THE STRUGGLE FOR MEANING: UKRAINE, IYALOJA, AND ALL THAT JAZZ
By Pius Adesanmi
Three years ago or so, one theme ran through my public lectures. From
one podium to another in Canada, in the USA, in Nigeria, I screamed
about "the struggle for meaning". I was transferring that concept from
the terrain of abstract critical thought and high-tension theory in my
graduate seminar rooms in North America to the trenches of our
collective struggle to take Nigeria back from our establishment
enemies in Abuja. I said that nationhood is first and foremost a
struggle for meaning. How that struggle plays out and who wins it come
loaded with concrete and material consequences for you, yes, I mean
you, my friend over there, yes, ehen, you - roaming the streets of
Abuja or Lagos with your CV in a manilla file, still seeking
employment ten years after graduation.
If, as a people, your enemies win the struggle for meaning, they get
to define the shape, character, purpose, essence, and mission of the
political state which determines every aspect of your membership of
Project Humanhood. Today, that state has effectively been defined by
your enemy as a shorthand for impunity and corruption; the only patch
of land on planet earth where twenty billion dollars could be stolen
and there would be equivocation over whether to condemn the heist or
not. Once a definition takes place and gains a foothold, all
institutions of state, laws, etc, are designed by the victors to
service their own forms of meaning. This is when the struggle for
meaning stops being an abstract concept or dogon turenchi and you
suffer from its real life material consequences. Today, all your
institutions of state, your laws, everything that governs your
everyday, are designed to facilitate, enhance, and perpetuate the
singular meaning of the Nigerian state as defined by the few who won
the struggle for meaning: government of Stockholm Syndromed fools by
the criminals for the rich.
There are more concrete consequences to your surrender of meaning to
the criminals ruling Nigeria. Surely, you know from the history of
slavery, colonialism, and Apartheid, that victors don't stop. Victors
will keep on expanding the ideological, physical, and even spiritual
space of their victory. They will keep encroaching and your world and
margin of action will keep shrinking. Today, you are gnashing your
teeth that they have released a Centenary Honours List featuring not
just some of the most opprobrious and despicable characters in our
national memory but, most importantly, they even managed to make a
British colonial criminal, Lord Frederick Lugard, appear in the same
list as Chief Gani Fawehinmi!! Why are you surprised that they are
able to do this? These are the conquerors of national meaning. Victory
over meaning comes with their ability to rewrite the history of
national heroism for you, to re-inscribe national memory. Don't fool
yourself: the handful of credible names they have on that list are
just there to shut you up. Their real heroes are the Lord Lugards, the
Obasanjos, and the Sani Abachas of this world. Those are the people
they really want to celebrate and invest with national heroic and
symbolic meaning.
And there are still more concrete consequences to your surrender of
meaning to the criminals ruling Nigeria. I always laugh, bemused and
amused, whenever I hear genuine progressives and activists grumble
that they no longer recognize themselves in those two words. Well,
your world shrinks when you lose the struggle for meaning. No space is
too sacred, too inviolate for the conquerors to invade.
You think that the conquerors of meaning are going to let you continue
to enjoy a world in which "progressive" and "activist" mean Bamidele
Aturu, Joe Okei-Odumakin, Ayo Obe, Chido Onumah, Omoyele Sowore, Okey
Ndibe, Sonala Olumhense, Chidi Odinkalu, as well as the "collective
children of anger" arrowheaded by the likes of Soni Akoji, Gimba
Kakanda, Japhet Omojuwa, Dapo Rotifa, Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, Seyi
Osiyemi, Tunji L'ght Ariyomo, Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, Safiya Musa,
Petra Akinti Onyegbule, Agbaosi Gloria, and so many others on social
media? Should you really be surprised that the conquerors of meaning
have ensured that "progressive and activist" now also automatically
bring to mind every and anybody from Bukola Saraki to Tambuwal via
Atiku Abubakar? Because of this violation, I have even suggested we
stopped using the terms, "progressive" and "activist" to describe
those genuinely working for the emancipation of our people and
fatherland. I have coined a new term, "community of conscience", to
house the genuine warriors of the people. But, if this new term gains
acceptance, how long will it take before we begin to see Homo
Lootophilus Nigerianus admitted into Nigeria's "community of
conscience"?
If you think that those raping meaning do not know what they are
doing, consider the degree of discomfort that the intellectual wing of
the APC - those who can be considered proper political progressives -
exhibits whenever they are confronted in media interviews over the
question of the damage that their political party has done to meaning.
