STRIKER: The Progressives Dilemma

THE progressives are generally defined as those favouring social reforms. Differing from conservatives and traditionists who are content with the status quo, the progressives aim at policies that will take society to a new developmental level that guarantees, more and more, the welfare and prosperity of the majority of citizens.

The common saying is that “birds of the same feather flock together.” Accordingly, be it politics or other social organisations, progressives come together on the basis of likeness of mind and interest to advance humanity to the next level, while conservatives, reactionaries, radicals, revolutionaries, and centrists do likewise, for their various interests and agenda. It is expected that you will never find a reformist in a neo-Nazi movement. However, whereas flocking together on the basis of breed still obtains largely in the avian and animal world, humans seem to have moved on to a new perplexing level of breed dilution when it comes to bedfellow on ideas and interests!

Depending on the historical challenges of any specific country, one can plainly tell what the positions of the progressives are. That used to be the case in times past in Africa, Nigeria not exempted. In Nigeria for instance, when Awolowo, Aminu Kano or Balarabe Musa speak, you know from which point of view and in whose overall interests; same for Ahmadu Bello, Adisa Akinloye or Umaru Dikko.

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Things have changed drastically and nastily, especially since 1999. Today, either in politics or within various social organisations, ideas, manifestoes and programmes have been relegated to the shadows. Congregations are no longer based on the promotion of any articulated social interests rooted in any lofty conception. All that exists are various gangs promoting private and clique interests basically deleterious to the common good. In politics, the major political assemblies are as patently different from one another as six is from half a dozen!

Progressive-minded activists and politicians still abound in the land even as they are becoming endangered species in an age when “the best are full of doubts and the worst are full of passionate intensity.” However, number has never been a disadvantage to votaries of good causes; their handicap has always been waned zeal to distillate themselves as wheat away from the chaff, then organise with passionate intensity.

Today, progressives, with very few exceptions, are sandwiched in a variety of reactionary and anti-people assemblies, fearful for personal fortune and thereby silenced in words and action. With Nigeria traumatised and endangered as it is, there is no graver time in its history demanding crystallisation of progressive thoughts and actions in a purified and outstanding assembly.

The most critical question on the front burner of the nation is the very one conservative and reactionaries do not want raised and progressive are fearful to proclaim and demand answers to the question of the structure of a nation that is named “FEDERAL REPUBLIC of Nigeria.” Any progressive-minded patriot that has not lost his/her progressive mind must know that the infidelity to that very name is the root cause of all trials and tribulation the country faces, from time, and till date – which is threatening to consume it. In Nigeria, we always love to dance around our problems rather than solving them as witness the recent Supreme Court judgement that targeted solving accountability problems rather than the structural problem that occasioned corruption of the entire system in the first place!

Genuine progressives must know that until we resolve the question of the warped, upside-down structure of the country, a thousand more general elections, however free and fair, can never produce persons that will right that wrong, having been premised on politics, political parties, political proceedings that are offspring of a deformed structure. Indeed, it is amazing grace that Nigeria is still standing; and perplexing that true progressives can claim that nomenclature – in their invisible, ineffectual state wherever they are. One clear fact is that Time always propels a solution from the belly of the problem confronting any age, and Time will surely tell.

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not represent the opinions or views of OSUN DEFENDER.