Brigadier Akwasi Afrifa taking the oath as one
of the three-man Presidential Commission appointed at the time of the handover
to the civilian administration led by Dr. Kofi Busia
December 18th,
1977: Retired Lt. General Akwasi Afrifa's Letter to General Ignatius
Acheampong, Ghana's military Head of State in which Afrifa spoke of his fears
about the future of the country and a concern that the dwindling reputation of
the military might lead to a situation where to discourage future military
interventions, both men and others could be lined up and shot "one by
one".
Afrifa's letter
to Acheampong:
Personal and
Confidential
Okatakyie Farms
P.O. Box 89,
Mampong-Ashanti
18th December
1977
My Dear General
and Friend,
When I write to
you since you came into office, I do not receive any acknowledgment. I would
normally not write again, but this is a matter that touches on my life and the
lives of a few others.
I feel greatly
disturbed about the future after your government. I have heard from certain quarters
of the C.P.P. threats, which they will execute after 1979. In other to
discourage the military from staging coups in the future, how about if they
line us all of us up and shoot us one by one? Then they would disband the Ghana
Army; but I do not certainly want to be arrested, given some sort of trial and
shot. These are my genuine fears. All members of the N.L.C. including General
Joseph Ankrah, are involved. I still have no regrets whatsoever about my part
in the operations of 1966.
My fears
increase when I look at the Koranteng-Addo Report as a whole. I do not like the
Union Government as proposed in their report. The political forces militating
against it are too strong.
I wish very
sincerely to let you know that I am worried about the future. So many hard and
unpleasant things were said about me by the people of this country when they
had the opportunity, the very people who hailed me in 1966. Consequently, I
decided that politics would be the last thing that I would do in my life. But I
would be a stupid General if I would sit in the comfort of my farms to await
the VENGEANCE that is about to be unleashed on us.
I do not see
how I can be SECURE in the Union Government. I do not also see how you yourself
can be secure in that government. What Koranteng-Addo has said is this: If a
soldier wants to join this government, then let him take a leave of absence
from the Armed Forces. You are a soldier and you will see what happens as soon
as you take this leave. Have you forgotten that they made me sign the 1966
Constitution that disqualified me on the grounds of AGE?
I have decided
to be in the next Parliament in 1979 to protect myself and those who were
associated with the 1966 coup. The danger is that independent individuals in
Parliament under Union Government will almost immediately constitute themselves
into a political group; so the political parties law will be enacted for the
trial of soldiers who have made coups.
My dear brother
and friend these are my fears. So far you have protected all of us including
John Harlley. I have been very happy on my farms, and I have been very quiet. I
had hoped that when you decide to return the country to civilian rule, you
would seek my views in confidence since I have done it before and been in
prison after that.
But the
Almighty God is the supreme ruler of all. Let us pray for Him without ceasing.
He alone gives perfect protection. I will pray to Him to take away the fear and
the confusion weighing on my mind now.
I wish you a
happy Christmas.
Yours
Sincerely,
Akwasi (SGD).
NB.
Both Afrifa and
Acheampong were executed by firing squad in 1979 during the purge which followed
the June 4 Uprising by junior members of the Ghanaian Armed Forces. Acheampong was shot on June 16 and Afrifa on the 26th. Their death sentences
were sanctioned by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) which was
chaired by Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings.
The victory in early November of Charles
Soludo, the candidate for the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) party, in
the gubernatorial elections in Anambra State, Nigeria, has been remarked upon
as a turning point in Nigerian politics. For one, it produced an election free
of the sort of violence that is prevalent in Nigerian polling events. It has
also brought to power someone viewed by his followers as a man of ideas and a
technocrat capable of pioneering a ground-breaking plan for tangible development
within a nation which, despite its abundant human and natural resources, has
failed to achieve the status of having a developed economy. Soludo faces a
daunting task: While far from being a ‘poor’ state by Nigerian standards, it
contends with an array of problems related to poor infrastructure, the
deliverance of healthcare and environmental pollution. There is also the
perennial incumbrance of dwindling federal allocation of funds. And as is the
case with the rest of the country, its residents face day-to-day security
concerns related to the activities of armed herdsmen, armed robbers and the
actions of the militant organisation Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) whose
goal is to secede from Nigeria. But amid this complicated backdrop remains the
overarching problem faced by the leader of every African constituent or
sovereign state, that is, the challenge of transforming a former colonial
entity into a truly modern industrial society.
