to. I used the word "school" metaphorically. It brought me face to face with the excesses of military rule and I came to appreciate [them] just reading the kind of material that people presented before the committee. What I did was to simply use the petitions of the ordinary people who came to us, whether they are ethnic groups like the Ogoni, or the people of Zangon Kataf, or [about] the internal infighting within the military itself.
This is the material that I managed to put together to use it [in the book] to interrogate the contradictions of the Nigerian state. So it's partly a narrative of my own experience but it's also the story of Nigeria. It's not just the story of the Oputa Panel [named for the chair of the panel, Justice Chukwudifu Oputa]. I just saw the things that came to us as symptoms of the rot that had taken hold of Nigeria.
What struck you as you were participating on the panel and writing the book? Was there a moment that struck you as the key reason why Nigerians are who they are today, why Nigeria is what it is today?
My worry had always been, how or why is it that we don't have a coherent account or narrative of the history of Nigeria. Some of the best materials that one can hope to read about Nigeria are books written by foreigners. My experience is that even Nigerian writers have not been able to create enough critical distance between their own ethnic and regional convictions and what the problems of Nigeria are.
So one of the things that I was interested in was to use the Oputa Panel as an opportunity to see whether we could really assemble a history of Nigeria as captured by the kind of petitions that people submitted to the commission. And I'm grateful to the chairman of the commission because he really gave me quite a lot of latitude and some of that comes through in my narrative. We went out of our way to make sure we had all of the materials the people presented. My main concern was ensuring that we used the opportunity to gather as much as possible of the stories of Nigeria.
My own personal experience: I come from Kaduna state, from the southern part of the state, where until 1999 - with all the people with doctorate degrees and the high quality of education - nobody had represented the state as an ambassador, as a minister. We had gone through some really systematic discrimination. I used to think we were the only people that had this unfortunate experience of exclusion or marginalization from the mainstream of power until I began to travel around Nigeria.
I began to discover from Akwa Ibom to Zamfara, the length and breath of Nigeria, there is not a single state in Nigeria that has not reproduced the same contradictions. Either you have a little clan that has been producing all the ministers since independence, or you have a little tribe that has literally been going away with all the prizes. One of the things that comes through in the book is an attempt to tell the story that in the final analysis we are all a tribe of the walking wounded.
My conclusions are that if we all realize that it's not as if there is one dominant ethnic group that is responsible for all the troubles of Nigeria then we can all move forward. Metaphorically, the mere thought of the Ogonis coming to the same table seeking redress and the Sultan [of Sokoto] coming to the same table seeking redress, and the soldiers who have monopolized power and represented one of the corrupt faces of Nigeria, seeking justice and fairness it was a very interesting expression of how thoroughly bad our situation had become.
I used the book to see whether we can appreciate the fact that in Nigeria under military rule [no one was dealt] a good hand, even the soldiers themselves. From the responses I've received from people - I am not one to judge the quality of the work itself - I do hope that it offers us an opportunity to begin to think a bit more clearly and creatively where our country might be headed.
If the only thing we learn from the book is how bad military rule was and whether the elections work or don't work we can at least begin to push and hope that the more we conduct elections the further we move away from military rule.
When [John] Campbell [the former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria] talks of the possibility of a coup, he's talking about a military that still has a hunger for power, a military that is not like the Indian military, not like the Kenyan military. Even at the worst of times the soldiers in Kenya never had that kind of temptation. The Nigerian army still has a few people who if not properly checked can still spring a surprise, not necessarily because they have anything good to offer Nigeria but because the military has allowed itself to be a tool in the hands of ethnic and religious warlords.
Can you pinpoint a certain time in Nigeria's history when things started to go wrong? Colonial rule certainly had its role, but do you see any particular turning point in Nigeria's history where things could have gone in a different, better, direction than they did?
It is the most critical question and the answer to the question that we must collectively find an answer to. Chief [Emeka Odumegwu-] Ojukwu used to say you need to know where the rain started. I think the sad thing with Nigeria is we've never seriously, even as academicians and intellectuals and those who govern Nigeria, have never tried to find out where did we take this wrong turn and how did it happen?
