Awolowo and the questions of our age
In its November 10, 1958, edition, TIME Magazine published an interesting story about the Constitutional Conference attended by 80 leaders from Nigeria to finalize the arrangements for independence in October 1960. In the story, the magazine drew a contrast between Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Premier of the Western Region, and his counterparts from the other two regions. What is significant about the report is that while the then, arguably, most globally prominent weekly newsmagazine focused on Awolowo’s capacity for leadership, it focused on other aspects of the personality or political life of the others. Stated TIME, ‘In Western eyes, Obafemi Awolowo of the Western Region seemed the most statesmanlike: as the conference began, the London Times carried a full-page ad proclaiming his declaration for freedom under the title “This I Believe,” prepared with the help of an American public relations man.’
The report was a pointer to some of the ideas and ideals that were later identified with the man: vision, mission, conviction, planning, and capacity for state-building. These were some of the qualities that separated Awolowo from his peers and have ensured that his ideas about how to build a country where there is ‘freedom for all, [and] life more abundant’ remain the most fundamentally clear and far-reaching of all the serious proposals that have ever been articulated about how to make a multi-ethnic state such as Nigeria, a plural, but universally egalitarian polity.
As we posthumously celebrate the 115th birthday of Africa’s ultimate-man of praxis today we are again compelled to reflect on his contributions to human possibilities in our part of the world as well as the national disabilities wrought by the departures from, or antagonism towards, the path he laid.
Such a reflection is particularly crucial for the progressive forces who, paradoxically, have been fighting what would seem a rear guard battle, especially since the start of the Fourth Republic. This is even more so given that, in the last decade, the same progressive forces, those who claim to be the heirs of Awolowo’s political legacy, have been acting as if Obafemi Awolowo had, before his passing, indemnified them against thinking new thoughts, or thinking at all in innovative, yet practical ways about what is to be done about Nigeria’s challenges.
Perhaps the most salient question that has been posed to progressive forces since Awolowo’s passing was this: Is Nigeria redeemable? There is no consensus on this question among this formation of the Nigerian political elite. Between the moderately ambitious and the monstrously ambitious in the rump of the progressive class, what Nigeria represents, and her future possibilities, have been mired in the question of immediate political power—and its benefits. The middle ground in this formation that is still quietly, though quintessentially, devoted to long term collective (national) public good are so bereft of socio-economic and political muzzle that they exist now only as side shows in the political arena. While their conservative opponents (and allied forces – some of them pretending to be ‘progressives’) are united in the mission of milking the country dry while preserving it with the force of arms, the progressives are left with publicly and privately weeping about the path not followed. Those among them who are truly committed to Awolowo’s ideas concerning the capacity and pathways to save Nigeria are not engaging in any form of strategic thinking and planning about how, what the Italian thinker, Antonio Gramsci, describes as the war of position, would translate into the kinds of manoeuvring that can save Nigeria from the clutches of her abductors. And those who want Nigeria extinguished are more romantic than practical about how to create a new country of their own. But for the tragic consequences of these deficiencies, it would have been comical to witness how both factions of the progressive formation, particularly in Southwestern Nigeria, have now been left in the lurch by the Bola Tinubu presidency.
As things stand now, the progressives who think Nigeria is unredeemable are hoarse in their badgering, and those who think Nigeria is redeemable appear preposterous in the ominous lack of imagination in their proposals about what actions are necessary for national transformation. It comes as no surprise therefore that a less illustrious mouthpiece of the former group is now trapped between ethno-nationalist aspirations and ethnic solidarity.
Yet, in the middle of the paralysis provoked by the salient question re-emerges the figure of Awo. The progressive forces remain confronted by the figure of a man with an obstinate commitment to the possibility of progressive social transformation. Indeed, the dilemmas of Awolowo’s political heirs are simultaneously affirmed and denied by the complex figure of Awo.