Charles Soludo,
who was confirmed as the governor-elect of the Nigerian state of Anambra by the
Independent Nigeria Electoral Commission (INEC), is an economist by training, a
former academic and a former Chairman of the Central Bank of Nigeria. His
party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), was formed in the early 2000s
with what its founder Chekwas Okorie described as “the Igbo initiative”; giving
the Igbo ethnic group, who dominated the failed secessionist enterprise of
Biafra, a platform to engage with the rest of the country while proselytising
the idea of “inclusion and restructuring”.
The party thus
represented, and, in terms of its present support, arguably still represents a
political expression of Igbo sentiment that points to the marginalisation many
Igbos complain has not ceased since the ending in 1970 of the Nigerian Civil
War, as well as the perennial urge to configure a looser, more decentralised
relationship with the federal polity, an aim of the former Eastern region
during its negotiations with the rest of the country prior to the outbreak of
the civil war.
The APGA is not
a mainstream party and in a sense it negotiates a fine line between the
pragmatism of maintaining a continued union with the Nigerian state on the one
hand and the conscious or unconscious desire of many Igbos to be independent of
Nigeria on the other. The party’s first presidential candidate was Chukwuemeka
Ojukwu, who as a young lieutenant colonel had declared the secession of the old
Eastern Region from Nigeria. Later reabsorbed into the Nigerian establishment,
Ojukwu, while continuing to serve as a spiritus
rector for the passive yearnings of separatism, nonetheless was party to an
agreement with Muhammadu Buhari, a fellow presidential aspirant, which was
known as the Daura Declaration. Made as part of a pact when both were challenging
the legitimacy of the 2003 poll which re-elected Olusegun Obasanjo, a former
military ruler, as president, the declaration reiterated both men’s strong
conviction about “the unity, oneness and indivisibility of Nigeria”.
This
‘accommodation’ with the Nigerian state contrasts with the avowed aim of
secession expressed by the IPOB led by Nnamdi Kanu.
Although not on
the gubernatorial ballot, the proscribed IPOB was a key player in the election.
Its uncompromising stance has been manifested by attacks on establishments and
personnel of the Nigerian state, as well as on prominent Igbos deemed to be
‘collaborators’. The group has also instituted a series of sit-at-home edicts
to populations in Igboland, one of which threatened to coincide with the Anambra
election. However, no terroristic acts were taken by the IPOB during the
election, the result of discreet missives sent by prominent and ordinary
members of the Igbo community who beseeched the organisation to not play into
the hands of the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, who had deployed a large
contingent of security forces to Anambra. The messages warned that IPOB action
would have prompted the authorities to use maximum force in operations which
would have led to the loss of innocent lives, as well as provide Buhari with a
pretext to declare a state of emergency.
The election
passed without incident and Soludo was duly elected.
The only
impediment to Soludo assuming office would appear to be a possible legal
challenge mounted by Andy Uba, one of the defeated candidates, who is mulling
over going to court to “reclaim the stolen mandate” which he claims was caused
by the defection of APGA ward chairmen to the All Progressive Congress (APC),
one of the mainstream political parties. Anambra has had a torrid history
during the 4th Republic which was born in 1999 after the handover of power by
the military government of General Abdulsalami Abubakar to the civilian
administration led by the retired General Olusegun Obasanjo. There have been
several disputes related to the results of gubernatorial elections and an
episode of impeachment, all of which were referred to the judiciary.
