The Obasanjo national dialogue has power behind it. But it is power without legitimacy – to the extent that the results of the 2003 presidential elections are still being vigorously contested.

The Anthony Enahoro-led PRONARCO has a measure of legitimacy behind it, to the extent that it is being supported by some non-governmental organizations in the country. But it is legitimacy without power because these groups are largely Lagos-based.

We are thus faced with a conundrum. To paraphrase W.B. Yeats, the worst are full of passionate intensity; the best lack real conviction. And yet the work of setting Nigeria to rights must continue, realizing, as Chinua Achebe pointed out, that the proper bringing up of an errant but beloved child – which truly is what Nigeria is – is not a day’s job.

Some have suggested that the Obasanjo dialogue be boycotted for the reason that it does not flow from the consent of the Nigerian people. For my part, I would rather see the show in Abuja as much needed comic relief before the real fireworks begin. Politics is all about dialogue to reconcile interests and values even as each side manouveres peacefully to achieve its own ends. The operative word here is ‘peacefully.’ For it is infinitely more preferable that Nigeria’s political figures assemble under one roof to swap jokes than retreat into ethnic enclaves and lob grenades at each other.

Chinua Achebe the novelist is the master of surprise. On encountering the all-powerful Ezeulu in the first pages of Arrow of God, who could have ever envisaged his terrible end in the novel’s climatic moment, reduced to a puny arrow in the bow of his awesome God? Or consider the grim portrait of the African country under the thumb of a megalomaniac military dictator in Anthills of the Savannah.

Mass arrests, slaughter of innocents, ordinary people subjected to economic hardship. And just when we are about to give up hope of any redemptive acts, of discovering larger meaning in the cacophony of greed and strangled heroines and heroes, the dazzling image of a newborn child, birthed to carry on the difficult work of freedom, leaves us smiling amidst our tears. Tears of joy at the sheer genius of the master craftsman at work here. But also tears of sheer relief that Achebe the political thinker has not given up on Nigeria, on the idea of Nigeria.

I believe, like Achebe, that there are powerful forces at work in the
world, and whose workings take a while to be fully comprehended by our
modest intelligence. We will not know what will come out of the
Obasanjo dialogue until its deliberations are concluded and the
delegates roll up their mats and go home. I stated last week that the
bulk of the delegates will be more appropriately cast in the role of
comedians than stateswomen and men seriously debating the future of a
nation roiling in crisis. But even comedians have been known to
occasionally provide insights which the discerning and well-meaning
then convert to good use on behalf of the commonweal.

So I say: let the Obasanjo dialogue continue, even as Nigerians
seriously searching for answers to the nation’s myriad ills continue
their quest. The question of participating in the former does not
arise. President Obasanjo and his advisers chose the script, designed
the stage, and selected the actors and their roles. They did all these
without bothering to find out what manner of theatrical fare might be
the preference of the Nigerian people. The people are not bound to
participate in a comedy they find ill-suited to their taste.

But it is simply not enough to reject the Obasanjo initiative and
embark on the large gesture without backing it up with muscle – as the
Enahoro alternative is presently doing. The convening of a national
conference with sovereign status to air the fundamental problems at the
heart of the Nigerian crisis and work out their solutions in an
ambience of amity is serious business, very serious business. Loud
statements are very well. But there is no record in the pages of
history where pious statements of themselves alone have wrung
meaningful concessions from the powers that be. Indeed, Enahoro’s
PRONARCO reminds me of yet another political movement that burst on the
nation’s political scene with sound and fury in the wake of the
annulled June 1993 presidential election, only to turn out an eight-day
wonder on closer scrutiny. Its name is NADECO. NADECO and PRONARCO –
don’t they begin to sound suspiciously the same, rolling off the tongue
mellifluously but ultimately meaning nothing?

I was there in London with the denizens of NADECO at the height of
their exertions to remove Abacha from power in the late 1990s. True,
there were a couple of well-meaning and dedicated politicians in London
who worked very hard to make things hot for the Abacha junta in Western
capitals. They did make their voices heard. But NADECO as political
organization, as political movement was without coherent structure or
central animating logic. Striped of all mystique, NADECO can be reduced
to this: a small group of Nigerian politicians who fled Abacha’s wrath
and found themselves in London, and then began to meet in a flat to
plan how Abacha might be eased out of power so they can return home to
business as usual. This explains why, for all the years they were in
London railing against Abacha, NADECO members did not produce a major
document in which their vision of Nigeria, informed by hard economic
and social data, is outlined. This explains why, until they disbanded
themselves following Abacha’s death, these politicians ran NADECO more
like a secret conclave than a democratic organization open to all
Nigerians concerned to help resolve the nation’s problems.

NADECO leaders loved the large gesture, preferably when BBC and CNN
cameras were rolling. But they were never taken seriously in any of the
European capitals, least of all in London where they were based.
PRONARCO has also embraced the large gesture, announcing that it would
convene its own national conference in June without telling us how many
Nigerian villages and factory floors its leaders have visited, and
whether the spokespeople of these villages and factories have indeed
confirmed that they will be sending delegates to the deliberations.

Convening a sovereign national conference the sort that PRONARCO
envisages will not be a tea party. Those in power and who have invested
heavily in the present order of things will not sit idly as new
political actors plot to oust them from their cushy nest. They will
attempt to frustrate its convening, or failing, disrupt it if it does
convene. The only known antidote to narrow, self-serving power is mass
power. A successful sovereign national conference can only come to be
if mass support is built up for it north and south of the country. This
will be slow and hard work, away from the transient glamour of media
sound bites.
But then, as Chinua Achebe counseled, the tree of liberty must be
deeply rooted if it is to endure. Patience, time, and hard work are the
secrets of this wonderful tree, deeply and truly planted.