We Must Set Forth At Midnight
By Tolu Ogunlesi
IT says something about America, doesn't it, that it has chosen such a radical message of Hope and Change in this time of financial cataclysm. I very much agree with the person who said that the Americans always like to surprise themselves and the world.
Of course, I do not believe, " and neither should anyone in his or her right mind, "that one man can, alone, rescue a collapsing country.
But I believe that but one man can, by the power of inspiration, (contagious optimism, a message of overriding change, and the symbolism of a new beginning) kick-start and pilot the journey back from hell.
I believe that America will rise again, if only on the strength of the immense pride that it currently has in itself, flowing from the act of putting a skinny kid with a funny name, " and a foreign
heritage " into an overwhelmingly white White House. It can only get better for a country that had the confidence to do what America has just done.
It is, however, not the same in Nigeria, another country that likes to surprise itself. While the Age of Obama was being ushered in, deranged armed naval officers in Lagos were beating up a defenceless woman.
It is, of course, merely the next episode in the series of the Reality Show - Who wants to bully a defenceless (woman) driver? " a show to which Governors, Policemen, Army Officers, Navy officers and danfo drivers are rushing to sign up for. No one knows what the first Prize is,
but it must be something substantial. National Honours maybe.
At the same time we hear that our Chief Electoral Umpire is bragging about how America has a lot to learn from him regarding conducting elections. I wonder what gave him the boldness to say that. But thinking about it again I begin to understand. Our electoral system is so brilliant that Mike Tyson, an American citizen decided he just had to participate in the elections in Ondo State last year. That's how awed he was by the beauty of our democratic process, as managed by INEC.
Only a disgruntled element, cynical, unpatriotic and ungrateful to INEC for the great work it is doing will imagine, the way I am now doing, that, had INEC handled the US elections, Underdog Obama (aka Opposition Party Obama) would not have been able to vote for himself.
That Obama would have sat there at the polling booth awaiting a ballot paper that would never arrive, and that he would have gone home, tail between his legs, to hear a Returning Officer announce on television that even in his own ward, no one had voted for him. It is midnight in Nigeria. And the clock seems to have stopped.
We weren't always a midnight nation. Once upon a time it was
dawn. Might that explain why Wole Soyinka titled his memoir - You Must
Set Forth At Dawn. Time Magazine in its October 10, 1960 issue, said: Nigeria is not only the most populous but is on the way to becoming the richest of the new African states. Tarred roads connect all the major towns. Ibadan has the first TV station in Africa. Enugu (pop.
63,000), bustling capital of the Eastern Region, Zik's center of power, will soon inaugurate a TV station of its own, and a new university nearby is ready for students. Revenue from palm oil and kernels, cocoa and peanuts already has boosted exports to $460 million a year; to reduce the overwhelming dependence on agriculture, Sir Abubakar's men hope to develop iron ore, lead and zinc deposits, even talk of building a steel
mill to supply West Africa's needs. Oil already pours out of Shell's wells along the Niger River delta, and the flow of Nigerian crude may reach 500,000 bbl. a day by 1970.
Time Magazine was not just gushing. The Slave Coast " having followed in the footsteps of the Gold Coast, in freeing itself from the Colonial bullies " was on its way to becoming the Coast of Black Gold; a Cape of Black Hope. No one knew that independence was simply going to be a chance for us to show how adept we could be at ruining our own country with minimal foreign assistance.
Where did it all begin to go wrong, is the multi-million naira question. True, it was never a perfect country, Nigeria has always been an entity steeped in ethnic distrust, a painful legacy of colonial
(mis)experimentation. But how, or where did we learn, in the years following independence, such ingenious ways of making it even more imperfect. To give credit where it is due, in the years since 1960, there have been
moments when light glimmered (even if faintly) on the horizon, moments
in which Change and Hope must have converged so magnificently that they
inspired the kind of euphoria that we associate with the Obama Moment
of today. 1970 (The end of the Civil War). October 1, 1979. June 12,
1993. May 29, 1999.
Sadly, no matter how close we got to the end of the tunnel, we managed to " in the most ingenious and baffling of ways " keep adding more tunnel. Every time we got close to hauling ourselves out of one
hole, we began to dig new improved ones, for us and for the generations
coming behind. Today, it is midnight. The more cynical among us will
say that it has always been midnight. Today there is little evidence that there is any government in the country. All we have are politicians and political parties. Dispensers of bitumen and grinding machines and Ghana-must-go bags and press releases and brand new official cars to replace brand new official cars.
My conclusion is this: Perhaps it is time for a farewell party for the generation that set forth at dawn. They have been lucky; they met the kitchen whilst the cooking was still in progress, whilst the wine vats brimmed with new wine. Let us applaud them for their services to the Nation. (Many of them have actually already applauded themselves, with National Honours and sizeable chunks of National Cake). I'm in support of this farewell party, and confident that my generation can raise the funds (in the unprecedented manner in which young Americans raised funds for Obama) to sponsor this party. Thank you for serving Nigeria. But your time is up.
We will not complain that we are unlucky. We must not. We accept
our fate as children of midnight, burdened by the ill-packed bags of
emergency. This is not 1960, not 1970. This is 2008. Midnight. The hands
of the clock are united " on the dot of midnight. If we had our way
we'd go back to the beginning, start the journey all over again. But that is wishful thinking. We must get on. Our bags and burdens are many. But we are alive, against all the odds thrown at us by a system designed to ensure that we do not survive " a system that wants to make
sure that if we manage to survive being born in hospitals devoid of compassion or of medical skill, then we certainly will not survive the intellectual darkness of classrooms devoid of roofs or of blackboards; or the stray bullets or beatings from uniformed men who should be protecting us, or the vagaries of the Sahara or the Mediterranean as we hustle our way into Europe.
Frantz Fanon has defined our destiny for us: Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it. We have discovered ours. We are to be midnight children
whose dream " and mission " will be to create a new dawn for our own children (a dawn that we ourselves have never quite managed to experience). Those who have gone ahead of us gleefully talk of the good old days. Our own dream " and prayer " is to never have to talk of
good old days. We must leave our world better than we met it. We would like to thank everyone who has gone ahead of us, all who set forth at dawn. You have tried; you have done your best. Let us, having discovered our mission, get a chance to fulfill it. Or betray it. There is
hope, because we are still alive. Nigeria is still alive, even if near comatose. Perhaps the Age of Obama will rub some of its magic on Nigeria.
Whatever happens, it is time for the new generation to applaud the old, and gently usher it off to the sidelines and the state-boxes and VIP lounges, where the elders can admire their Chieftaincy titles,
National Honours and Cheque Books in utmost peace.
Ogunlesi is the 2008 Guest Writer at the Nordic Africa Institute,
Uppsala, Sweden.
