In this analysis which lends a fresh perspective to the controversial Lagos State Government ‘reintegration’ saga, Okechukwu Nwafor, who lectures at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, joins issues with notable apologists of the policy, and also urges Governor Fashola to contain his excesses and spare the citizens of reckless abuse of their fundamental human rights… Permit me to draw a parallel between Fashola’s Deportation law and an apartheid law of South Africa. On 27 June 1797 Earl Macartney, a British Colonial expansionist, passed a law to exclude the natives from Cape Colony. Cape Colony was regarded, by the apartheid regime, as a city area that should be exclusive to the Whites. Of course, the British and the Dutch at different times laid claims to the founding and development of the Cape Colony, a city area known today as Cape Town (this is akin to certain individuals’ claims to the Yoruba as the founder and developer of Lagos). Under apartheid ‘pass law’, the natives were much regarded as nuisance in the Cape Colony in the manner Fashola regards the beggars and destitute as nuisance in the city of Lagos. The Natives Act of 1952 in South Africa made it compulsory for all ‘black’ South Africans over the age of 16 to carry a “pass book” at all times within the white areas. This is to enable the apartheid state ensure that the ‘black’ do not constitute a nuisance in these supposed white owned cities (remember the citizenship of black South Africans was constantly abused here in certain city areas of the nation just as the citizenship of certain Nigerians is abused in the city area of Lagos). One may now reconcile Fashola’s development ideas with this apartheid pass laws: these beggars are less humans and unworthy of a ‘place’ and ‘space’ in the exclusive city called Lagos just as the black South Africans are less human and unworthy of a space within the Cape Colony. They must be banished to the hinterlands just as Fashola banishes the destitute to the hinterlands. Fashola needs to be reminded of potentially cataclysmic effects of his action with a clear reminder of its apartheid’s version. During the peak of the discriminating laws in South Africa, African National Congress (ANC) began a Defiance Campaign to oppose the pass laws. This campaign culminated in the Sharpeville Massacre where most of the black opposition were violently massacred leaving about 69 people dead and over 180 injured. Of course it drew international outcry that increasingly made apartheid regime unpopular. Fashola may claim that the scale of his own deportation cannot equal that of the apartheid state but the fact must be stated clearly that injustice is injustice no matter the scale it assumes. If this is anything close to truth then individuals like Fani-Kayode and Don Adinuba must refrain from rationalizing Fashola’s actions outside the dictates of civil discourse. Femi Fani-Kayode has asserted with impudent certainty that “The claim that the Igbo helped to develop Lagos is hogwash.” He also said that “The major institutions of the south-west were developed by the diligence, hard work, industry and sweat of the Yoruba people. This is a historical fact”. Fani-Kayode re-enforced the above statement in his publication titled “Lagos, The Igbo and the Servants of Truth” in ThisDay of Friday, August 9, 2013 on page 48. Well, one needs not remind Fani-Kayode that his statements are highly charged politically and would ultimately be analyzed as such. He lacks a clear understanding of the tenets of civil discourse. Let me briefly clarify him on this. A civil discourse is one that engages the point of view of government power (including its ethnic and class characteristics) that enables it to divide the governed from one another. When partiality is imposed on a section of the governed populace (be it Igbo, Yoruba, rich, poor, physically challenged, women, children or otherwise), civil discourse insists on delineating the full field of vision in which that partiality unfolds so as to lay bare the blueprint of the regime. This is exactly what some of the numerous responses to Fashola’s recent deportation of some individuals to Onitsha is doing. They want Fashola to lay bare the blueprint of his administration that occasions massive deportation of ‘citizens’ from their nation. Some of the responses are short of civil discourse. And I dare say that it is wrong to qualify them as such because they are as short-sighted as Fani-Kayode’s assertions, and lack in the objective analysis of civil discourse. It is pertinent to state that civil discourse strives for the utmost height of objectivity and lacks in ethnic sentiments. Those who claim that the Igbos ‘helped’ to develop Lagos are right. Mark the word “helped”. They do not lay claims to singularity here by saying that “Only