From our archive is an evergreen piece below, delivered by veteran journalist, activist and public intellectual, Adagbo Onoja, while he was as a Guest Speaker on March 29, 2003 at the launching of N10 million Guest House Project by Edumoga Development Association (Ede-ma) at Ugbokolo. Onoja was then the Personal Assistant [Media Affairs] to the Hon Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alhaji Sule Lamido. The issues he raised are as germaine today as they were 23 years ago, hence the resolve to publish it unedited. Happy reading!
THIS OCCASION is suffused with an array of really distinguished personalities that I began to think that whoever suggested me as Guest Speaker must hate me. What do I hope to say to satisfy this kind of audience?
I am also surprised at being chosen as Guest Speaker after my well-known and well-publicized criticism of the nature and character of the National Executive of Ede-ma based on my notion that the leaders of the community pressure group such as Ede-ma must be people who are in occupation and life positions in which they are relatively independent of government and the state (i.e. the state as a concept, not as in Benue State), not civil servants or teachers. Not because they are not good but the nature of their public engagement makes them unsuitable for this kind of task. It is either the leaders are magnanimous or appreciative of what I said as to have invited me again. Whatever the case, I thank you for the privilege given to me to address the audience.
But the trouble with Edumoga is also much less than an inconsiderate and unfair Idoma elite prepared to overlook the Edumogas probably out of fear of their numerical strength. The greater disaster is the inability of the Edumoga elite to locate their own power in a social and comparative context. That is to say that unlike the Okpoga elite, just for example, the Edumoga elite have a very narrow, apolitical and self-centred understanding of power. That is why they are permanently incapable of reproducing their power.
I have chosen to speak on THE TROUBLE WITH EDUMOGA. I believe that if we can identify the main trouble with Edumoga, then we are half way to the solution. Of course, whatever I say here is an individual’s speculation.
The Reality of Elites
In every society, the elites are the key movers. In 19th century Europe, certain theorists came up, after a study of Marxist, Communist parties with the IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY thesis, demonstrating that in reality, there are certain layer of people who actually do all the deciding and that such is the rule rather than the exception even in European Socialist and Communist Parties, the Vanguard of egalitarianism. So, the cliché came about that he who says Organisation says Oligarchy. This theory also applies to Edumoga and that is why you have the Ameh Ebutes, the Barthy Oches, the Abba Moros, the John Odahs, and the Adulugbas. In the wider Idoma or Benue, that is why you have the Akumes, the Ayus, the David Marks, Ejigas, Onojas, Unongos, the Shuluwas, the Obeyas, and the Andrew Agoms, etc.
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The issue is not whether a ruling layer exists in Edumoga or Benue or Nigeria or the United States of America or China. They do and they can be observed at work. Of course, the masses can, theoretically, organize and overthrow a particular hegemony. That has happened in too many places in history and would continue to happen. Any ruling elite that is sloppy and socially stupid deserves to be thrown out of power by the people.
The issue, however, is that every elite, of necessity, defines its power socially. They realize that it is in their own interest to accommodate and provide for the interests of the commoners. Otherwise they cannot sleep comfortably if the commoners are awake, hungry and angry. This attitude of elites to provide for the masses is not because the elites are so kind and good-hearted and godly. No. All elites are greedy and selfish, always accumulating for their family and children. But the elites fear the tension and instability that comes with mass dissatisfaction in every society. So, they make concessions.
For example, the Europeans decided to go for a Welfare state because they feared that their masses would be restive once they began to see their Soviet counterparts enjoy better life as a result of the Communist ‘coup’ in 1917. This type of elite large choice go on all over the world except probably Nigeria where the elites are not capable of conscious accommodation of the masses socially. And that is why there is too much instability in Nigeria because the elites do not guide the society. They are just behaving like travelers on a chance mission that will not last.
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The tragedy here is that elite behaviour is reproduced instantly in the society. If the elites are sober, reflective, systematic, the society will reflect all that to a great extent. If the elites are vulgar, ostentatious, incompetent and unimaginative, the society would reflect those elements greatly too.