But assuming he
is able to assume the office unimpeded, Soludo faces many problems. There is
the perennial problem of underdeveloped, and in many instances, decaying
statewide infrastructure. Nothing illustrates this malaise better than the
condition of many roads. For example, the Federal Government-made Onitsha to
Owerri expressway, which connects Anambra (Onitsha is an historically important
city and commercial hub in Anambra) with Imo State. The road was described as a
“death trap”, and some months ago, images of a giant sinkhole in a section of
the highway swallowing a diesel tanker went viral on social media.
And while a
portion of the road was fixed by the Federal Government after the public
outcry, Soludo will know that the problem of roads is not delimited to those
which are the responsibility of the Federal Government alone. A report in the Premium Timesmedia outlet which was published on November 23rd 2021 quoted a
resident of Akwa, the capital of Anambra State, as saying that “virtually all roads
that lead to schools, markets, hospitals, business outlets, and residential
areas are not passable.” Another resident felt that the city had become a
“laughing stock” given the comprehensive failure of the road-networks in the
city.
It goes without
saying that the poor state of roads has a negative effect on the economy
starting with the constant need of those in the transport industry to repair
their vehicles which are damaged when negotiating the roads.
Another issue
which Soludo will need to confront is that of air pollution. In 2016, the World
Health Organisation (WHO) declared Onitsha to be
the world’s most polluted city for air quality. The city recorded 30 times more
than WHO’s recommended level of PM10. (Three other Nigerian cities featured in
the top 20 ‘worst offenders. They were Kaduna, Aba and Umuahia). The source of
this brand of pollution which include cooking fires, burning rubbish and the
use of older model, environmentally unfriendly vehicle engines point to an
overall lack of amenities and endemic social poverty. The resulting negative
impact of the health of the community in terms of respiratory ailments and
death rates is largely ignored and the state government has so far not made any
strenuous efforts to tackle the problem.
The state of
hospitals is another key challenge facing Soludo. Outbreaks of cholera and
measles have occurred in the past, this and other problems being caused by a
lack of essential equipment and drugs. The maladies associated with health
encompass both federal and state health establishments and the frustration of
the people over the delivery of health services led to the extraordinary scene
in May of 2021 of protesters storming the Nnamdi Azikiwe Teaching Hospital in
Nnewi. A group calling itself Advocates For Good Governance, which included
patients, their relatives and staff, signed and delivered a letter to news
media which was titled “Abuse of Due Process, Racketeering, Extortion, Graft
and Celebration of Corruption at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching
Hospital, Nnewi”. They complained that poor management had resulted in many
avoidable deaths.
The problem of
the brain drain of locally produced doctors is intimately bound with the
maladies associated with health care. And while a nationwide problem, Soludo
will need to deal with the issue in a more purposeful manner than one of his
predecessors Chris Ngige. Two years ago Ngige, the Federal Minister for
Employment and Labour, told an
interviewer that doctors were free to leave Nigeria to
practice elsewhere. “We have surplus”, he shrugged. “If you have surplus, you
export”. Two years later his tone had changed when calling on the Federal
Government to get doctors to sign a bond that would compel them to practise in
Nigeria for a minimum of 9 years before they are able to relocate to another
country.
The education
sector is also in a poor condition. A survey carried out by an NGO known as
Evidence and Collaboration for Inclusive development, which was released in
September 2021, revealed that “no fewer than 90,000 children are out of school
in Anambra State”. The figure is largely caused by disparities between those
who live in urban and rural areas and has raised concerns in a state which
prides itself as being one of the most advantaged in Nigeria in the area of
education.
Besides these issues
of administration are those of social malaise and communal conflict. The
problem of security is one which presently bedevils Nigeria, and Anambra State
has to contend with the herdsman crisis, as well as with an enduring problem of
armed robbery. The aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War saw a rise in armed
robberies in the cities of what had been the secessionist republic of Biafra.
Today, the problems caused by underdevelopment form the basis of the rise of
dangerous armed robbers and cultists.
