Books Planes and Politics

It’s been a while since I have had a chance to post on this blog, the simple act of getting on with life and the absence of readily available internet connections have been my major excuse. I have started many times to write an entry, but have been unable to post. I am currently in Port Harcourt Nigeria, the so-called Garden city.  There is no Internet connection in the house where I am staying and at work the connection is intermittent and any way I have a job that I am paid to do that leaves little time for literary self-indulgence. However it should come as no surprise to those of you who have read my previous entries that Africa has not failed to surprise.

People often talk of being lulled into a false sense of security, this is usually a clichéd short hand warning sign to the reader or listener that some thing unpleasant is about to materialize, Nigeria is quite the opposite, it goads you into totally justifiable sense of Paranoia and trepidation and then quite unexpectedly does something unbelievably pleasant and human.  I have frequently complained about African airports in general and Nigerian airports in particular, when I came out to Nigeria this time the flight from Cameroon was late, the onwards flight from Lagos was canceled with out any reason warning or explanation, In the first Domestic air port I was constantly hassled by un official and official airport personnel and avoided a couple of attempts to steal my luggage, in other words, situation Normal.

Having discovered from a rather surly check in girl, (after she had checked in my bags) that the flight was canceled I hauled myself off to one of Lagos’s other Internal airports, and brought my self an Air Nigeria Ticket to PH> The woman who served me was polite and courteous and spoke English with the sort of precise and clear enunciation that would have made Henry Higgins apply for a residence permit. In fact all the Air Nigeria staff (formally Virgin Nigeria) were polite and courteous. I made my way through security without incident. I did however remark on the number of serious books on the conveyor belt passing through the X-ray machine. The last time I had flown out of the UK (Bristol Airport) I had noticed that most of the passengers if they had any reading material had the sort of glossy sub tabloid publication that barely achieves the five hundred word vocabulary that is generally considered to constitute communicative proficiency, The rest had had held electronic games and head phones.  In Nigeria though I noticed that books were everywhere, though I have seen precious few bookshops. During the flight almost every one was reading, novels and the local newspapers. This was the day after the first round of elections had been canceled; the papers were alive with vitriolic and frequently very funny comments on the political situation. In Britain we pride ourselves on the Ian Hislops of Grub street, and whilst certainly I am a fan of his acerbic wit, and I am proud that we still have a Swiftian element in our media that pilloried political pomposity, I have been pleasantly surprised by the level of satire in The Nigerian press, it’s true that they have much to satirize, but it is also positive that in a country so rife with political corruption that there is such freedom of the press, Whilst that freedom flourishes there is still hope for Nigeria. Though he road the country still has to travel, is long.

Nigeria, Democracy and Chelsea Football Club

I am  sitting in a hotel in Lagos, yesterday I was told not to go out-side because it would be Election Day and there were fears of Political violence breaking out. As it happened the elections were cancelled at the last minute, literally the last minute about ten o ‘clock on poling day, the only thing showing on the TV is a British football match, the hotel is full of Nigerians, all glued to the television set, watching not the unfolding political crises but Chelsea Football Club.

On the flight in to Lagos I read an excellent article in the National Mirror by Dapo Olaosebikan one of the papers political columnists. He spoke of the corruption, which still beleaguers the country; he spoke of the arrogance of the ruling class, and their refusal to learn from history, even recent history. He also, though, acknowledged that the great achievement of Nigeria is  in the fact that it is a nation that does hold elections every four years. They may not be transparent, free from violence or entirely legitimate, but the population are politicized enough to demand their right to vote, which in away puts them way ahead of the superficially more advanced societies undergoing social upheaval in the Middle East at the moment. It is there fore enormously disappointing that the elections were cancelled, I hope, that it is to guarantee fair play and not for more sinister reasons.

One of the other striking features about Nigeria is the freedom of the press. Every channel has pundits openly criticizing the corruption in government; the theft being committed by elected members of Government is openly discussed.  So why can they not stop it?

The Arab uprising should have shaken a few rulers across non Muslim Africa as well; it does not appear to have done so. I have a suspicion that the problem lies in education and nowhere else. Many Nigerians are poor, in many cases inhumanly poor, whilst the rich are insanely rich, a similar demographic I would suggest to Saudi Arabia, the difference is though that Nigerians are not oppressed.

There is freedom of speech, there are (out side the radical Muslim areas) not self appointed religious police, what they lack is access to a broad-spectrum liberal education.  The idea of education for educations sake is very difficult to sell where there is extreme poverty, in a developing country education is way of putting food on your family’s table, if it does not do that, it serves no purpose. 

Here we come to the fundamental flaw of democratization.  At its worst democracy is mob rule, the greatest number wins, so in a tribal society the tribe with the greatest number rules.  Most modern societies have witnessed the effected  that the increase in educational standards tends to correlate directly to the shrinking of family size, thus we perpetuate rule by the least educated. The larger the family size the less money for education; the cycle is never ending.

I always enjoy the  Nigerian newspapers, they are frequently well written, thoughtful and often extremely funny, so why does Nigeria’s eloquent, thinking middle class not run the country?

That ultimately is the most important question to answer, there are people in this country who understand that politics should be a vocation devoted to improving the welfare of ones fellow human beings and not merely self-serving and financially enriching. The only hope is that the electoral commission in delaying the election by two days will achieve a more just and transparent election that will slowly move Africa’s most populous country towards being the balanced 21stc century democracy that it should be. This is not just necessary for Nigeria and Nigerians, it affects the whole world, on a strategic level Nigeria has more oil than Libya, but on a moral level it affects us all, by participating in the perpetuation of a corrupt regime we devalue are own standards the same standards that we often seem so willing to enforce at the point of a gun, but then isn’t that what Col. Muammar El Qaddafi is doing?