In otherwise brilliant media interviews, this is the point at which
their logic collapses and Kayode Fayemi, Babatunde Raji Fashola, and
Adams Oshiomhole suddenly begin to make Goodluck Jonathan sound like a
beacon of coherence. Kayode Fayemi is a good case in point. When asked
about what the wholesale embrace of decamping thieves and criminals
from PDP means for the character and complexion of progressive
politics, he rambled on and on, arguing that there are progressives
such as Julius Ihonvbere in the PDP before settling on the progressive
antecedents of the Republican Party in the US. Fayemi's answer was
shameful and disgraceful and he knows it.
But the real loser is you. Fayemi, Fashola, and Oshiomhole may be
expanding and diluting meaning for purposes of political expediency
and forced cohabitation with migrant criminals from PDP, they don't
really suffer personal consequences. They belong to the winning team
in the struggle for meaning. You are the one who cannot have Ukraine
because you lost out in the arena of meaning. Ukrainians are having
Ukraine right now and you have been salivating over that struggle and
wondering why you can't have Ukraine in Nigeria.
My brother, my sister, Ukrainians have Ukraine because beyond their
differences there is a rough, workable, transcendental agreement over
what the Ukrainian state should mean for the Ukrainian people; there
is an agreement that their current oppressors are in flagrant
violation of that meaning; there is an agreement that the traducers of
national meaning need to go, starting with the President. Nobody is
saying that the President is our son. Nobody is saying that the
President is a Christian or a Moslem. That is why Ukraine is going on
and you are salivating.
I'm afraid you will not have Ukraine now. You need to start by
re-learning how to win little symbolic struggles in the theatre of
meaning. They have come up with their disgrace of a Centenary Honours
List. Stop agonizing over their list. Organize and rescue the genuine
and credible names from their list, add new names to it and draw up a
people's list. Compare names in all your spaces of national
conversation and civic participation. It is going to be chaotic, it is
going to be cacophonous. The usual monsters of ethnicity and religion
will creep in. But here is one instance where you need to show that
you can overcome what the rapists of meaning always use to divide you.
Come up with a genuine people's National Centenary Honours List and
begin to circulate it on social media and other friendly media. Let
the noise around your own alternative list drown out the buzz around
their own list. This is one civic duty of disobedience and
disagreement with the irrationalities of the Nigerian establishment
that you owe to yourselves and to Nigeria.
If you are able to do this, you may be ready for other baby steps on
the road to Ukraine. Take the case of the Iyaloja-General who has been
breaking the law, practicing impunity, and terrorizing traders in
Lagos with arbitrary market closures for political reasons. If you
cannot even come together against the local terrorism of an Iyaloja in
Lagos, how do you hope to ever rise against the might of the corrupt
Nigerian state in Abuja? Something snapped in my heart when I read
newspaper accounts of her victims claiming they went to beg her to
reduce their fines and "temper justice with mercy". Beg who? Why? And
which justice? There is so much madness going on in Nigeria. Somebody
is breaking the law, you go and beg her to have mercy! Again, this
Iyaloja-General's case in Lagos is a critical test. She can only
happen to you because you lost the struggle for meaning and the state
is consequently defined as impunity. Can you resist impunity at that
local level before you start dreaming of Ukraine?
I can speak against her and call for action against her because I am
not beholden to political gods and I have contempt for racism and
bigotry masquerading as ethnic nationalism. I do support ethnic
nationalism and autonomy within a redesigned and redefined Federation
but, sadly in our case, many of those who speak for ethnic nationalism
are pea-brained racists and bigots ruining and bastardizing a
beautiful concept. Because I am not bogged down by the dual demons of
ethnic racism and political godfatherhood, I can speak out against the
Iyaloja of Lagos who, by the way, is terrorizing all traders on an
equal opportunity basis. Your ethnicity or religion does not matter,
just show your APC registration card or else! If I ask you to rise
against her lawlessness and terrorism, can it be done
transcendentally? Or will your putative action collapse in the face of
ethnicity and religion?
If you cannot speak and act with one voice against an overbearing and
wholly lawless Iyaloja-General in Lagos, if your usual dividers and
conquerors are going to rally you to her support - and to the support
of her lawlessness - because she is Yoruba or because of the faith she
practices, then, folks, stop dreaming Ukraine at the centre in Abuja.
