Thursday,Dec 24,2009
Dim Ojukwu and Peter Obi’s Re-election Campaign
Former Biafran leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, has reportedly vowed to return Peter Obi to the Government .... By Jideofor Adibe
Thursday,Dec 17,2009
Don’t Cry for Me, Nigeria
It must have been around 1984 that Wole Soyinka declared his generation, ‘the wasted generation’. The 1.... By Jideofor Adibe
Thursday,Dec 10,2009
A Nation in Coma: Beyond Constitutional Provisions
Nigeria is once again at one of those junctures where tripping over the precipice cannot be ruled out. At issue is .... By Jideofor Adibe
Thursday,Dec 03,2009
Uba’s Honorary Doctorate: Why UniZik Was Right
The recent award by Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UniZik), of an honorary Doctor of Public Administration (DPA), to An.... By Jideofor Adibe
Thursday,Nov 26,2009
Sanusi: A Radical in a Conservative Job?
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is a very brilliant man. He writes the English language with remarkable authority, and e.... By Jideofor Adibe
Thursday,Nov 19,2009
Anambra State Needs Liberation
Anambra state has been in the news, often for the wrong reason, for much of the 4th Republic. It has in many ways b.... By Jideofor Adibe
Thursday,Nov 12,2009
Heroes, Democracy, and the ‘PhD’ syndrome
A nation that does not honour its heroes is not worth dying for –so goes the cliché. This appear.... By Jideofor Adibe
Thursday,Aug 06,2009
Are We Trying to Pull Down Barrack Obama?
Since Barrack Obama announced a visit to Africa, his relationship with Nigerian Internet bloggers seems to have sou.... By Jideofor Adibe
It must have been around 1984 that Wole Soyinka declared his generation, ‘the wasted generation’. The 1986 Nobel Laureate in literature had accused anyone who was 40 years old or over, of belonging to a generation that wasted the opportunities to take the country to greater heights. I was then a young man in my early 20s, and my generation and the one following us were perhaps expected to correct the errors of the ‘wasted generation’.
A quarter of a century after, members of Soyinka’s ‘wasted generation’ are paradoxically today held up as the only true heroes and heroines the country ever produced. Similarly, the society that the Nigerian wordsmith riled against at that time is today benchmarked as the country’s golden era. Meanwhile, Soyinka, at 75, is still very much in the trenches.
In 1984, at about the time that Wole Soyinka unveiled the ‘wasted generation’ thesis; celebrated novelist Chinua Achebe published the well-received slim book, The Trouble With Nigeria. For Achebe, who is generally regarded as the father of modern African novel, the trouble with Nigeria was squarely a failure of leadership.
I was a final year student of political science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, when The Trouble With Nigeria was first published. The book sharply divided our class. At issue was whether the trouble with Nigeria was really that of leadership or whether it was systemic. The orientation of the class was overwhelmingly Marxist, so the system argument got a good hearing. Some argued that even Achebe himself had bought into the system argument through the Obi Okonkwo character, in No Longer At Ease (1960), Achebe’s sequel to Things Fall Apart (1958).
Though many in my class in those days believed that the trouble with Nigeria was systemic rather than leadership, we also agreed there was a conundrum: if the Obi Okonkwo complex showed how system dynamics could corrupt a good man, what would then be required to change the system? It is like the argument of whether the chicken or the egg came first.
A quarter of a century after our argument about The Trouble With Nigeria, the ‘systemic problems’ we talked about had degenerated into ‘system collapse’, and talks of Nigeria being either a failed or failing state. As for leadership, while Achebe implied 25 years ago that the trouble with Nigeria was that of poor leadership, today, with President Yaradua hospitalised for an indeterminate duration in Saudi Arabia without reportedly formally handing over power to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, many feel the country has no leadership at all, not to talk of whether it was a poor one or not.
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