Prominent Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, on Saturday said he can only wish Nigerians less miseries in the New Year.
In a message titled, “Blame passing: The New Year Gift to a Nation,’’ he also called on the Nigerian government to end the current fuel scarcity in the country rather than resort to blame passing.
The Nobel laureate said government must not be fooled by the quietness in major cities, adding that Nigerians are going through pains to get petroleum products.
“In the accustomed tradition, I wish the nation less misery in the coming year. A genuine Happy New Year greeting is probably too extravagant a wish,” he wrote Saturday.
Soyinka stressed that prevailing socio-economic circumstances in the country make a genuine happy New Year greeting an extravagant wish, adding that 40 years after the country passed through the same problems associated with scarcity of fuel, the ugly development is still rife.
Making reference to a Daily Times publication of June 7, 1977, when President Muhammadu Buhari was then minister of petroleum and natural resources, the laureate said:
“The accompanying news clipping from June, 1977 came into my hands quite fortuitously. It is forty years old. It captures the unenviable enigma that is the Nigerian nation. It is however a masterful end-of-year image to take into the coming year, not only for the individual now at the helm of government, General Buhari, but for a people surely credited with the most astounding degree of patience and forbearance on the African continent – except of course among themselves, when they turn into predatory fiends. When many of us are blissfully departed, an updated rendition of this same clipping – with a change of cast here and there – will undoubtedly be reproduced in the media, with the same alibis, the same in-built panacea of blame passing.”
He recounted what he experienced at filling stations when he travelled through Lagos, Ibadan and Abeokuta, describing the situation as traumatising.
“Even with ‘unorthodox’ aids of passage, this was no task for the faint – hearted,” Mr. Soyinka wrote of efforts to get fuel around the cities.
“Just getting past fuelling stations was traumatising, an obstacle race through seething, frustrated masses of humanity, only to find ourselves on vast stretches of emptied roads pleading for occupation. As for obtaining the petroleum in the first place – the less said the better.
“I suspect that this government has permitted itself to be fooled by the peace of those empty streets, but also by the orderly, patient, long -suffering queues that are admittedly prevalent in the city centres. It is time the reporting monitors of government moved to city peripheries and sometimes even some other inner urban sectors, such as Ikeja and Maryland from time to time to see, and listen!”
The Nobel laureate argued that pronouncements such as the one contained in the 1977 Daily Times newspaper’s viral headline are “a delusion at best, a formula that derides public intelligence.”
He described it as attempts to buy time and pass blame, adding that the current hike must be remedied quickly.
“It is time the reporting monitors of government move to city peripheries and sometimes even some other inner urban sectors, such as Ikeja and Maryland from time to time to see, and listen ! Pronouncements – such as the 1977 above – again re-echoing by rote in 2017– are a delusion at best, a formula that derides public intelligence. Buying time. Passing blame. Yes of course, the current affliction must be remedied, and fast, but is there a dimension to it that must be brought to the fore, simultaneously and forcefully? This had better be the framework for solving even a shortage that virtually paralyzed the nation.”
He wondered for a moment, “what became of the initiatives by some states nearly two decades ago – Lagos most prominently – to decentralize power, and thus empower states to generate and distribute their own energy requirements? Frustrated and eventually sabotaged in the most cynical manner from the federal centre! The similarity today is frightening – for nearly four days on that earlier occasion, the nation was blacked out near entirely. We know that one survival tactic of governments is to keep their citizens in the dark over decisions that affect their lives, but this was literal! And yet each such crisis, plus lesser ones, merely reiterate again and again that this national contraption, as it now stands, is simply – dysfunctional!
“What this demands is that, in the process of alleviating the immediate pressing misery, we do not permit ourselves to be manipulated yet again into forgetting the main issue whose ramifications exact penalties such as petroleum seizures and national power outage. These are only two handy, being recent symptoms – there are several others, but this is not intended to be a catalogue of woes. Sufficient to draw attention to the Yoruba saying that goes: Won ni, Amukun, eru e wo. Oun ni, at’isale ni. Translation: Some voices alerted the K-legged porter to the dangerous tilt of the load on his head. His response was – Thank you, but the problem actually resides in the legs.”
“The providential image above sums up a defining moment for both individual and collective self-assessment, places in question the ability of a nation to profit from past experience. Vast resources, yes, but proved unmanageable under its present structural arrangements. As the tussle for the next round of power gets hotter in the coming year, the electorate will again be manipulated into losing sight of the base issue. Its noisome claque in the meantime, the automated mumus of social media, practiced in sterile deflection and trivialization of critical issues, unwittingly join hands with government to indulge in blame passing and name calling – both sides with different targets. From the anguished cry of Charley Boy’s Our Mummu Don Do! to expositions from academics such as Professor Makinde’s recent intervention, the public is subjected daily to a relentless barrage of awareness, underlined in urgency. Nobody listens. One wonders if many people read. And certainly, very few retain or relate – until of course the next crisis. The Labour movement declares that it awaits a guarantee of the ‘people’s backing’ before it embarks on any critical intervention. Understandably. There is more than enough of the opium of blame passing on tap to lull mummus into that deep coma from which – give it a little more time – there can only be a rude awakening.”
“Sooner than later, but not as soon as pledged, the fuel crisis will pass. And then of course we shall await the next round of shortages, then a recommencement of blame passing. What will be the commodity this time – food perhaps? Maybe even potable water? In a nation of plenty, nothing is beyond eventual shortage – except of course, the commonplace endowment of pre-emptive planning and methodical execution. Forty years after, the same language of re-assurance? “There is something rotten in the state of Naija!”
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