Even though its blurb says the book “pulls together the innermost thoughts and views of Lieutenant General Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, former Chief of Defence Staff and pro-democracy activist, on true federalism in Nigeria and how to achieve unity that is equitable and beneficial to all Nigerians”, and in the Foreword, Cornelius O. Adebayo, a former Minister of Communications, describes it as “a history of the popular General’s military and post-military career presented in an unconventional format occasioned by circumstances”, Alani Akinrinade: My Dialogue With Nigeria is undoubtedly much more than those. A more encompassing description of the book, in my view, will be as a history of contemporary Nigeria seen from the perspective of one man who has been an active player in the scheme of things in the country for most part of that history.
Lieutenant General Akinrinade, whose thoughts and views make up the book, is not just “one of the most popular heroes of the Nigerian Civil War”, Adebayo again says in the Foreword, “he is also now a political hero and activist”. He fought in the civil war, served in civilian and military governments, became a pro-democracy activist with National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) following the June 12 saga and the coming of the Sani Abacha dictatorship, and has since remained a strong and respectable voice in discourses around national unity.
So, it is not just about Akinrinade. Rather, through his lens the book touches on virtually every key issue that has defined, and continues to define, Nigeria’s political and socio-economic history, for good or for ill, even as the country continues to grapple with the search for nationhood.
Presented in 25 chapters and 441 pages, the book comes in two parts. Part One contains 21 chapters featuring interviews granted by Alani Akinrinade to different media over time, while Part Two has four chapters featuring speeches delivered by the retired general at different forums.
The chapter headings themselves speak volumes. Chapter One says ‘A Coup is an Illegal Thing’; Chapter Three discusses ‘Why We Need the National Conference’; Chapter Four is on ‘My Problems with Abacha’; Chapter Five says ‘We Are Not Unpatriotic’; Chapter Seven says ‘I Cannot Vote Myself Into Slavery’; Chapter Twelve predicts that ‘Nigeria May Break If…’; Chapter Thirteen says ‘Boko Haram is the Talakawa Syndrome’; Chapter Fourteen insists ‘The Civil War Settled Nothing’; Chapter Eighteen explains ‘Why Nigeria’s Unity is Negotiable’; Chapter Nineteen says ‘Buhari Can’t Win Corruption War Without Restructuring Nigeria’; Chapter Twenty argues ‘It’s Political Suicide for the APC to Say Restructuring is not in Its Manifesto’; Chapter Twenty-One says ‘Nigeria Must Restructure Or Break Up’; Chapter Twenty-Three talks about ‘The Ijaw Quest for True Federalism in Nigeria’; Chapter Twenty-Five discusses ‘Leadership and National Security’, and so on.
There is one common trait, though, in all these interviews and speeches spanning more than 25 years: Akinrinade’s consistent push for a fiscal and political restructuring of Nigeria as a catalyst for lasting unity is unshaken. Even now, restructuring remains his priority proposition for Nigeria’s survival.
For those who do not know, the call for restructuring and true federalism has been around in the country for a long time. Indeed, it was one of NADECO’s major demands in the days of pro-democracy activism. But no time has it ever been as deafening as now, with virtually all sections of the country agreeing that it is the only way forward for Nigeria – except, of course, conservative elements who are the chief beneficiaries of the current decadent system. That is why the book could not have been timelier.
So, for Alani Akinrinade, restructuring is the best way to go. “It is long overdue and doing this will address many of the problems confronting us.” (p. 332)
And the problems are legion. There is the issue of Fulani herdsmen. There is the call for fiscal federalism, which, hopefully, will bring about an egalitarian society and change the current structure where “three of us will be working and the fourth will be idle, knowing that we will feed him”.
There are the several national confabs that almost always ended in chaos. The last one under the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, he says, “ceased to be serious after the first two weeks” and the delegates “turned it into a jesters’ pit”. There is the question of negotiability or non-negotiability of Nigeria’s unity, to which he returns the verdict: “Anything that’s not negotiable cannot make progress.”
There are weak institutions, which he says “must be cleansed such that justice, fairness becomes a culture” and the individual feels “a sense of responsibility for the proper running of society” – “otherwise nothing will work”.
There is the anti-corruption war. And while Akinrinade agrees it is good to recover money and mete out punishment, the greater worry is that “all institutions in Nigeria are corrupt” and need to be overhauled to “save this country”. There is the rot in the military, which started “as a mindset” long before the Ibrahim Babangida regime but “got out of hand” in Babangida’s time with the birth of the “Babangida boys”.
There is the Boko Haram insurgency, which grew out of a “tradition and culture which allows children to grow up without education and without the values of their parents” and is fuelled by “poverty of knowledge and physical poverty”.
There’s the civil war, which he says “could have been avoided if the Aburi Accord (reached in Ghana) was not unilaterally jettisoned by General (Yakubu) Gowon”. While many who took part in that war still maintain it was fought to keep Nigeria one, Akinrinade says “it was useless fighting that war” and regrets his participation in it.
“What led to the war then has come back and in a bigger form and everyone is fighting against one another in Nigeria. The pro-Biafra groups are there in the South-East, Boko Haram is in the North, Niger Delta Avengers are in the Niger Delta, and the herdsmen are killing everywhere,” he says.
On Biafra, he sees absolutely no reason why Nigeria should not let Biafra go. Provided it is the wish of the people, he says, “provided there is a referendum that clearly shows they want to go” and the process is orderly, “I see no reason why we should be exerting energy and risking our reputation to hold some people who want to leave Nigeria”. (p. 314)
There is the Niger Delta agitation, from Isaac Boro’s Niger Delta Volunteer Force to Ken Saro-Wiwa’s “very sophisticated intellectual” approach, down to the “militant agitation” involving Asari Dokubo and co. While Boro died in the civil war, Saro-Wiwa was hanged by the Abacha dictatorship, but the militant agitators have been empowered through amnesty, making them into tin gods and overnight billionaires. Yet, the problem persists because the real issues have not been tackled.
“A new generation of them will come up, rebels with a cause. You are always going to get supporters for it until we go to the riverine areas and really set the place right,” he argues. This point, obviously, has been borne out by the continued emergence of new militant groups in the Niger Delta despite the amnesty.
But not just the Niger Delta conundrum, no Nigerian problem that has ever truly been solved. Successive governments have only scratched the surface or pretended the problems don’t exist, so the problems always come back in other forms. And so, Nigeria has remained a country “in constant civil war”; a country with “too many centres of rebellion”; a country “in a big mess”; a country “that’s always at war, equal opportunity war among all of us”; “a country in big tumult” – all because “we are glossing over a lot of important things”.
The result is this: “We feel ashamed this is what it has come to, where nothing works at all. No value; anything goes. I am not sure our children are going to do better. It’s frightening. One can only hope that with a Buhari there, perhaps, perhaps, these ills will be cured.”
But even this hope in a Buhari miracle is fast dissipating. Instead, things have grown miserably worse on many fronts, and Nigeria remains ever more divided.
(Book edited by Soji Akinrinade and published in Lagos by MayFive Media Limited, 2017).