There must be a thousand others sharing qualitative characteristics with the two I have mentioned based on my personal experience of them. But all our elite must come together and define for Edumoga an agenda of transformation that emphasis mobilization of the community on certain core values, values that can heal unnecessary bickering in the land, that can produce an infrastructure revolution in the land, that can give meaning to our people’s subsistence agriculture, that will facilitate better cultural and political understanding and relationship between Edumoga and her neighbours.
The question now is; what has all these got to do with EDUMOGA? The simple answer is that in a society like Nigeria where the elite are not developmental nor transformative, smaller entities in the lower rung like Edumoga are in greater problem. This is a straightforward logic. If there is infrastructural paucity in the whole country, then Edumoga which is but a district in a local government council/area in Central Nigeria which is thus outside of the WAZOBIA architecture of power stands in great disadvantage. This does not need elaboration for it explains the fact that a population of Edumoga’s size has not a single Government Secondary School. What it has, in Emmanuel Secondary School, which is just about the only school worth being called a secondary school in the area was by the grace of the missionaries, not of the elites in power in every regime in Benue State since 1976.
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I don’t have to go on with this exemplification in areas such as functional clinics, primary schools that are even worth the name or road networks. There is no elite that should not have seen the point about tarring the Eke-Ojapo-Effeche-Utonkon road thereby opening up Edumoga heartland for strategic, agricultural and cultural reasons. The examples are a legion.
But the trouble with Edumoga is also much less than an inconsiderate and unfair Idoma elite prepared to overlook the Edumogas probably out of fear of their numerical strength. The greater disaster is the inability of the Edumoga elite to locate their own power in a social and comparative context. That is to say that unlike the Okpoga elite, just for example, the Edumoga elite have a very narrow, apolitical and self-centred understanding of power. That is why they are permanently incapable of reproducing their power.
One would have expected that any Edumoga elite today would remember how he or she escaped infant mortality and miraculously became anything at all in life and, proceeding from that background, take a political view of whatever or wherever he or she finds himself or herself. Unfortunately, this is not the case with almost all of us except one or two people who, to my knowledge, have demonstrated exception and I would mention them shortly.
Taking a political view of individual success means that as the Edumoga person who happens to be the Secretary to the Benue State Government or local government chairman or General Secretary of Nigeria Labour Congress or chairman of Local Government Service Commissioner or Personal Assistant to some minister or governor etc will see himself, first and foremost:
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- A mobiliser of other Edumoga people on popular, democratic communal aspirations, values and prioritise
- Coalition builder of Edumoga elites
- Organizer of community representation and pressures to governments at all levels
- Documenter or organizer of such documentation of the cultural realities, and
- User of channels and opportunities open to him or her by virtue of position in public office to bestow possible project favours to Edumogaland where this is clearly desirable and socially urgent.
If we are to score the individual Edumoga sons and daughters I mentioned above on these five components of what I call the political view of individual success, most would score less than 50%, the pass mark.
Without this political/communal perspective, many of our top elites have not transcended existence within a small circle of peers and drinking mates or their immediate family or kin. They have not been able to use their friends throughout the world to give their community any advantage of their being on top. It is not even part of their consciousness, partly because many of us have not the high-mindedness or sense of exceptionalism that makes it imperative to build local base, not in a backward, exclusivist sense but as a contribution and experimentation on the possibility of progress, starting, in this case at a concrete, community level.
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I am compelled at this point to name the two Edumoga sons that I think have demonstrated a sufficient political view of life. There are certainly many others but one of those I know is Abba Moro and the other is Christopher Idu.
Abba Moro started on a completely exceptionalist, altruistic note which he sufficiently demonstrated at the Benue Polytechnic where he attracted large goodwill to himself. He took other peoples’ fight as his, he paid for such fights, he called other elites [I, for example]; he was accessible to people coming in from far and wide to get him to intervene in one thing or the other especially commoners and villagers with no capacity to access our judicial and police system and are most times helpless. He was vocal, he was bold. There was the communal spirit and he was networking on these and he had tremendous energy. I worked with him on the efforts towards creating Edumoga LG around 1989, so I observed a lot of these empirically.
