The Colonized Present

In the past twenty years, Nigeria's basic problems and political processes have not changed in nature, but only in degree - becoming so extreme and surreal as to defy workaday English. In The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (August 1996), the black humor and unblinking vision of Nobel laureate writer and playwright Wole Soyinka rise to the occasion, and then transcend it. Imprisoned for two years before fleeing into exile, now temporarily based at Emory University in Atlanta, Soyinka has seen some of Nigeria's darkest, bloodiest corners and brightest lights, and he can sum up the situation in ways a sober historian would not:

Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space. The appropriate cinematic equivalent would be those grade B movies about alien body-snatchers. The only weapon of resistance that is left intact is a cultural memory. Make a careful study of people under a dictatorship, and invariably you will observe that it marks a period of internal retreat into cultural identities.

Cultural resistance to alien invaders has been, and continues to be, Nigeria's sorest and strongest point, dividing people even as it sustains them. Davidson (who, in his reverence for Africa's pre-colonial systems, has strongly differed with Soyinka's advocacy of modern democratic processes) earlier noted the crucial role of cultural identity as rural economies and community structures disintegrated and huge numbers of the technically "unemployed" sought work and wages in the metropolises:

Seldom developing any consciousness of forming a social class, the "urbanized" masses continued to defend themselves within what remained to them of their traditional cultures. Migrants brought kinship with them, and kinship ties could open the way to an unofficial means of subsistence, however erratic, fluctuating, and always liable to personal disaster, that was somehow capable of sustaining life in vast peripheral slums. Such "informal economic activity" was intricate, ranging from small-time handicraft to the exchange of minute quantities of food or other goods; or an ingenious diversity of services such as errand-running, backyard beer brewing, the operation of kinship clubs and mutual-aid societies; or the dispensing of oracular wisdom, magic, fortune-telling, together with odd "employments" on the fringe of the official economy in shops, garages, even factories; along with prostitution, petty crime and general brigandage against the official economy.

Now Soyinka indicates that culture has moved from the passive posture of self-defense to a more active stance involving

...multiple layers of resistance, from labor unions and professional organizations to traditional cultic resistance, one that involved the nocturnal placement of sacrifices at crossroads, invocation of ancestral curses on the enemy, distribution of akara offerings to the deities, all the way through to the proliferation of cassette recordings of imprecational lyrics that had the police stymied: Just under what law do you arrest and prosecute a recording artist who predicts infernal tortures for a dictator that persists in thwarting the will of the people?

The problem, Soyinka reminds us, is not one of class, ethnicity, profession, religion, geographical region or political party; rather, it is the refusal of any segment of society "to grant others the simple right of participation in the process of deciding a collective destiny." To speak of a collective destiny is to presuppose the existence of a collectivity - that is to say: a nation. Whether the country's current geographical borders are accepted or redefined, or whether, as Soyinka proposes, Nigerians redraw "an ethical map," the nation cannot subtract from itself "that lowest common denominator, the human unit."

Millions of that humanity have been swept away, millions have perished, never really understanding why, never really understanding to what gods they were sacrificed, other than that the state or the aspiring state had ordered it, that some program in the cause of a mere concept of nationhood demanded they be uprooted from their homes, turned into stateless nonpersons, degraded from creatures of feeling or sentience to mere digits in some abstract evocation that had become the end, not the means, to the elevation of humanity, the enhancement of its productive potential, or the harmonization of its relationship with power and authority.

On June 12, 1993, some 14 million human units got up on their legs and voted to express their collective will in an election that was "universally acclaimed as a model of fairness, order and restraint." It is perhaps irrelevant now to ask (as Soyinka does not) to what degree Alhaji Moshood Abiola's overwhelming support was made possible by his generous donations to political parties and social institutions of both the north and the south, of both Christians and Muslims. The point, Soyinka insists, is that voting patterns proved incontrovertibly that the long-bewailed rift between north and south was "a deliberate invention of a minor, power-besotted leadership and its divisive gamesmanship."

There is indeed a line of division in the north, but it is drawn between the workers, peasants, civil servants, petty traders, students, and the unemployed on the one hand and the parasitic elite and feudal scions on the other. These last, the beneficiaries of that ancient deception, are now traumatized. They cannot cope with this stark revelation of a nationalist political consciousness, so triumphantly manifested...

After a brief interlude of apparent resignation and confusion, the "poli-thugs" (as Soyinka terms the military ruling class and its collaborators) scrambled desperately to annul the election, suspend the national and state assemblies, and re-establish their agenda of social divisiveness and their control over "the spoils of power" along with the protection, immunity and privilege that come with those spoils.

Nigeria's recent succession of dictators weren't fighting over nickels and dimes when they seized each other's offices: Soyinka reports a government inquiry finding that over $12 billion in Gulf War windfall oil revenues alone are simply missing, unaccounted for. Small drops of the 96% of Nigerian revenues derived from oil trickle down only when necessary to grease the wheels of power so that the powerless may be ground down into ever smaller pieces. According to the Washington Office on Africa, the US buys over 40% of Nigerian oil, which accounts for 8% of all US oil imports. Soyinka has been prominent among the pro-democracy Nigerians who, in coalition with over 70 ecology and human rights groups around the world, have called for an embargo on all Nigerian oil. Many have specifically urged a boycott of Shell Oil, which accounts for almost 50% of Nigeria's daily production and has continued to engage in particular egregious ecological and human rights practices; Chevron, Mobil and Texaco maintain lower profiles. Embargoes on arms sales to the country have also been proposed but not enacted in several nations, including Great Britain, which, true to tradition, supplies tanks and armored vehicles to the Abacha regime. Nigerians know they'll never see a penny of oil money except in the person of military police or private security forces paid with that money to beat them up or shoot them down.