An article
published in This Day news media on July 21st 2021 stated that “...in Anambra, besides the
reign of “unknown gunmen”, cultists and armed robbers have seized the
opportunity to add to the fear in the state by having free reign. For example,
no day passes by without incidences of armed robbery and cult killings. In many
neighbourhoods in towns across the state, including the state capital (Akwa),
armed robbers consisting of youths sack a whole street , moving from one end of
the street to the other, robbing shops and residential buildings, most times at
day, without any form of challenge.”
The absence of
law enforcement, caused by armed attacks on security officials by bandits
referred to as “unknown gunmen”, has caused a spike in the crime rate, ranging
from petty thievery to armed robberies. One effect of this has been an increase
in vigilantism by ordinary people who have meted out instant and brutal ‘justice’
when suspects have been caught.
The unknown
gunmen have also attacked politicians and prominent persons including Dr. Chike
Akunyili, the widower of the late Dr. Dora Akunyili, who was assassinated. The
suspicion -despite strenuous denials-is
that these victims of murder and arson have been targeted by the Eastern
Security Network, the paramilitary wing of IPOB, who view federal
establishments as manifestations of an unjust imposition on the sovereignty of
Igbos and those on mainstream political figures as actions befitting for
‘collaborators’ with the Nigerian state.
The other
pressing security concern is that of the herdsmen, cattle rearers of the Fulani
ethnic group. Many communities across the length and breadth of Nigeria have
complained of armed herdsmen mounting deadly attacks on their person and
properties. (The groups representing Fulani herdsmen claim that they need to be
armed for self-protection amid what they see to be the increasingly wholesale
demonisation of Fulanis).
But what can be
explained fundamentally as a conflict between pastoralists and sedentary
farmers over access to land due to the effects of the southward expansion of
the Sahara desert and the increasing aridity of the Sahel region is also
interpreted as an insurgency aimed at establishing Fulani hegemony over all
parts of the country. It is an explanation which has great resonance in many
parts of the heartland of what was the secessionist state of Biafra including
Anambra. One plank of Biafran propaganda during the civil war was that the
conflict was an attempt by the Muslim Fulani-Hausa to conquer the largely
Christianised south after which they would euphemistically “dip the Koran into
the Atlantic Ocean”.
The proposal by
the current president, Muhammadu Buhari, himself a Fulani, to grant land to
Fulani herders in parts of the south was seen by many as an attempt at
establishing Fulani “colonies”. The refusal of communities in Anambra State to
donate land to herdsmen for settlement was, many Anambra communities maintain,
followed by a strategy employed by herdsmen of forcibly entering farmland and
destroying the property and crops in order to displace the farm owners and
occupy their arable lands.
An article in
the Vanguard which was
published in July 2020, claimed that “(ten) communities in Akwa North local
government area lamented the destruction of their farmlands by herdsmen, which
they said had become a daily occurrence.” The destruction of farmland has had
an effect of creating food shortages and increasing the price of staple crops,
not only in Anambra but in neighbouring states owing to the fact that the
western Anambra region is considered as the breadbasket of the sub-region.
The stories of
destruction of farmland, murder and rape allegedly committed by herdsmen has
created an atmosphere of fear and also fueled revenge attacks by
IPOB on Fulani communities.
The combination
of the aforementioned problems present formidable obstacles to the task of
development, but Soludo who has previously written and spoken about how he
feels Nigeria can develop as a nation is confident in his ability to transform
his home state into a hub of commercial enterprise and a model of economic
development.
He has
articulated a vision of “wealth creation” and economic diversification in
contrast to the prevailing consumptive culture of sharing oil wealth. He
evangelizes about “micro-financing” and of leap-frogging the industrialization
ladder. Importantly, he talks of the need for Nigerian politicking to go
“beyond sloganeering” and be reinvented as “ideas-based” or
ideologically-driven.
Nigerians have
listened closely to Soludo’s pronouncements on how he expects to reform and
regenerate the economy of Anambra State during and after the election campaign.
Development requires funding, and given the problematic issue of dwindling fund
allocations from the Federal Government, the question of how he will raise the
necessary financing is ever present.
