By Jimanze Ego-Alowes
In the first part, we contended: ”Now take away Emmanuel from the equation. The point remains that the idea and concept of classification and thus comparison, is singularly the most powerful tool in developmental science and achievement…. That is, at the heart of classification or rectification is the ceaseless pursuit of precision, of excellence. And whether it is Aristotle, Confucius or Emmanuel, they are one and all reiterating the same ideas and ideals in their own time and space patios. This brings us again to the fancy concept of equifinality.”
Next, the matter of civilization and nationhood, illustrates another key mix-up in our wrong classification models. The two, despite false appearances, are not one. But most Nigerians so confound them.
To put things squarely, the problem with Nigeria is the problem of civilization, not that of nation building. And the fact that we confuse and conflate the two only compounds our development problems.
Now, let’s take a step back into our history. Save for a window period of 1960-1966/7, all indices of Nigerian development have gone downwards. To explain this, we have fallen to the common but faulty logic that it’s our lack of great leadership that has done us in.
And in some urban myths, names like Azikiwe, Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello were haloed as special persons. The point is, they were not. What made the difference is that they were merely the stubs of British civilization in Nigeria. That is, these great men performed largely under the strictures of civilization that the British bequeathed us.
Our greatest tragedy thus, is that many thought that the structures of civilization are easy to come by. Or perhaps these structures looked so self-evident many thought that they happen anyway. And it so happened, that largely ignorant, even if well meaning factions of the army, thought that the possession of a nation equates to the possession of a civilization. And they successively abolished the roundtable, that is the civilized order. And these military kids introduced in its stead, diktats and gunboats, decrees and state thuggery, in one continuing form or the other.
The other details are as follows: Civilizations produce the tools with which nations are built. A great example is the roundtable. It is significantly the greatest production of man as a development practitioner and as a thinker. The point is that over the roundtable only logic holds sway. For persons interested in ancient history, the first such formal construction was in Athens, the Athens of Socrates. Over liquor and above all over shared equality and camaraderie, aristocrats and commoners, the young and the greybeards, the artists and the logicians gathered. They were guided only by one thing – the rule of the man with the greater logic. This is at least what Plato tells in his book ‘The Symposium’. The implicit logic therein is that it is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle a question without debating it. And to settle questions without debate was all the factions of the Nigerian military in coups-aided governance did. And thanks to that moral criminality, Nigeria has become a human abattoir.
The important point is that without the tools of the roundtable – of logic and persuasion – no enduring states have been constructed. At this point it is important to restate that a state is not a garrisoned geography, with people trapped in it. A state is a space chosen by a people to advance the welfare and affairs of man.
To repeat, what happens in a state defined as a geography garrisoned by gunners is best illustrated by Nigeria. From 1960 till date, no decade has passed without massive bloodletting on the Nigerian soil. The why of this is that Nigeria is negotiated outside the roundtables. And thus will for a long time remain a human abattoir. This is an iron lore.
But it is never late to come back to one’s senses. First, a forewarning. A negotiated space is and does not amount to a breakup, even as it may include it. In fact, the most important civilizational point of negotiation is not what positions are adopted. Rather it is the fact that a people have consensually and freely chosen the best and most persuasive way to go. If consensus is not achieved amongst a composite people, development will forever elude them. This, again, is an iron lore.
It is upon this plank of a garrisoned state as against a productive one, that Aristotle gave a warning. It is that we should not confound a great state with a populous one. That is to say in broad terms, our greatness is not in numbers, in scalar quantities. Our greatness is in directions, in our vectoring choices. And our finest choices are gifted us by the roundtables.
This again is where Emmanuel, the helmsman at Akwa Ibom State, interests us. His take on the matter of development is Aristotlean. It is that direction trumps inertial effects or constructions. Perhaps it is a question again of equifinality, of great minds converging with one another.