I do know that today, opinions are divided about him in Edumogaland. That is, however something that arose in the event of his ascension to local government power. It is easy to hazard a guess that political or ‘ideological’ loneliness combined with the reality of actual power and having to balance the personal, elite and group pressures must have left considerable stress on Abba Moro’s politics.
Should we not accept that any guests coming to our shores like legislators, governors, politicians on campaign hustling, businessmen, merchants and missionaries should be taken to sleep in our interiors and villages to see how our people live very wretchedly, how malaria, typhoid, etc. kill children, how many women die giving birth and what pass for so-called primary schools or the road network and monkey bridges that dot the whole landscape.
But I do not know if Edumoga can afford to throw away such an investment as some people are asking for now because of whatever might have happened in the last two years. This is a point that I think opposition to, and critics of, Abba may wish to take into consideration because they would, on reflection, discover that no matter what, Edumoga still needs an Abba Moro, politically speaking, and in the current configuration in Idomaland and Benue. We could insist on speaking truth to power in dealing with him henceforth but beyond tasking him with such a community shopping list so that he doesn’t begin to presume too much, we should simply cool temper.
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There is always a background to every reality and those who feel sufficiently annoyed or disappointed or betrayed by Abba’s politics have a duty to reckon with this. Thank God they are educated enough, politically and otherwise to appreciate this and I believe all Edumoga people do not wish for any kind of diversion of energy into unnecessary tension and in-fighting. Above all, tomorrow will always be greater than today even in ruins.
Permit me to extend this mentioning also to Mr. Christopher Idu, whom I know so well in this matter. Of course, I have heard people complaining that he segregates and sometimes side with one group or the other. I have, however, also seen him at work on about what we are talking and I have no fear at all that Mr. Idu would be very, very qualitative community guide and fighter when taken on the whole. It is a tragedy that he is being destabilized at the Federal level but he will triumph.
There must be a thousand others sharing qualitative characteristics with the two I have mentioned based on my personal experience of them. But all our elite must come together and define for Edumoga an agenda of transformation that emphasis mobilization of the community on certain core values, values that can heal unnecessary bickering in the land, that can produce an infrastructure revolution in the land, that can give meaning to our people’s subsistence agriculture, that will facilitate better cultural and political understanding and relationship between Edumoga and her neighbours.
This task is for everybody but the Edumoga elite in political power at all levels should carry a greater percentage of the assignment. Not for them to cheat any other people in favour of Edumoga but to put Edumoga in Benue State government’s distribution list of social amenities. By their population and natural resources and voting strength, they deserve to be on that list. Right now, Edumoga is not on that list, just as it has not been from the beginning of Benue. It is up to our political elites to call themselves to design how they do this. If it means a rally to Makurdi or boycotting the elections or pleading with the other Idoma elites, so be it. And the time is NOW.
Finally, there seems to me to be a priority crisis when we talk of a ten million naira Guest House. Why don’t we talk about an Edumoga Development Fund first where a Trust can sit down and draw up a priority list and after which projects will be mentioned. How do we think our more prosperous Otukpa, Orokam and Okpoga neighbours will look at us when we start by talking of a Guest House? Can Edumoga ‘blackmail’ any regime in Benue state to help it complete a Guest House?
Should we not accept that any guests coming to our shores like legislators, governors, politicians on campaign hustling, businessmen, merchants and missionaries should be taken to sleep in our interiors and villages to see how our people live very wretchedly, how malaria, typhoid, etc. kill children, how many women die giving birth and what pass for so-called primary schools or the road network and monkey bridges that dot the whole landscape.
Or shouldn’t we do something about Edumoga Community Secondary School and think about turning it into a Leadership Training School?
Thank you for your kind attention.