Over the years,
it has become increasingly clear to those who run state governments that
reliance on the monies disbursed from the coffers of the Federal Government as
the sole basis of income is self-defeating. Indeed, it is often claimed that
the monies released are often not enough to cover the remuneration of state
employees and pensions.
Unfortunately,
Soludo has disappointed many by intimating in post-election interviews that he
will call upon the network of contacts he has built up while working for
international organisations to help fund his economic programme. The negative
response to this strategy is understandable. Such a move would create the
circumstances through which external agencies will have leverage over domestic
policies and specific projects. What is more, the raison d'etre of lending
institutions is to create indebtedness; a burden that can be ill-afforded.
It is clear
that if Soludo’s aim of creating the conditions conducive to economic
transformation are to be met, he will need to think creatively about how to
raise money for the state coffers. The methods by which this can be achieved
relate to contriving an efficient method of raising taxes within the state, as
well as providing the basis through which people within Anambra State or
otherwise connected to it, that is, those indigenes living in the diaspora, can
be part of the money generating process.
Tax plays a key
role in economic development and Nigeria’s governments at both national and
sub-national level have failed to implement comprehensive tax regimes through
which the income generated can be maximised and purposefully used for
developmental purposes. Revenue collecting mechanisms are often inefficient and
susceptible to “leakage” and corruption. Anambra State is no different in this
regard. Indeed, the state relies on an archaic and crude method involving mobile
touts who navigate its towns and cities demanding payment from people on the
roads, motor parks, bus stops and market areas. Blaming the state of affairs on
the state ministries of Transport and Trade & Commerce, one prominent
businessman described the system of using mobile agents as tantamount to
“corruption and economic sabotage”.
Broadening the
tax base and implementing unused levies is a strategy of action which some
Nigerian states are already adopting. For instance, the governor of Kaduna
State, Nasir El-Rufai, has instituted a regime of property taxation including a
straightforward process of registering land title deeds. Speaking in November
2020 in a keynote address to the Annual Tax Conference of the Chartered
Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) which was themed “Taxation and Economic
Competitiveness: Imperatives for National Development - a Nigerian Subnational
Perspective”, El-Rufai informed his audience
about the steady rise in revenue collection in his state over a four year
period. In 2019, the state had succeeded in increasing revenues from 23 billion
Naira in 2016 to 44.9 billion Naira -an increase of 21.9 billion Naira. Total
revenues collected in 2015 had been 13.55 billion Naira.
So while Soludo
has correctly complained in the past about tax powers being “concentrated in
the Federal Assembly with corporate and value added tax being paid into the
federal account”, there is a great deal of room for manoeuvre in generating
monies from state level taxes. For instance, in the United States, states which
are rich in natural resources are disposed to raising revenues from non-tax
sources such as mining minerals and metals. Anambra State is rich in a good
number of these including bauxite, iron ore and ceramics. The dividends and
profits generated from economically viable State Public Sector Enterprises
along with user charges on services provided by the state could also form the
basis of funding the sort of development Soludo envisages.
The other
source of developmental capital can come from the citizens of the state. This
is an avenue which some have sought to tread in the past. Back in the 1980s
during the military regime led by General Ibrahim Babangida, the military
governor of the original Anambra State (Anambra was later divided into a
further state named Enugu), Group Captain Emeka Omeruah, reached the
conclusion that short of a miracle, the Federal Government would be incapable
of funding and developing tertiary education to a desired level. So, lacking
the funds for his ambitious plans for rural development, as well as education
and technological advancement, he appealed to “the people’s culture of
self-help”.
The Igbo pride
themselves for being an industrious people and indeed one famous manifestation
of this was centred in Onitsha. The Onitsha Chapbook culture developed prior to
Nigeria’s independence instilled a sentiment of aspiration and an enterprise
culture undergirded by entrepreneurial and Christian precepts. Throughout the
vast Nigerian diaspora, Igbo social unions exist not only for the purposes of
networking and preserving their culture, but also to facilitate the collection
of monies to undertake projects such as the building of amenities in the towns
and villages from which members originate.
