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There may be a little controversy over who originated the saying about inattention to the lesson that history teaches. The controversy is the question of who among three persons – a Briton, an Irishman, and a Spaniard – authored the original aphorism. The version credited to Irish statesman, Edmund Burke, is that “those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” However, George Santayana, Spanish philosopher, was credited with the version that says: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Lastly but no less significant is output from British statesman and leader, Winston Churchill, who volunteered this: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Whoever is the original author, the meaning for these aphorisms is the same. All speak to the necessity to draw lessons from the past to guide actions in the present and future.
Two years ago, I posted a Facebook comment aimed at hushing those who were bent on praising the harsh economic policies of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration. Stomach infrastructure, I wrote, is everything (in Nigeria) right now. “Continue getting excited as government speaks to its ‘enemies’ in the language they understand. You just wait until you go to market to buy stuff; nobody will tell you to swallow the excitement and face the issue of stomach infrastructure.”
The 24-month Facebook admonition popped up on my FB timeline this Monday, July 3, 2023. It made me remember a book manuscript that I have completed but have yet to publish, titled “The History We Forget.” The book idea came from a discovery I made a few years after I stopped writing “history in a hurry.” I had taken time to reflect on over four decades of media news reports, features, and editorial columns. The output remains hidden today on the archived pages of Satellite Newspapers (Enugu), and in The Guardian, Daily Times, and Vanguard (Lagos). Unsurprisingly, a couple more of the articles I recently wrote in my Sun newspaper and Enugu Metro also qualify for inclusion. Taken together, they validate the ideas of Burke, Santayana and Churchill, to wit, Nigeria goes round in circles, year after year after year.
Every entry in that collection that I see – things I wrote years ago – leaves me with amazement at how they mirror the challenges of today. What was written about the things that happened 30 years ago appears as if it was written for what is happening today. Thus, more than 95 per cent of the chapters in The History We Forget directly speaks to our current condition. They indicate that Nigerian leaders either do not bother to let history be their guide to the future or that they do not know and do not want to bother about how yesterday helps communities deal with challenges of today and tomorrow. The subjects that caught my reporter’s attention ranged from poverty, politics, governance, culture, tourism development, the language we speak and how they divide us, and wealth acquisition.
One fascinating feature of the compilation is how we know what is right but use our politics, culture, ethnic differences and every other alternative point of view to suppress the truth. All for our selfish benefit. We also use our words to widen the gap between and among people, making collaborations and joint actions impossible. The politician uses divisive rhetoric to canvass for (ethnoreligious) votes. The journalist exercises his dexterity with the pen to unthinkingly put others down. The public and private sector managers use their executive positions to install nepotism in place of merit in appointments and promotions. At the end of the day, individual actions rather than government policies or pronouncements promote and sustain division and hate among our people.
This is the reason why government pronouncements catch citizens unawares – we are so busy looking at ourselves rather than facing the people responsible for the challenges of the moment.
Here is an example of how history catches us on the wrong foot in politics. On the eve of the swearing in of Mr. Bola Tinubu as President, it was left for former Works Minister Raji Fashola to tell Nigerians that the Buhari administration had implemented a phased fuel subsidy withdrawal. Nobody knew, or rather those who knew kept the “secret” to themselves. However, Fashola was announcing something that was in the public space, sitting at a virtual corner in both the Ministry of Finance and the Budget Office. It had been there since January when the departed President signed the 2023 appropriation bill into law.
Here is how the departed Minister of Finance announced the event when she presented the 2023 Budget Statement.
“The projected fiscal outcome in the 2023 Budget is based on the PMS subsidy reform scenario…The budget framework assumes that petrol subsidy will remain up to mid-2023 based on the 18-month extension announced early 2022. In this regard, only N2.25 trillion has been provided for PMS subsidy.”
Here is the thing. The public argument we are currently having over so-called petroleum subsidy removal could have been concluded before the elections. This would have been the case if journalists had read the document and interpreted it correctly. And to think that this law was debated and passed by National Assembly legislators elected to represent the best interest of their people. It would have changed the tenor of campaigns if opposition politicians were alive to their duties, rather than hanging around, waiting for the next election cycle to begin shopping for votes. Opposition politicians forget that it is easy to energize a voting base without spending “shishi,” as Mr. Peter Obi elegantly put it. Additionally, they abdicate their role as a shadow government. If not, the PDP National Assembly legislators would have prepared the ground for their victory by creating and sustaining a negative national dialogue over the information.
Four years from now, and Labour Party being alive and well, their members will also pass up the opportunity to prepare the ground for a takeover by being the voice of the majority of the common people who vote. Just like PDP waited for Mr. Fashola to announce the bad news after APC had been declared winner. They will bite their fingers in regret when the likes of Malam Garba Shehu tell us why they “hid” the subsidy removal information – to allow the APC to score another dubious victory. And for this to be true, this would validate the saying that if you want to hide things from the African, put it in a book. Indeed, they hid the information so well – in a public document that anyone could have accessed in the three months before the presidential election took place.
Mmesoma and the wayo at JAMB
Mmesoma is one of those delightfully quaint names that modern Igbo give to their children, to glorify the Almighty for the favour of the fruit of the womb. It roughly translates as “God’s abiding grace.” Mmesoma brandished a university common entrance examination result that should have promoted her as the best scorer in the last exercise. Without waiting for confirmation, she took to the social media to advertise the feat, receiving not only accolades but also scholarships and invitations to shake hands with the high and mighty in government and private business.
Her joy was short-lived as the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) subsequently burst her bubble. The examination body was emphatic on two points – the result she brandished did not issue from their portal, and she did not score a mark that places her on top of the pack. This was after JAMB turned the secret police (DSS) onto the poor girl.
The defence offered by the examination body appears believable. However, this does not suggest that the tale told by the girl is a fib. Her story sounds believable to the extent that she may have been a victim of the wayo that goes on at JAMB. Way out? Let JAMB expose her true results and launch in-house cleaning exercise on their portal that everybody knows is prone to manipulation and a side hustle for unscrupulous IT staff of the agency. Enough said.