While the ruling military class devises ever more incredible and ingenious ways to bankrupt the nation and extract funds from any international agencies or corporations willing to gamble on its future, living conditions of the Nigerian people grow ever more abysmal: nonexistent health services, with hospitals that have become "virtual mortuaries"; potable water that "has become a commodity best left to the dispensation of the skies"; electricity that could only come from the same source, if Sango, the god of lightning, would be so willing; and public transportation that "provides a study in collective masochism, degenerating often into a contest of the survival of the fittest." Nigerian literacy rates rose from 10% in 1958 (Davidson) to 57% today (CIA); nevertheless, "hundreds of thousands of youths roam the streets, jobless, without purpose or direction, half-baked products" of deteriorated educational institutions. During the colonial era, Nigeria was a large exporter of agricultural products only at the cost of food shortages at home; now the country must import food. "Hunger stalks the streets and, with it, desperation" such as can only occur when, not content with looting the homes and stripping the bodies and spirits of its citizens, the government "must stick [its] fists down their throats and pull out the day's lone morsel that the citizen has succeeded in scrounging from dung heaps..."

Only the underground media can speak freely of these issues, for the valiant remnants of Nigeria's once proud press cannot raise their voices without feeling the "erratic sword" of "the infamous Decree No. 2" grazing their necks. This edict, introduced in 1983 by Gen. Muhamadu Buhari along with his tragi-comic War Against Indiscipline and Corruption,

declared any journalist guilty, with a penalty of prison without option of fine, not for publishing lies against the government or its officials but for publishing the truth, if such truths brought the government or any of its officials into public ridicule and contempt. The guilty publishing house would also be sentenced to pay a fine.

Decree No. 2 proving insufficient to win compliance, the Abacha regime has not hesitated to resort to such extralegal means as assassinating journalists and fire-bombing editorial offices. Perhaps members of the judiciary should also invest in bodyguards and fire extinguishers, if they dare continue to issue rulings against the government in defiance of Decree No. 12, issued in 1994. As reported by the US Department of State, this measure declares that "no act of the federal military government may be questioned henceforth in a court of law," and "divests all courts of jurisdiction in all matters concerning the authority of the federal Government."

No matter how many Nigerians are killed or imprisoned, the truth will not be silenced. Soyinka opened his book with the urgent question: When is a nation? The answer is as clear now as it was on June 12, 1993: It is when a people, or a collectivity of peoples, raises its individual, human voices as one and claims the right to define itself and the conditions of its life in its own terms. Only one question remains: What other nations of the world will heed Nigeria's cry?

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Hard Copy Sources

Achebe, Chinua: The Trouble with Nigeria. Fourth Dimension Publishing Co., Ltd., 1983. Heineman Educational Books, Inc., London & Portsmouth, NH, 1984. Order the paperback from Amazon.com

Davidson, Basil: Let Freedom Come: Africa in Modern History. Little, Brown and Company, NY, 1978. Out of print (OP).

Hillier, Bevis: Cartoons and Caricatures. Studio Vista, Ltd., London/E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., NY, 1970. OP. Of the cartoonist James F. Sullivan ("Jassef"), whose works were published in the English penny-magazine Fun in the 1870s, Hillier writes: "A cartoonist of advanced radical ideas, he was one of the first to take a jaundiced view of Victorian imperialism: one of his comic strips shows Africa being 'opened up', first by force of arms, then by factory-building in the name of Christianity and charity."

Meredith, Martin: The First Dance of Freedom: Black Africa in the Post-war Era. Harper & Row, NY, 1984. OP.

Soyinka, Wole: The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis. Oxford University Press (W. E. B. Dubois Institute Series), NY, 1996.
Order the hardcover from Amazon.com | Order the paperback from Amazon.com

About Developments Subsequent to This Review

Treason Charges against Wole Soyinka & Others
Human Rights Watch/Africa, 13 March 1997

Wole Soyinka: If world won't help, we'll fight alone
Mail & Guardian, 20 March 1997

Wole Soyinka on the rot in Nigeria
Mail & Guardian, 21 March 1997

Wole Soyinka: Nigeria's great charade
Mail & Guardian, 18 July 1997

Abacha dies at 54
BBC News, 8 June 1998

Nigerian defense chief to succeed Abacha
CNN, 8 June 1998

Nigeria to release all political prisoners
CNN, 2 July 1998

Abiola death sparks unrest
BBC News, 8 July 1998

Nigerian leader Abubakar dissolves Cabinet
CNN, 8 July 1998

Writer brands Abiola death "heinous crime"
Radio Kudirat/BBC Monitoring, 10 July 1998

Gen. Abubakar urges Soyinka to return home
Freedom Forum, 28 September 1998

"Overwhelming" reception for Soyinka
BBC News, 16 October 1998

"Redesigning a Nation": Wole Soyinka's first lecture in Nigeria
Mail & Guardian, 28 Oct 1998

Online Information about Current Events

Africa Policy Home Page
NigeriaWEB
PEN American Center: Nigeria

For Further Reading Offline

Basil Davidson: The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State (1993, paperback).

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed.): The Essential Soyinka : A Reader (1998, hardcover).

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed.): In the House of Oshugbo: Critical Essays on Wole Soyinka (1998, hardcover).

Adewale Maja-Pearce: Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka?: Essays on Censorship (1992, paperback).

Wole Soyinka: Ake: The Years of Childhood (1989, paperback).

Wole Soyinka: Collected Plays, Vol. 1 (1973, paperback). Includes A Dance of the Forests, The Swamp Dwellers, The Strong Breed, The Road, The Bacchae of Euripides.