A people without a sense of history

CHUKS OLUIGBO

Many Nigerians do not often remember what happened yesterday. And this inability to remember seems to me the greatest impediment to our nation-building process. There’s a general lack of a sense of history. People don’t remember the past. They just don’t care – or they think it’s not important to remember.

And our politicians know that we have a very short memory, that is why they rape us and plunder our heritage today and come back tomorrow to pat us on the back and beg for our votes only to get back into power tomorrow and start the raping and plundering afresh. They know we won’t remember that we were raped yesterday, even if the aftertaste lingers on our lips, even if their stinking semen is still spattered on our laps.

That is why a man like Ibrahim Babangida who annulled a free and fair presidential election in 1993 would have the effrontery to come out 14 years later and claim to be a democrat and ask to be allowed to contest presidential election in a democratic setting; that is why the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC), which claims to be progressive, would court this same Babangida to join in their fold; that is why Atiku Abubakar would vilify the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the worst terms imaginable in 2007 when he had a convenience marriage with the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) only to come back in 2011 to contest the PDP primaries; that is why Umaru Dikko, who had a huge scandal as chairman of Presidential Task Force on Rice during the Shehu Shagari administration (remember the shameful 1984 ‘Dikko Affair’), would be appointed chairman of PDP disciplinary committee in 2013; that is why the Federal Government would deem it fit to appoint Salisu Buhari, a disgraced former Speaker of the House of Representatives (removed as Speaker for certificate forgery), as a member of the Governing Council of a first-grade university, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; that is why the 2010 Yar’Adua saga is replaying itself, shamelessly, in Taraba State as I write this; that is why politicians recycle the same campaign promises every four years and we are taken in by their eloquence – because we do not remember.

This inability to remember, I think, is also partly responsible for the lack of patriotism we see everywhere in the country. How do you expect patriotism from a generation that does not know the country’s national emblems and what they stand for? How do you expect them to wear clothes with the green-white-green crest instead of the American flag? How do you expect them to watch Nigerian League instead of European League?

Now listen to this: Some weeks back NTA Newsline went to the streets to ask Nigerians to recite the second stanza of the National Anthem. The discovery was terrible – many were not able to remember even the first few words of the anthem, and those who could remember couldn’t go beyond the fourth line. Same with the National Pledge. So, how could they be patriotic? How could they show any form of allegiance to Nigeria? Worse still, it occurred to me that those folks interviewed by NTA Newsline might not be the only culprits. How many of the guys in the ‘hallowed chambers’ of the National Assembly and the state assemblies claiming to make laws for us can say The Pledge without stammering?

Way back in primary school, there used to be a subject called Social Studies, where we were exposed to aspects of Nigerian and world history. That was where we learnt about the traditional nationalists such as King Jaja of Opobo, Nana of Itsekiri and Oba Ovoranmwem Nogbaisi of the Benin Kingdom who stood against European imperialism and paid dearly for it. We also learnt about Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Balewa, Akanu Ibiam, Anthony Enahoro and other nationalists who fought to wrestle Nigeria from the hands of the colonialists. And then we were taught about Mungo Park, The Lander Brothers, David Livingstone, Lord Lugard, Flora Shaw, Florence Nightingale (also called ‘The Lady with Lamp’), Mary Slessor (who stopped the killing of twins in parts of Nigeria), and the other colonialists and the humanitarians who accompanied them. Are subjects like Social Studies and History still being taught in our schools today? And so, really, as P. O. Esedebe, emeritus professor of History at UNN, rightly asks, “How many of our countrymen and women in private employment, public service, politics and business – how many of them have a nodding acquaintance with the history of the nation-state they are serving or aspire to serve?”

Yet our government preaches patriotism. In their bid to immortalise so-called heroes past, successive governments have named universities, airports, stadia, university hostels, streets, major roads, and other monuments after these heroes. Now how many of today’s youths know who these heroes were and what roles they played in the development of the country? For instance, the Enugu airport is named after Akanu Ibiam. Who was Francis Akanu Ibiam and what did he stand for? You’ll be shocked that not up to a handful of people, youths as well as the old, in the South-East know that he was the first Igbo medical doctor. Who was MKO Abiola? Who was S. L. Akintola? What about Anthony Enahoro, Murtala Mohammed, Kenneth Dike, Aminu Kano, Nwafo Orizu, and a host of others?

A people’s history is their pride. There is a saying that a sense of history is a sense of sanity, and not to know what happened before one was born is to remain perpetually a child. Unfortunately, many of our leaders and people view history as a dead past that should be allowed to bury its dead. They tend to believe that there is no connection between the past and the present – and future. But how can you understand the present without reference to the past?

Esedebe’s position on this matter comes in handy: “Nothing can be explained in human affairs without reference to the past. A group of people cannot talk for long without referring to the past. It is the only means whereby we may understand the present. Hence it has been described as the collective memory of mankind. A man who loses memory of what went before will be a man adrift. He would not know where he came from and where he intended to go or what he wanted to do. The same is true of society. History is to society what remembered experience is to the individual. Like individuals, communities strive to learn from their mistakes and derive encouragement from their triumphs.” Enough said.