Nigeria’s National Interest: What is it?

By Sam Onimisi
One cannot watch the on-going demonstrations in the Arabian Peninsula without the evocation of nationalism as the people poured into the streets to protest against regimes that are perceived as bankrupt, corrupt and which has outlived their usefulness. The people in one accord are rejecting what they believe is against their nations interest or that could compromise their future prosperity. Against all odds and in the face of brutally repressive weapons of coercion, the people kept marching on inspite of hundreds of fatal casualties. One wonders what is their sustaining inspiration or power. To say that they are patriotic is to stir up a big argument as to your definition of patriotism. Even then, is patriotism all there is to their mass action?
To me, the public action by the Arabian people has poignantly redefined their understanding of patriotism. They have shown that patriotism must be to the nation – the people – rather than to a regime whose tenure is at best, tenuous. Although, sovereignty is held in trust by the ruling authorities, it is the property of the people and not that of government. Ruminating on this issue, it occurs to me that the Arabian demonstrators are defending their nations – their common heritage. As a nation, they share many things in common: language (with its varying dialects), culture, the Islamic religion, in addition to their shared territory¬ – all of which are the ingredients for nationalism. However, without these common properties of a nation, there is no way the people could agree to a common policy, programme or mass action. In other words, the reason why mass action has failed thus far in Nigeria is that the country is only a vast mass of territory inhabited by divergent and mutually suspicious nationalities without common interest. Their common poverty which should have united them does so temporarily whenever the Nigerian Labour Congress or the Trade Union Congress succeeded in wrestling a few more naira into the pockets of the Nigerian worker. Therefore, poverty is not in the class of forces that unites a people, if also because a people of one nationality holds the people of the other nationality as responsible for their economic woes. We have also seen that Nigerians are only momentarily united by soccer when the Golden or Flying Eagles are playing against a foreign team, but this are flashes of rudimentary nationalism which is inadequate to sustain a country.
Nationalism precedes patriotism in the sense that there must be a substance to which one could be patriotic. Other than the colonial period when most Nigerians were against colonial rule and wanted self-rule, there has been little or no nationalism ever since we achieved independence. Those who were truly nationalistic were viewed or cast in their ethnic garb by those who are suspicious of their nationalism. Which is why we have not been able to articulate a cohorent national interest? If nationalism connotes ‘the consciousness of the nation-state and of belonging to that entity,’ it means that we have not had and still do not have a nation that could evoke the spirit of nationalism in us. Robert Coles, in ‘Political Life of Children’ said: “As soon as we are born, in most places on this earth, we acquire a nationality, a membership in a community. A royal doll, a flag to wave in a parade, coins with their engraved messages – these are sources of instruction and connect a young person to a country. The attachment can be strong, indeed even among children yet to attend school, wherever the flag is saluted, the national anthem sung. The attachment is as parental as the words imply – homeland, motherland, and fatherland---. Nationalism works its way into just about every corner of the minds’ life.”
With due respect to a few individuals whose nationalism to Nigeria is unquestionable, most Nigerians are Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba or Igbo nationalists – and they are right. Until we define Nigeria’s national interest with which all nationalities could identify with and cultivate strong attachment to, we cannot have many Nigerian nationalists. We only irritate and antagonize ourselves when we elevate sectional interest, or when we exhibit Igbo nationalism, for example, and hold it out as Nigerian nationalism. And I wonder if we have not lost the chance of making a nation out of the hundreds of nationalities of the country. Of all the properties of nationhood, language appears to be the most unifying, but we all speak English and we are neither Britons nor Englishmen or women and yet we cannot unite around English! Unlike our neighbour and brother West African, Ghana, who at independence adopted the language of a minority ethnic group as a Lingua – Franca and a medium of instruction and communication. Today, most Ghanaians speak Twi and this has helped to define their nationhood and solidify their unity as a nation.
In the absence of an abiding and well-defined national interest; not having a political ideology with which to guide the people, confounded by a polyglot of languages without a native lingua franca around which to converge, disorganized by two opposing faiths of religions – with one looking west and the other east-Nigeria is riddled by challenges that are both self-imposed and thrust on her by foreign impostors. These void created vacuums which nature abhors and which were then filled with inequities as much as iniquities. The entrance and enthronement of corruption stems from this void. The choice of religious fanaticism with fatalistic fervour (devoid of the fear of God) emanated out of this void. Out of the void emerged political gluttony wracked by false starts, intervention of selfish ‘patriots’ and formation of cultic clubs masquerading as national political parties etc. There is no policy continuity as projects are conceived as monuments to the glory of the incumbent ruler instead of the country, and so our land is littered with abandoned or uncompleted projects. Noble endeavours such as population census and revenue generation which assists in good and adequate planning for growth and development are enveloped in bedevilment such that, all we get out of them are pains, rancour, international ridicule and a few millionaires with unearned wealth.
Nigerians are more united when they share loots than in nobler pursuits. There is no discernible Nigerian character that is elevating except her ‘potentials’ which are largely wasted in collaboration with foreign exploiters. With four petroleum refineries, we import every litre of fuel we consume to the extent that we are now set to import fuel from Niger Republic, yet our national leaders fail to see nothing wrong with this as long as they have so much to share. After supervising the wreckage of our refineries, they will soon award import license to themselves and their cronies to bring fuel from Niger in a short-circuited deal without benefit to the country. So susceptible to flattery are we that we bask in self but empty adulation when international businessmen (more of swindlers than otherwise) come here to eulogize our potentialities – which amount to nothing if not developed and prudently utilized. Our seeming self-sufficiency in gas and petroleum resources have been erased by the killing of our refineries and so, we are gross exporters of crude oil and at the same time, net importers of refined oil – the most glaring evidence of our national prolificacy, rank corruption and crass inefficiency!
We have been at sea trying to develop our steel industry for three decades without anything reasonable to show for it, except unbridle kleptomania by successive regimes through their various stealing Steel ministers who often, uses their ministries to amass wealth with which to fight gubernatorial races. Do we have any assurance that President Jonathan’s steel minister will be different? Just before being ruined by my rumination over the non-existence of a Nigerian national interest, it occurred to me that a country that has no agreed basis of existence can never be a nation and may remain only as a nation-state. It dawned on me that we have never really sat down as a people to discuss, agree and approve any binding rules or formula for our existence even as a country. This country has remained one thus far as a happenstance or by the grace of God as the potentials for great conflicts are as many as her economic and mineral resources potential. Until we restructure, how can we formulate a national interest?