This could be
taken to a much higher level, involving the financing of large scale projects.
Lessons can be drawn for instance from the funding of Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance
Dam. Denied access to IMF loans, it was funded in large measure by government
bonds and private donations. Note should also be made of the manner by which
Israel funded its secret quest for a nuclear capability. Much of the
financing for the Dimona nuclear project came from private citizens of the
Jewish Diaspora.
But the
disposition to individualism by Igbos often sits uneasily with achieving
communal goals.
Group Captain
Omeruah’s Anambra State Education and Technology Fund (ASET), a parastatal
which he envisaged in 1986 as “a new method of enshrining and putting the
finishing touch to our self-help culture”, was hampered by a lack of funding.
The problem of funding reared its head in relation to the issue of primary
education, years after the initial declaration of a universal primary education
scheme in 1976 by the military regime headed by Lt. General Olusegun Obasanjo.
Federal spending on education had dipped markedly in the 1980s during the
period the Babangida regime was implementing cuts in social spending in accord
with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund-backed Structural
Adjustment Policy. Omeruah’s optimistic goal of establishing free primary
education in his state by 1987 was frustrated by the lack of revenues from
taxation. He had envisaged that each taxable adult in the state would have
contributed a total of 35 million Naira to make it a viable objective. However,
in 1986 he admitted this would be “difficult” because, as he put it, “all we
have in the kitty is 6 million Naira, which means people are not paying their
taxes.”
There is much
to learn from past mistakes and shortcomings. Soludo has several options. He
may choose to work towards establishing a state development trust fund and
engage with the people of the state including those who live abroad if his
efforts are to yield results. There is also the option of working with other
state governors to facilitate the establishment of special municipal bonds of
the sort which would enable states to float debt with interest costs subsidized
by the Federal Government.
Yet, such
measures and initiatives, while laudable and offering a distinctly different
path to the future will not be enough if it falls short of aiming for the
wholesale transformation of Anambra State into an entity with an industrial
base. This means that Soludo should attempt what few African leaders have done:
build a foundation for future industries by setting out a radical plan which
aims to change the agricultural sector into a full-fledged mechanised industry
alongside the development of chemical, manufacturing, and technological
industries.
This would
necessarily have to be bound to a corresponding plan to educate the population
beyond mere competence in basic literacy. The revenues accrued from
strengthening industrial capacity including the maximising of steel production
and electrical generation would be used to pay for a policy of mass education
which would encompass basic, vocational and university education to produce the
requisite level of professional and technical expertise to sustain an
industrial economy and society.
In a 2019
speech entitled “Economic and Institutional Restructuring for the Next
Nigeria”, Soludo made reference to China’s “Made in
2025”, a 10-year plan to update China’s manufacturing base. But it would have
been more thoughtful of him if he had referred to the initial economic plan
which was set in motion at the time of Deng Xioping’s reforms in the late 1970s
and made a coherent analogy as to how a long-term plan for economic
transformation could be thought out and engineered in an African context.
In other words,
Soludo’s claimed ambitions and objectives should not be taken seriously unless
he clearly conceives and articulates a template providing a way forward which
serves notice that a new breed of African leader is determined to create the
circumstances in which Africa is no longer willing to subsist as an appendage
to the global economy. This will only be achieved if he endeavours to harness
local skill and capital to produce quality industrial products from the raw
material to the finished product within the local currency regime. African
states should thus make use of the advantage they have over those industrial
nations who must import the raw materials. African leaders such as Soludo need
to break away from the mentality of talking of “attracting investment” which
only consolidates a dependency syndrome; one feature of which is the harmful
practice of selling exploitation rights to Western and Chinese corporations.
The question of
“mentality” is important.