the Igbo developed Lagos”. Just as the Igbo “helped” to develop Lagos so also are the Hausas, the Fulani, the Niger Deltans, the Portuguese (who named the city ‘Lagos’ in the first place), the Sierra Leoneans, among so many others. Fani-Kayode, therefore, is rather the one lacking in history, otherwise his arguments would have resonated with same singularity in the politics of naming Lagos which the Portuguese can lay claims to. To prove this I will take Fani-Kayode down a brief memory lane. The Portuguese first landed on Lagos Island in 1472, led by Ruy de Sequeira who named the city Lago de Curamo. The Portuguese merchants eventually called the city ‘Lagos’ meaning ‘lakes’ in Portuguese. How can Fani-Kayode engage this politics of naming? From the fifteenth century, trade developed slowly until the 1760s when the Portuguese had established a flourishing slave trade. I emphasize “when the Portuguese (not the Yoruba) had established a flourishing slave trade”. Lagos’ superiority as a port led to rapid growth of the slave trade. Buying and selling slaves brought considerable wealth to the city’s rulers. The Oba (king) was remunerated with many articles of trade brought by the slave traders. Now Fani-Kayode did not understand that the first opening up of Lagos to trade (be is slave or otherwise) was by the Portuguese. It was not done by the Yorubas nor by the Igbos nor any other. So history is now the bitter food Fani-Kayode needs to eat in order to get his records straight and to understand that such claims to singularity are dangerously provocative and drains the mind of intellectual discourse. Such claims also undermine the tenets of civil discourse. If nebulous altercations besieged Fashola’s deportation, it is his (Fashola’s ) responsibility, to clarify and exculpate his regime of these supposed altercations. It is not Fani-Kayode’s duty to do so by laying claims to ethnic singularity in the evolvement of a mega-city. It is neither the duty of other rationalists who clamp down on the vituperations trailing Fashola’s deportation. One of such rationalists is Don Adinuba whose publication in the Daily Independent on August 2, 2013, page 34 titled, “Does Fashola really hate Ndigbo” is, again, short of sound arguments in civil discourse. This is because Adinuba does not want to engage the argument on its merit: deportation of individuals from their nation. Instead Adinuba’s article reels in a perverse rambling of ethnic love or hate. The article ultimately obviates the moral, juridical, political as well social fallouts of Fashola’s action. Again what Adinuba fails to understand is that rationalizing Fashola’s deportation would pitch him against Marxist advocates who believe that the city has unfavorably immobilized the “disinherited other”. And who are the “disinherited other” other than the poor, the destitute, the homeless, name them. They are not Igbos, nor Yorubas, nor Hausas, nor any other group. So those attaching ethnic flavor are either rationalizing Fashola’s actions or lacking in full grasp of the arguments surrounding civil discourse. I can strongly argue that in Fashola’s political imagination, the city is a highly capitalist construct difficult to imagine outside the domains of class consciousness. If Fashola fails to rationalize his own actions satisfactorily, he is culpable, at least, not only in the minds of Marxist ideologues but also in our courts of public opinion. Civil discourse is not a fiction. It attempts to pave way for the domain of relations between citizens on the one hand, and subjects denied citizenship by a given regime on the other, on the basis of their partnership in a world that they share as women and men who are ruled. This world happens to be the city of Lagos in this instance. Now Fani Kayode and Don Adinuba did not want to channel their jaundiced narrative to the fact that govermentality as it is deployed by Fashola’s administration is a select act of violence against a particular class of individuals in the city and not against a particular ethnic group. However one views it, the action is flawed. Finally, I would rather advise Fani-Kayode and Adinuba to read the book titled “Soft City” by Jonathan Raban. In this book, they would see how cities emerge. They would understand that cities are conglomeration of different classes of people. When a regime develops a city, street urchins and ‘area boys’ would naturally fit into place. They would naturally move with the city’s current and find their place and space. This is a fact. Finally if Fashola lacks the creative vision to develop the city, let him contain and manage his excesses and spare the citizens of reckless abuse of their fundamental human rights.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 20:52:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015