You are not ready.
Three years ago or so, one theme ran through my public lectures. From
one podium to another in Canada, in the USA, in Nigeria, I screamed
about "the struggle for meaning". I was transferring that concept from
the terrain of abstract critical thought and high-tension theory in my
graduate seminar rooms in North America to the trenches of our
collective struggle to take Nigeria back from our establishment
enemies in Abuja. I said that nationhood is first and foremost a
struggle for meaning. How that struggle plays out and who wins it come
loaded with concrete and material consequences for you, yes, I mean
you, my friend over there, yes, ehen, you - roaming the streets of
Abuja or Lagos with your CV in a manilla file, still seeking
employment ten years after graduation.
If, as a people, your enemies win the struggle for meaning, they get
to define the shape, character, purpose, essence, and mission of the
political state which determines every aspect of your membership of
Project Humanhood. Today, that state has effectively been defined by
your enemy as a shorthand for impunity and corruption; the only patch
of land on planet earth where twenty billion dollars could be stolen
and there would be equivocation over whether to condemn the heist or
not. Once a definition takes place and gains a foothold, all
institutions of state, laws, etc, are designed by the victors to
service their own forms of meaning. This is when the struggle for
meaning stops being an abstract concept or dogon turenchi and you
suffer from its real life material consequences. Today, all your
institutions of state, your laws, everything that governs your
everyday, are designed to facilitate, enhance, and perpetuate the
singular meaning of the Nigerian state as defined by the few who won
the struggle for meaning: government of Stockholm Syndromed fools by
the criminals for the rich.
There are more concrete consequences to your surrender of meaning to
the criminals ruling Nigeria. Surely, you know from the history of
slavery, colonialism, and Apartheid, that victors don't stop. Victors
will keep on expanding the ideological, physical, and even spiritual
space of their victory. They will keep encroaching and your world and
margin of action will keep shrinking. Today, you are gnashing your
teeth that they have released a Centenary Honours List featuring not
just some of the most opprobrious and despicable characters in our
national memory but, most importantly, they even managed to make a
British colonial criminal, Lord Frederick Lugard, appear in the same
list as Chief Gani Fawehinmi!! Why are you surprised that they are
able to do this? These are the conquerors of national meaning. Victory
over meaning comes with their ability to rewrite the history of
national heroism for you, to re-inscribe national memory. Don't fool
yourself: the handful of credible names they have on that list are
just there to shut you up. Their real heroes are the Lord Lugards, the
Obasanjos, and the Sani Abachas of this world. Those are the people
they really want to celebrate and invest with national heroic and
symbolic meaning.
And there are still more concrete consequences to your surrender of
meaning to the criminals ruling Nigeria. I always laugh, bemused and
amused, whenever I hear genuine progressives and activists grumble
that they no longer recognize themselves in those two words. Well,
your world shrinks when you lose the struggle for meaning. No space is
too sacred, too inviolate for the conquerors to invade.
You think that the conquerors of meaning are going to let you continue
to enjoy a world in which "progressive" and "activist" mean Bamidele
Aturu, Joe Okei-Odumakin, Ayo Obe, Chido Onumah, Omoyele Sowore, Okey
Ndibe, Sonala Olumhense, Chidi Odinkalu, as well as the "collective
children of anger" arrowheaded by the likes of Soni Akoji, Gimba
Kakanda, Japhet Omojuwa, Dapo Rotifa, Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, Seyi
Osiyemi, Tunji L'ght Ariyomo, Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, Safiya Musa,
Petra Akinti Onyegbule, Agbaosi Gloria, and so many others on social
media? Should you really be surprised that the conquerors of meaning
have ensured that "progressive and activist" now also automatically
bring to mind every and anybody from Bukola Saraki to Tambuwal via
Atiku Abubakar? Because of this violation, I have even suggested we
stopped using the terms, "progressive" and "activist" to describe
those genuinely working for the emancipation of our people and
fatherland. I have coined a new term, "community of conscience", to
house the genuine warriors of the people. But, if this new term gains
acceptance, how long will it take before we begin to see Homo
Lootophilus Nigerianus admitted into Nigeria's "community of
conscience"?
If you think that those raping meaning do not know what they are
doing, consider the degree of discomfort that the intellectual wing of
the APC - those who can be considered proper political progressives -
exhibits whenever they are confronted in media interviews over the
question of the damage that their political party has done to meaning.