Leaders such as
Soludo need to demonstrate that they can synthesize their intellectual and
spiritual ideas, largely framed by Western education and training, into ideas
which are tailored to meet the needs of the African condition. For instance,
Soludo is said to identify as a Catholic. But there is no evidence that he has
immersed himself in the study of the intellectual traditions of Catholicism.
Familiarity with the works of Heinrich Pesch could arguably give him insight
into the relationship between labour and capital and induce personally thought
out ideas on how to approach economics. An understanding of Catholic social
teaching could give him ideas about how to go about fostering unity and how to
mobilise labour by translating Cistercian values into developing a particularised
work ethic among his constituents. Unfortunately, some are under the impression
that Soludo is a conventional, by-the-textbook economic theorist. They point to
his failed attempt to redenominate the Naira while he was governor of the
Central Bank of Nigeria as evidence of this.
There are
aspects of Soludo’s thinking which need to be challenged and clarified. He has
spoken of drawing on the human resources of Nigerians as part of an economic
plank, in one instance stating that as “the Western population ages and
declines, they would need productive labour and Nigeria can smartly position to
become the largest supplier of such labour-indirectly through outsourcing or
directly”.
The problem
with this idea is that it appears to propose that Nigeria can benefit from
being merely an auxiliary piece in the economy of Western Europe when in fact,
the “supply” of such labour would be more useful if devised as a strategic part
of a plan for financing economic development. For instance, while embarked on
the first stage of his decades-long plan for South Korea’s development,
President Park Chung-hee reached an agreement to send miners and nurses to West
Germany in exchange for monies in a deal which at one point accounted for up to
two percent of his country’s earnings. Monies earned from this arrangement were
used to fund economic development. This was also the objective in mind when
Park sent the South Korean Army to fight as part of the United States coalition
in Vietnam. The benefits to the Korean economy were tangible.
The matter of
mentality regarding the mass of people Soludo wishes to serve is also worth
examining. Again, using religion as a focal point, Anambra is often referred to
as a “Catholic State”. But there is little evidence that Catholicism substantively
informs the political associations or organisations that have emerged in the
state. By this, one is thinking of the ideological constructs that have emerged
in parts of the world where large Catholic populations exist. For instance, the
emergence in the 20th century of influential Christian Democracy parties in
Germany and Italy and the germination of Liberation Theology in South America.
Technocrats belonging to Opus Dei were prominent in Francoist Spain and played
a prominent role in modernising the Spanish economy. In Anambra, the issue of
Catholicism and politics was registered in a negative way during the 2009
gubernatorial campaign involving Soludo, Peter Obi and Chris Ngige when priests
were pitted against each other over which candidate they wanted the laity to
support.
Soludo, as with
other Nigerian politicians who wish to be recognised as leaders of substance,
needs to be able to device ways to draw on the strengths of his people. His
call for “ideas-based” forms of leadership puts the onus on him to develop strategies
that tap into what his predecessor Omeruah referred to as the “self-help
culture” of his people. By way of example, in South Korea, the New Village
Movement or Saemaul Undong tapped into traditional Korean values associated
with communalism (Hyangek and Doorae) to form the basis for marshalling
rural communities to participate in the modernisation of the country.
To be sure,
well-intentioned leaders such as Soludo have their work cut out. The prevailing
structures of governance and the social problems plaguing Nigeria serve as a
barrier towards instituting radical change. It is no accident for instance that
those non-Western countries which have industrialised have done so under the
stable and disciplined circumstances of authoritarianism and even
totalitarianism. The USSR under Stalin, Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, South
Korea under Park Chung-hee and China under the Communist Party were able to
accomplish their long-term economic objectives because the power wielded by a
directing force in government was not disrupted in ways that developing
countries operating Western-imported liberal democratic structures often are.
The choice is a
stark one. The onus will be on Soludo to make a clear break from the past and
approach his economic plan in a bold and innovative manner. Otherwise, he will
only be able to effect cosmetic changes. This has unfortunately been the story
so far as leadership in Nigeria is concerned. The words of the French writer
Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr come to mind: “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme
chose”, that is, “the more things change, the more they remain the same.