Emmanuel says:
It’s very simple; you know we have launched the Dakkada philosophy, where we have what we called moral rebirth. If you aspire to greatness and your passion is right, nothing is impossible. Let me tell you that the easiest thing for anyone to do is to award a contract, and if I give you cash, you would construct a road for me, but the most difficult thing to do is to inculcate into people core moral values. After eight years, we would have inculcated in our people that right to sense of greatness.” https://punchng.com/why-i-wasnt-surprised-by-akpabios-defection-emmanuel-akwa-ibom-governor/
This distinction of ”core values” is important. These are the values that give directions to inertial numbers like constructions. And Emmanuel signs off by stating: ”inculcated in our people that right to sense of greatness.” The point is that if a people are able to achieve this, then the fact of it may be taken to be the greatest developmental construction of the given people and state.
As a developmental artefact, it is such metaphysical tools as Dakkada that built America. Barack Obama bears testimony in part: ”change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.” Obama’s testimony follows a Dakkada-style inoculation into the American mind by their Founding Fathers. For instance, the American was told that each man is a king and needed only to realize himself. So Americans abolished monarchy, since all men are potential kings. That looks ordinary but the greatness of America as confirmed by her greatest scholars, Francis Fukuyama Samuel Huntington et al, is built on their Dakkada-style awakening.
Interestingly, our latest book which is soon to roll off the press zeroes in on this idea of core values, of the link of metaphysics to material abundance. The University-Media Complex As Nigeria’s Foremost Amusement Center, by yours truly, like Dakkada, like Aristotlean poetics, conjectures as follows. A people can achieve sustainable material abundance only to the extent they are metaphysically deep. The rest is in humor. This, again, is an iron lore.
Tonye Cole, entrepreneur, goes for the crown of leadership
There is tremendous hunger in Rivers State for an end to the bellicose and toxic politics that have seized the State since 1999. Media headlines about the State are frequently about political assassinations, beheadings and inconclusive elections due to widespread violence.
As Nigeria’s oil and gas metropolis, Rivers State suffers unique consequences when our social and political spaces are dominated by swaggering thugs and other merchants of violence baying for blood in the streets.
As a former Commissioner for Information in the State I know, I have heard business leaders silently agonize about how to conduct business in a once-peaceful State now trapped in a circle of violence and strategic dysfunction.
As businesses quietly close shop in the State at an unprecedented rate, a whole generation of young people are unable for find work or learn new skills, freezing them in economic and social stasis.
Our leaders are responding to crime in Rivers State by donating guns, gunboats and bayonets to the police and making solemn promises of a football academy that would turn us all into soccer stars. But where that fails, a multi-billion naira Ecumenical Centre has already been built to cast out the incubus of unemployment from our State, through frantic prayers.
Our leaders have forgotten the well-known nexus between joblessness and criminality. They lack an expansionary vision and have diminished the serious task of governance to simply paving a few kilometres of asphalt.
They have replaced public policy with bombast and appear unprepared for the important task of building a knowledge economy to replace a fading oil and gas era in Rivers State.
This is why the news last week that Mr. Tonye Cole will be seeking the office of governor of Rivers State in 2019 should interest us.
Tonye Cole has been profiled by Forbes magazine as a business titan. He attended Harvard, and serves in the UN’s Expert Advisory Council. His efforts to confront global challenges through the World Economic Forum are well known.
As the co-founder of Sahara Group, Tonye has created life-changing jobs for hundreds of young men and women. He is consulted by presidents of countries whose economies are failing. He is an inspiration and a mentor to millions of young people across the continent.
Those who question the biological bona fides of such an illustrious son of Rivers State are driving politics to the edge of lunacy, and may have to reassure us of their psychiatric fitness.
In the age of artificial intelligence and block chain technology in schools, we must reject the abomination that public office in Rivers State is the preserve of knife-wielding alcoholics and hectoring despots.
We must encourage all other citizens with stellar credentials and commitment to uplift our people to seek any office, on any political platform, in Rivers State.
We need leaders who can tap into the genius of our youth and create opportunities for them, not those who seek to mobilize our young people into a raging platoon of sycophants.
Finally, those who see Tonye Cole through the primal keyhole of riverine and upland politics are the offspring of a false and rejected dichotomy. He is a son of Rivers State revealed at a moment of epiphany, in a hopeful effort to reclaim and fulfil the promise of Rivers State.
Credits: ”Tonye Cole, entrepreneur, goes for the crown of leadership”, was written by Dr Austin Tam-George, a former Commissioner for Information and Communication, Rivers State.