The great Swiss historian Jacob Bruchkhardt, in his eponymous work, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, famously described the state as “a work of art”. Bruchkhardt sought to understand the rise of the modern territorial state in the Italian Peninsula during the Renaissance. His particular interest was in city-states such as Florence, Venice, Sicily and others. He reached the fascinating conclusion that the city-state of the Renaissance could best be depicted as a work of art. As a connoisseur of the arts myself, I found this enigmatic depiction of the state both elegant and fascinating. Michelangelo spent several years painting the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
It was a task that demanded total concentration, effort, inspiration and, of course, high ability. When he completed that work he earned his place among the immortals. I am also reminded of the immortal works of the other great renaissance artists – Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and others. Great works of art speak to us not only of beauty but also of truth, purity and immortality.
When we envision the state as a work of art we understand it as an entity that is built by inspired statesmen. It requires time, patience, inspiration, ability and sheer nobility of spirit. To build a great state is to become an artist of the human spirit. Just as a great work of art presupposes a great artist, a great nation-state similarly presupposes a great statesman and stateswoman.
In our day and age great statesmen and women are in short supply. It’s not only an African problem; it is a worldwide phenomenon. The British people who have lived together for centuries as Scots, Welsh, Irish and English narrowly missed breaking up their union in a recent referendum in Scotland. We have not seen the end of the matter yet. The giants that straddled the political stage in Britain, from Elizabeth I to Gladstone, Clement Attlee, Churchill, Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher have been replaced by little men who have no vision of the greatness of British civilisation and of its place in the world. Beyond Baroness Thatcher, British politicians have largely forgotten the task of nation building.
The Canadians have been more successful at it. For decades, it was not a question of if but when Quebec would break from the Canadian federation. It took statesmen such as Pierre Trudeau to give Canada a sense of renewed purpose and destiny. Trudeau was a brilliant scion of illustrious Quebecois family. He was perfectly bilingual in French and English. After studying Law and Political Science in Quebec he went across the Atlantic to the London School of Economics for graduate work. He also seized the opportunity to travel around Europe and Asia. His heart and mind was enlarged by his experiences. He was determined to rebuild Canada as a nation that would be at peace with itself and the world. And I think he succeeded tremendously.
Nations do not emerge out of the nebulous ether. Nations, as the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) tells us, are “inventions” – constructed with the vision, determination and dexterity of great artists. Consider the case of Tanzania, a country replete with ethnic and religious divisions. Julius Kambarage Nyerere gave Tanzanians a sense of collective nationhood by making Kiswahili a national language. He also educated a whole generation of Tanzanians to feel that they are one people with one destiny. He put emphasis on literacy and education, patriotism and pan-Africanism. Today, Tanzanians are a much more united people than Kenyans and Ugandans. Nyerere will go down in history as one of the greatest statesmen to have come out of our benighted continent.
Much ink has been spilled in giving gratuitous advice to President-elect Muhammadu Buhari. I myself have been one of the culprits. Beyond and above all the nostrums that have been on offer, almost nothing has been said about nation building. In our day and age, countries rise and fall by virtue of economic management and prosperity that goes with it. I am the first to know about the primacy of economic policy. But beyond that, we can never even begin to know what to do about the economy until we forge that fellow-feeling that makes us feel we are one people with one collective destiny. That is the task of nation building.
I believe that the traumas the Nigerian people have endured in the last two decades are partly reflective of the crisis of nationhood. There was a time when Nigerians felt they belonged together. Something cracked along the way. We have become a fractious and divided people – deeply suspicious of one another. The dubious federal structure that the British left us, in which the North overwhelmed the other federating units, was bound to exacerbate ethnic suspicions. The military coups deepened those suspicions as did the gruesome civil war. The long years of military tyranny did nothing to unite our people. The military, which had been one of the unifying institutions across the country, became a vehicle of disunity. The collapse of the civil service also did great harm to nation building. Although nobody ever owns up to the fact, it is a truism that there is a subliminal feeling among the dominant ethnic groups that an Igbo man could never be trusted with the High Magistracy of our republic. The nearest person that came to it in 1999 was Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary-General. Unfortunately, he himself never wanted it. As a consequence, many among the remnants of Ndigbo have retreated to the dubious cocoon of Biafra. Oduduwa Republic has been a project that has been long in the making, with its flag, constitution and anthem. As for Arewa, their Usmaniyya Caliphate project has been hatched with the sword and with blood – much of it against the hapless people of the Middle Belt.
I was once asked by a distinguished French intellectual whether Nigeria is a country at all. My instinctive reaction was annoyance. But then, when I thought deeply about it, I realised it was a very legitimate question. I studied in France and have drunk deep from the fountain of French culture and civilisation. The concepts of state and nation are quintessentially French. From the fissiparous divisions of warring dukedoms from Normandy to Angouleme in the eighteenth century, the French forged a single state and nation, united together by their love of liberty, equality and fraternity. The revolution and Bonaparte did their part. Succeeding generations of statesmen from Louis XIV to Cardinal Richelieu to Charles de Gaulle, Pierre Mendes-France and François Mitterrand took up the mantle of nation building and never relented. For them, France is an eternal idea to be nurtured, sustained and advanced forever.
Is Nigeria a country? Juridically, yes. Are we a nation? Sadly, not yet.
The task of the coming generations of leaders is to give our people a sense of nationhood. That cannot be achieved by sectionalising and privatising government. We need a broad-based government that has a place for everyone. There are various other vehicles that can enhance nation building. One of them is the railways. I have always harped on the fact that railway workers in post-independence Nigeria were people who felt they belonged together. The parents of both Azikiwe and Ojukwu worked in the railways. Hausa became the first language of their children. When the railways died Nigerians became strangers to one another. Other unifying vehicles include football, sports and youth and development programmes. The NYSC was once a great unifying vehicle, but I doubt if it still is. The unity schools did their part, but they are a shadow of what they once were. I do hope and pray this message will not be lost on our new leaders. Nigeria can be fixed. Our country can be made to work. But we must begin, as it were, from the basics. We have to give our people a sense of purpose and collective destiny. The great Cambridge political philosopher Sir Ernest Barker, on his study of Greek political theory, taught that prosperous democracies can only emerge where the people have sense of collective spiritual identification.
Toleration as a political virtue has been harped upon since the times of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. Nigerians must learn to be more tolerant and more respectful of one another’s cultures and belief systems. A great deal of it must begin from the classroom. We should bring back the study of history in the curriculum and ensure our young people understand the glory that was Nigeria in the past, the challenges of the moment and the promise of greatness that is our manifest destiny.
Obadiah Mailafia
