Turning And Turning In The Widening Gyre

By Sunny Awhefeada

Literary aficionados or anybody who has read Things Fall Apart must necessarily remember the memorable lines which gave this piece its title. Taken from William Butler Yeats “The Second Coming”, the Nigerian sage and writer, Chinua Achebe deemed the thematic concern of the poem and the imagery of chaos it evoked as fit for the African experience which colonialism bequeathed. Yeats’ poem was birthed by the dysfunctional world that the modern period turned out to be. Yeats wasn’t alone in the depiction of the crisis that befell the world at the turn of the twentieth century. Thomas Stearns Elliot, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Beckett, among others captured in poetry, prose and drama, the essence of that era which petrified humanity. The events in question led to two world wars and somehow Africa, and by extension Nigeria, was drawn into the second war. What emerged from that war for Africans was the phenomenon of nationalism which swept across the continent and prodded it in the quest for independence. The colonial enterprise which made Africa the property of Europe after the Berlin Conference of 1884/85 was a source of multifaceted crises for Africa. The phenomenon disrupted the continent in a number of ways. The ensuing tragedy and confusion were to be the subject matter of much of African literature.

It was in the light of the foregoing that Achebe located a title for Things Fall Apart, his first novel, depicting the chaos that colonialism ushered into Africa. More than sixty years after the routing of colonialism Africa is yet to relieve itself of the disruptive consequences of that encounter. The Nigerian conundrum best situates the condition of Africa. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation and may be its richest. Nigeria boasts of an enterprising, astute, brilliant and inventive population. Its climatic condition is also very favourable. Unfortunately, the country has remains a big for nothing cripple six decades after independence. The founding fathers who envisioned a glorious future for Nigeria were dislodged from the power circuit in less than six years after independence. Since then, Nigeria has been “turning and turning in the widening gyre”. We have fought a civil war, survived many decades of draconian military rule, lived through horrible economic crises, suffered environmental degradation, ravaged by insurgency and what not? Our collective experience since 1966 has never aspired to or approximated greatness. We have faltered all the way.

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Many Nigerians considered the 1990s as defining moments for the country. That decade was comparable to the metaphorical and even metaphysical crossroads where we needed to make a choice between tyranny and freedom. Nigerians chose the latter and fought for it. Limbs and lives were lost. The people calculated the cost of tyranny as well as that of freedom. They saw that freedom held a trophy from which “everything good will come”. They fought long and hard hoping that the dawn of the new millennium will birth the realization of their aspiration. The curtain of the last century came down on military rule in Nigeria in 1999. The traumatized populace heaved a sigh, but cautiously. Their caution stemmed from the skepticism with which they viewed the ruling class. In no time, the peoples’ skepticism found justification. They were soon to discover that the ruling class has not learnt anything from the past. The ruling class turned the ills that truncated our journey to greatness to virtues with which it clothed itself.

Since 1999, the story has been the same and we continue to turn in the widening gyre. Every four years since 1999 offered us election periods through which promises of hope, greatness and rebirth were made. Those promises got violated the day after election and the people are left stupefied. The years 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019 and now 2023, were milestones that ought to have led somewhere for Nigeria and Nigerians. But the paths and roads were mis-taken and we hit a cul-de-sac. It has become unacceptable to blame the rulers for our woes. If we truly want to know who our enemies are we need to look at the mirror. Those who rule us today were among us as followers yesterday. So what happened to the ideals they espoused yesterday now that they are rulers today? Those in the rank of followership today have largely become complicit by way of collusion and condoning the ills plaguing the nation. The citizens have also largely abdicated their role in the election of credible leadership. Of the over ninety million registered voters in 2023 only a small 25 million, a little more than a quarter, voted in the last presidential election. Thus the office of the citizen which should be the most important in a democracy relegated itself to inconsequence in Nigeria.

Our reality today has become worse than harsh on all fronts. And it is apt to say that we brought it upon ourselves. The voting demography indicated that 74% of the voters were between the ages of 18 and 49. So, where were these voters on the day of election? Why did they disenfranchise themselves? What the outcome or victory of each election cycle offers us is a set of clueless and inept ruling class, always worse than the predecessors, especially at the federal level. Those who gleefully called former the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, clueless have been at the helms of affairs since 2015 and they have shown that they are worse than clueless. President Muhammadu Buhari who replaced Jonathan left Nigeria prostrate. Buhari relished kunu and fura di nono while Nigeria burnt. He was a general that was humbled by ragtag insurgents, an anti-corruption czar under whose watch the nation’s worst official heists took place. Tinubu, Buhari’s successor seems to be grossly deficient in the formula for Nigeria’s socio-economic and political mathematics. Those who profiled him as the reformer who gave Lagos a new lease of life simply sold Nigerians falsehood. Tinubu has foisted on Nigerians the worst economic experience of their existence. The figures consistently refused to add up for him.
That Nigeria is “turning and turning in the widening gyre” reflects in our present ordeal. Things continue to get worse. The grinding indices of individual and collective agony reflect in the cost of energy, the exchange rate which has gone above one thousand two hundred naira to a dollar, insecurity, galloping inflation, massive job loss, poverty and howling hunger, dearth of infrastructure, collapse of the education and health sectors and an overarching suffocation that has led to unprecedented migration, the japa experience. A few years ago, Nigeria was awarded the unenviable laurel of the world’s poverty capital. Three years later, the garland was that of sinking into multi-dimensional poverty. The statistics should be damning by now and I doubt if social scientists are equipped enough to give it a label! If anybody is still in doubt about Nigeria’s failed state status, then we are doomed! Part of our present dread is the enthronement of non-state actors who now posture as ethnic cum revolutionary champions especially in the South-East. The hapless government has also unashamedly enlisted the services of non-state actors to protect our national assets in crude oil pipelines. Government has failed on all fronts. Government is unable to stop corruption, unable to end insecurity, unable to revamp the economy, unable to build roads, unable to revive the education and health sectors. In fact government is unable to do anything. So we are hypnotized into “turning and turning in the widening gyre”. But, we must never give up on our country and our dreams. The people, yes, the people must wake up from the present slumberous mood and initiate the process of rebirth for Nigeria. Nation building has never been a walk in the park. It is an act of deliberateness matched with sacrifice, vision, hard work, forbearance and a consensus on the kind of society the people want. Let this task begin for Nigeria now.