The brokenness of the Nigerian state has been transmitted like a relay from one government to another. In the book I try to explain that if you read the speeches by all the coup plotters and up to the last speech by Goodluck Jonathan, we've spent the last 50 years with soldiers and politicians telling us how prepared they are to fix the country.
The strange thing is if you look back at those speeches, you ask yourself how is it that we just didn't understand that the government before and the one after never really managed to fix the issues, that our collective pain became the raw material for writing the speeches of every coup plotter.
They promised to provide electricity, they promised to provide water, they promised to provide light, they promised to fix the roads, they promised to improve health and yet we watched as systematically the country just went to the dogs.
Where did it all begin to go wrong? My take is that we took the wrong turn on January 15, 1966 when the military came to power. There was no anger on the ground and we thought that [the military leaders] were going to fix the country. If you read the text itself you can still fast-forward it and find a lot to incorporate into the speech of a Goodluck Jonathan or whoever wins the election next year because the problems are still there.
The military, more than any other institution, has helped destroy the foundations of democracy in Nigeria because the coups and counter-coups were driven by regional considerations, ethnic considerations. They were coups that helped to increase the tensions among ethnic groups and diminished the capacity of the political class.
So if this is the only thing that Nigerians look back and appreciate - that the last 45 years of military intervention have really helped to destroy the foundation of our collective existence - we would at least be on the path, were any soldier to mistakenly say that he wants to take over power in Nigeria, that we would be ready to fight this with the last drop of our blood.
The road that the soldiers have taken us on is one we definitely should never contemplate taking again. It's not because soldiers are good people or bad people, it's because the military institution does not have the capacity or ability to address the problems of Nigeria. The idea that any soldier would come as a night in shining armor should be discounted immediately.
It is only democracy that can resolve our problems, even with all its imperfections. The only way we can continue on this road is to continue to support the institutions of democracy, continue to encourage politicians to behave properly and to nudge our country on the path of democracy and freedom.
Ordinary Nigerians are so concerned about ensuring that elections are free and fair [and] are really and seriously committed to ending the stigma of shame. The onus is on the politicians to prove themselves.
This is why I think Dr. [Goodluck] Jonathan and his fellow actors must appreciate the fact that these elections if we don't get it right we will definitely be too close to the cliff. The leadership in Inec [the Independent National Electoral Commission] has sent out positive signals to Nigeria that the bad ways are probably over but I think at the end of the day if those in power want power so desperately there is very little that ordinary Nigerians can do. So it depends on the kinds of signals that the key players themselves send.
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One often hears that Nigeria is on the brink, at risk of collapse, disintegration. Why doesn't it happen and why do these doomsday scenarios so often come up? What keeps Nigeria together?
This is the beauty of it all. It is true that Nigerians are very frustrated with the quality of life in their country. And it is true that Nigerians feel very upset with how the successive leaders have thoroughly mismanaged the country. It is true that we wish this country were somewhere else, not where it really is. But I think beyond all that anger and frustration is a very deep passionate and proud commitment to national unity.
What holds the country together? Like somebody said, and I have used this quotation over and over. Nigeria is like a Catholic marriage. It may not be happy but it doesn't break up. I believe from the point of view of the lives of ordinary Nigerians we've actually slightly gone past the threshold of people thinking of going their separate ways.
I think the challenge lies in how the leadership of Nigeria displays very clearly its appreciation of the nature of the positive dynamics that ethnicity plays, our ethnic, our regional, our other differences.
Leadership is about managing differences and when these differences are not properly managed it is then that they become a liability and a threat. But with better appreciation and a better mental disposition for using power for good a leader definitely would not fall onto some of the landmines that are all over the place.
When Nigerians are so critical about their leaders they are doing it out of a deep commitment and love of the country. It would be a mistake to think that simply because you are a president or a senate president or a minister that you love Nigeria more. The average person on the street is passionately committed to building a very wonderful country.
I guess the final analysis is: who pays the price? The sad thing is that the leaders in Nigeria have been prepared to call on Nigerians to make sacrifices but a lot of people in leadership positions have shown such massive indiscipline and lack of seriousness - this is where the problem is. I see a very bright future for Nigeria I believe that amidst all of this anger you have a citizenship that is really, really committed to building a free and fair nation.
