By Sam Omatseye
The controversy over the status of Abuja takes one to an episode, long ago, in the days of colonial thralldom. A British writer, Margery Perham, had heard tales of the exploits of a kingdom known as Jukun, or Kwororofa in northern Nigeria. It was a predator as empire builder, its army almost of the aura and discipline, if not the butchery and grandeur, of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, its wealth of inevitable fables. She wanted to cancel imagination with reality. But when she got there, there were no majesties, no superfine wealth, no empire, no mysteries. Just huts and goats bleating under hot sun, as my history teacher at Ife Olomola told it. Then she exclaimed, “An exaggerated glory.” More like a ruin than a reign.
One can muse on the historic paradox of the Federal Capital Territory. It is Nigeria’s first synthetic city. Only decades ago, it was a rustic place of humble citizens, much like Perham’s Jukun. The military anointed it the capital and our oil wealth sculpted it. Just like Washington D.C. that was a native Indian home before white politicians changed capital and gave it a new status above all cities. No one remembers the native Indians who were conquered and displaced with brutal force, as it happened to them across the country, especially in the age of President Andrew Jackson. He embossed a trail of tears on Indian and American history where many of the indigenes died as whites reenacted America’s version of the exodus in uprooting them from their homelands.
The indigenes of Abuja, unlike the Indians now flattered as native Americans, saw themselves in the backwoods of the country’s politics. They took their land from them, and the politicians wined and whined in glory while no one gave them any status as inhabitants. They were not concerned about 25 percent. That was no status. It was a calculus for power. It gave no money, no resources, not even leverage to their people.
Since they had no status, or, we could say, they had status anxiety, some of them wanted something. They were not even sure they had one percent stake in the Nigerian project. A group of them went to court for a humble plea. If they could be given the status of a state, they would be happy. So, they galvanized and went to the court. In the final analysis, they brought the matter to the court of courts, the Supreme Court.
It was a humble request. The Supreme Court ruled that they had made a good plea, and it ruled that Abuja was, in fact, to be treated like a state. It may not have the size. But a state – like a nation – is not a substance of size. They did not have the resources. Nor does a state, as a component or subnational, or a state as a nation consist in resources. It is a factor of consciousness or consensus. The constitution is clear on the matter of the status. But a querulous nation requires an arbiter. That is the virtue of the rule of law.
The indigenes only want to have the other features of a state like a legislature. But outsiders have come to imbue it with the ego of Shakespeare’s Malvolio. He is the servant in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, who read a fake love letter from his mistress. One of the lines read: Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have it thrust upon them.
Suddenly, the same Abuja that a few years ago was not sure if it was even a city, now has a strange status thrust on it. It is now being described as a superstate. The indigenes must feel flattered by the word AND in the constitution. It is “and” that changes everything, according to those who want to give it a Malvolio complex. A rhetorical status, a superiority in word.
And, according to their benefactors, it makes them bigger than Lagos or Enugu states. It makes them more powerful than all the states put together because it is the only state with the status of AND. And is a great epaulette. The FCT is not only born great and has achieved greatness, it has greatness thrust upon it. That is the problem. Who thrust it upon it, like the fake letter of pranksters in Shakespeare’s play? This is the farce of the day. So, the FCT is not just the capital of the country. It is the capital of the constitution. Without it, the law cannot breathe. It must be a constitutional tour de force. Washington has no such status, nor Paris, nor London. A golden city, a golden state.
So, the indigenes must, however, worry. What does 25 percent do for them. It only makes somebody from somewhere else come to their city to call himself president. Even then, does that not make them stand tall? They don’t have the population of Lagos or Kano or Port Harcourt, and suddenly their percentage must count above those others because they are Nigeria’s synthetic city?
The interlopers of interpretation are taking away the definition of equality from the tenets of democracy. It says all men are created equal, all states are created equal too. For the so-called ‘And-ers,’ all states are not created equal. Some are more equal than others. Indeed, some are golden. If the oil states lay the golden egg that we all share, then Abuja is the state with the golden vote.
They belong to the antediluvian concept of democracy championed since the days of Plato. Such a concept believes in unequal people. Plato did not believe all men were created equal but he gave concession to a democracy of sorts. He preferred Sparta to Athens. Even Athens loved its slaves. In modern societies, including in England, only the gentry mattered. They were like Aristotle’s concept of the Magnanimous Man, who was a cut above the crowd in breeding and status. American society began that way, only white men with money had voting rights. There were no Indians in the drafting of the constitution. Slaves still broke their backs in plantations. It took over a hundred years of independence before women could vote, and another half a century more before blacks enjoyed it. Today, they are still creating barriers.
They belong to the bracket of democrats who say votes should not be counted but weighed. No way for one person, one vote. Men like Benjamin Disraeli and Calhoun pursued the concept. They have been disgraced in public by the surge of time. When in the state of Tennessee in the United States a gang-up of white legislators expelled two black lawmakers, the system invoked its reflex to save its democracy. Their constituents voted to return them. That is the way of mature democracy.
That is what the And-ers want to upturn. They want to make Abuja into golden votes like the interlopers in Ben Jonson’s play, The Alchemists. Some fellows took over a landlord’s house and convinced themselves they could make gold. They failed as alchemists until the real owner of the house returned. They, like our ‘And-ers,’ turned out to be dead-enders. The ‘And-ers’ are our constitutional alchemists. They are giving the FCT an “exaggerated glory.”
NB: Sam Omatseye is a respected columnist with the Nation Newspaper.