In otherwise brilliant media interviews, this is the point at which
their logic collapses and Kayode Fayemi, Babatunde Raji Fashola, and
Adams Oshiomhole suddenly begin to make Goodluck Jonathan sound like a
beacon of coherence. Kayode Fayemi is a good case in point. When asked
about what the wholesale embrace of decamping thieves and criminals
from PDP means for the character and complexion of progressive
politics, he rambled on and on, arguing that there are progressives
such as Julius Ihonvbere in the PDP before settling on the progressive
antecedents of the Republican Party in the US. Fayemi's answer was
shameful and disgraceful and he knows it.
But the real loser is you. Fayemi, Fashola, and Oshiomhole may be
expanding and diluting meaning for purposes of political expediency
and forced cohabitation with migrant criminals from PDP, they don't
really suffer personal consequences. They belong to the winning team
in the struggle for meaning. You are the one who cannot have Ukraine
because you lost out in the arena of meaning. Ukrainians are having
Ukraine right now and you have been salivating over that struggle and
wondering why you can't have Ukraine in Nigeria.
My brother, my sister, Ukrainians have Ukraine because beyond their
differences there is a rough, workable, transcendental agreement over
what the Ukrainian state should mean for the Ukrainian people; there
is an agreement that their current oppressors are in flagrant
violation of that meaning; there is an agreement that the traducers of
national meaning need to go, starting with the President. Nobody is
saying that the President is our son. Nobody is saying that the
President is a Christian or a Moslem. That is why Ukraine is going on
and you are salivating.
I'm afraid you will not have Ukraine now. You need to start by
re-learning how to win little symbolic struggles in the theatre of
meaning. They have come up with their disgrace of a Centenary Honours
List. Stop agonizing over their list. Organize and rescue the genuine
and credible names from their list, add new names to it and draw up a
people's list. Compare names in all your spaces of national
conversation and civic participation. It is going to be chaotic, it is
going to be cacophonous. The usual monsters of ethnicity and religion
will creep in. But here is one instance where you need to show that
you can overcome what the rapists of meaning always use to divide you.
Come up with a genuine people's National Centenary Honours List and
begin to circulate it on social media and other friendly media. Let
the noise around your own alternative list drown out the buzz around
their own list. This is one civic duty of disobedience and
disagreement with the irrationalities of the Nigerian establishment
that you owe to yourselves and to Nigeria.
If you are able to do this, you may be ready for other baby steps on
the road to Ukraine. Take the case of the Iyaloja-General who has been
breaking the law, practicing impunity, and terrorizing traders in
Lagos with arbitrary market closures for political reasons. If you
cannot even come together against the local terrorism of an Iyaloja in
Lagos, how do you hope to ever rise against the might of the corrupt
Nigerian state in Abuja? Something snapped in my heart when I read
newspaper accounts of her victims claiming they went to beg her to
reduce their fines and "temper justice with mercy". Beg who? Why? And
which justice? There is so much madness going on in Nigeria. Somebody
is breaking the law, you go and beg her to have mercy! Again, this
Iyaloja-General's case in Lagos is a critical test. She can only
happen to you because you lost the struggle for meaning and the state
is consequently defined as impunity. Can you resist impunity at that
local level before you start dreaming of Ukraine?
I can speak against her and call for action against her because I am
not beholden to political gods and I have contempt for racism and
bigotry masquerading as ethnic nationalism. I do support ethnic
nationalism and autonomy within a redesigned and redefined Federation
but, sadly in our case, many of those who speak for ethnic nationalism
are pea-brained racists and bigots ruining and bastardizing a
beautiful concept. Because I am not bogged down by the dual demons of
ethnic racism and political godfatherhood, I can speak out against the
Iyaloja of Lagos who, by the way, is terrorizing all traders on an
equal opportunity basis. Your ethnicity or religion does not matter,
just show your APC registration card or else! If I ask you to rise
against her lawlessness and terrorism, can it be done
transcendentally? Or will your putative action collapse in the face of
ethnicity and religion?
If you cannot speak and act with one voice against an overbearing and
wholly lawless Iyaloja-General in Lagos, if your usual dividers and
conquerors are going to rally you to her support - and to the support
of her lawlessness - because she is Yoruba or because of the faith she
practices, then, folks, stop dreaming Ukraine at the centre in Abuja.
You are not ready.
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