Awolowo approached every social problem with the intuition of possibilities, even while recognising historical and structural constraints. Yet, he never failed to ask the first order question: Is the problem insuperable? His answer was almost always in the negative. This constantly led him to the question of ‘what is to be done.’ While he always approached the latter question from an ideological position, he was never dogmatic about the approach. As a social democrat, he was more devoted to egalitarian rule and egalitarian life than to their ideological provenance. As a social welfarist, he saw the state as an instrumentality of ensuring ‘good life for all’ than as a mere rationality of rule, let alone as a modern technique of class accumulation. This was why his reflections led him to a two-pronged approach to Nigeria’s peculiar challenges. The first was the instrumentality of rule and the second was about the agencies of ensuring human possibilities.
The core reflection of the first, for him, was democratic federalism. That is why in Nigeria’s history, there is hardly any other leader who comes close to him as the grand apostle of democratic federalism. Thus, Awolowo was undivided in his attention to the necessity and viability of federalism in the context of a plural polity such as Nigeria. Yet, he realised that federalism was not enough. It was, for him, a political structure that created the possibility of a healthily competitive polity, one which made the competitive generation of public wealth and public good possible and sustainable. However, democratic federalism needed to be complimented by the programmatic agency of social good that would ensure equitable distribution of the wealth generated. The Unity Party of Nigeria’s anthem emphasised that, ‘Egalitarianism in our national watchword/equality of good fortune/must be to each sure reward.’ Thus, the core reflection of the second is social welfarism. This is why even those who either opposed him or were not alive when he was around but are either genuinely engaged in the struggle over creating a humane society in Nigeria or pay lip service to the past and ongoing struggle for egalitarian rule, all speak to a project that was best articulated by Obafemi Awolowo and the political parties that he created and led.
Awolowo’s awareness of a range of existing transcendental visions and interpretations led him to a particular path in his reflections in the first part of the 20th century. These reflections were about the place of Africa in the global context. His grasp of the existing political rationalities produced an embrace of a particular form of local yet universalisable political rationality with a fundamentally egalitarian goal. This was the reason why, for him, the primacy of politics involved investing politics with the capacity to reconstitute society and mobilise all aspects of political, economic, and social life in ensuring shareable human emancipation and social progress. His was the most holistic of thoughts about how to link the political condition of the Nigerian society to the economic and social transformation necessary for human flourishing.
Yet, Awolowo showed us that while politics may fail (for instance, in achieving egalitarian rule in the immediate), political principles must endure. Political principles would eventually make it possible to recover the egalitarian possibilities of politics and ensure that they become triumphant. This is especially important in a plural polity such as Nigeria where a strong tradition of anti-egalitarian politics is regarded as a cultural heritage among the most dominant faction of the ruling elite.
Despite this, Awolowo was relentless in his investment in the prospect of a new dawn and the necessity of human agency in producing this. There is a need to remember this even as we confront yet another false dawn. This is why 37 years after his death, those who exulted in, and still exult in, him and those who execrated, and still execrate, him are yet to find a better holistic thinker about the Nigerian condition with whom to have a regenerating conversation about why a country of such immense human and material resources always finds the most intellectually incapacitated members of the political elite at the helm of its affairs. Therefore, for those who claim to be his political heirs, legitimately so or otherwise, the ongoing vulgarization of the liberatory politics of the Awolowo tradition ought to be concerning.
The question that arises in this age in which the most trenchant ‘all progressives’ are no progressives, and the true progressives have been more or less decommissioned, is this: What can the progressive-liberal intellectual formation do to reenergize, if not rethink, Awolowo’s theory of political action, indeed, his praxis? This is an urgent question in the context of the ascendant socio-economic and political paralysis.
Perhaps this is why we are unable to leave Awolowo behind as we continue this journey. His ideas accompany us. Nigeria is yet to answer the question he posed about both the country’s possibilities and the consequences of a departure from the path he laid for national greatness. Also, those he left behind are yet to pose that question in a new way, let alone produce the answer that is necessary to terminate, or at least attenuate, the misery of tens of millions of our compatriots caught up in the current contraption.
Adebanwi, the author of Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency (Cambridge University Press, 2014), sent the article from the University of Pennsylvania, USA, via waleadenwi@gmail.com.