Criticizing The Critics By Malcolm Fabiyi

In a nobler time social
criticism required more than
just the ability to string words
on paper. In that gilded age,
social criticism was not only
rooted in verbiage and media
activism. It was not a career
choice, or a meal ticket. The
positions that public
commentators took were
driven by deep ideological
beliefs, and their activism
was not an act, it was a life
style. Their devotion to their
cause was one of total
immersion. They were
prepared to die for their
beliefs, to suffer prison and
privation.
Why is our social criticism
lacking for titans like
Funmilayo Kuti, Michael
Imoudu, Hassan Sunmonu,
Mokwugo Okoye, Tai Solarin,
Gani Fawehinmi, Chima
Ubani, Fela Kuti, Claude Ake,
Ken Saro Wiwa. Why have we
been plagued lately, by
charlatans and stage actors
who manage to fool us with
their highfaluting words and
their polished sophistry?
Many have bemoaned the
radical reverse
metamorphosis that Reuben
Abati has undergone. How
did this multi-colored
butterfly that once dazzled
with its iridescent wings
regress back to being a belly
crawling caterpillar, so
quickly and so completely?
But Abati is not alone. Before
him, there was Segun
Adeniyi. And before Segun,
there was a long list of
writers, activists – social
critics all – that have turned
their pens and keyboards to
the service of a system that
they once assailed.
It wasn’t always this way.
There was a time when social
criticism went beyond the
mere ability to write and
speak. It is easy to write
anything that one wishes to
under a civilian democracy.
Under the military, social
critics and activists risked jail
and death. Activism in that
period in our history was not
a career, it was a death
sentence. Student activists
risked rustication, jail and
even death. Labor activists
risked jail and their careers.
Social critics risked prison
and death. Those who
ventured into social criticism
in those hey days were men
and women who had given
their lives over completely to
the struggle for freedom.
They were prepared to die
for their beliefs.
It is therefore not surprising
that those who chose to walk
this perilous path did not see
a separation between their
careers and their struggles.
They were not just verbal
advocates for a better
society, but they spent their
lives working to build the
utopia that they were
advocating for.
Tai Solarin was a dogged
social critic. He began writing
a column in the Daily Times
in 1958, two years after
establishing Mayflower School
in Ikenne in 1956. The school
and the way it was run was
modeled after Solarin’s views
of society. Students were not
only taught their literary and
scientific lessons, but they
were also taught about hard-
work and service. As a
secular humanist, Tai railed
against the religious
hypocrisy that he saw all
around him, and that was
one of the reasons why he
established Mayflower
School. Tai publicly advocated
for national self-reliance, and
in his little utopia in Ikenne,
his students grew their own
food and sometimes built
their own dormitories.
It does not matter which of
the social critics one focuses
on from that era, there were
no inconsistencies between
the public lives that these
men and women projected
and their private conduct in
their careers or in public
service. Tai Solarin died in
1994, serving as Chairman of
the now defunct People’s
Bank during the Babangida
regime. His service at
People’s Bank was selfless
and he died with his integrity
intact.
Gani Fawehinmi was a titan
for the cause of democracy.
He was a consummate
advocate for the rule of law.
Many of us who were in the
students struggle owe Gani a
world of gratitude for being
able to graduate from school
and being extricated from the
torture cells of military
dictators. Gani was as fiery in
the defense of students
whom he served at no
charge, as he was in his
many legal battles with the
military and in the service of
his paying clients. Gani
Fawehinmi was also the
publisher of the most
authoritative law reports
publication in Nigeria. Gani
also famously took on Bola
Tinubu during the Chicago
State University certificate
saga, demonstrating his
complete devotion to the
cause of absolute truth and
justice.
Claude Ake was another
veritable giant in his day. His
contributions were cut short
by his untimely death in the
ADC plane crash of 1996.
Professor Ake was a
remarkably effective social
critic. He established the
Centre for Advanced Social
Science in Port Harcourt, a
think-tank that was the
leading institution for socio-
political research in Nigeria.
When the Abacha
government judicially
murdered Ken Saro Wiwa in
1995, Claude Ake resigned
from the Royal Dutch Shell
Commission to study the
Ecological problems in the
Niger Delta in protest.
There are no annals that we
can turn to that chronicles
the sufferings that many of
these men and women went
through in their service as
Social Critics, but suffer they
did. Their integrity and
conduct elevated social
criticism and made the space
a rarefied one. The tyrannical
and dictatorial tendencies of
military rule helped to sift the
wheat from the chaff. Those
who spoke and wrote about
social conditions in those
times were men, women and
youth with backbones of
steel.
Today, the likelihood that a
social critic will be picked up
for his or her views and
locked away for years in
prison is close to zero. The
probability that a hit squad
will arrive at the door of a
critic, put a bullet though his
head and burn his home to
the ground is also next to
zero. Thanks to democracy,
the space of social criticism
has now been opened up.
New voices have emerged
and in many ways, Nigeria
has benefitted from this
expansion in the space for
critical social discourse.
But herein is the problem.
While we could rely on the
fear of arrest, detention,
rustication, firing and death
to keep charlatans away from
the market place of social
criticism during dictatorial
rule, such deterrents are no
longer in place.
Most Nigerians are closet
critics. We are an opinionated
people, and whether we are
gathered at bus stops, social
gatherings or Beer Parlors,
our conversations are often
steered to matters of a
political bent. The social critic
as defined in this context is
that person who believes his
or her views about society
are worthy of amplification.
The facts are that deserving
or not, these social critics
become embodiments of the
alternatives that they
advocate for. As the public
face of our collective struggle,
such commentators must
bear reciprocal
responsibilities.
The best writers are
wordsmiths – imbued with
the ability to take a seemingly
riotous collection of
alphabets and forge them
into a self-consistent whole.
The same set of words can
be used to draw tears from
the driest eye, or to evince
love and pangs of
compassion from the hardest
heart. Words can turn sheep
to lions and wolves. But
words are also cheap, and
they are even cheaper still
when there are no
consequences that follow
from their use. It is no
wonder that when some of
these new age critics, who
have no ideological
grounding, are pulled into
government to actualize the
utopias about which they
write and speak, they are
found out to be vacuous
beings with no moral or
philosophical foundation.
They realize, as they are
buffeted by the demands of
office and tempted by the
trappings of power, that they
lack the conviction to stare
down the challenges they
face. Like chaff, they are
sifted by the winds of
adversity.
Nations need their critics. But
just as we require service and
performance of our leaders,
so too must we begin to
demand performance and
service of those whom we
rely on for the criticism of
those leaders. We must
develop new demands and
responsibilities of those
whose work we elevate to be
representative of our
struggle. Should we fail to do
this, the character flaws and
the vacuous nature of these
men and women will come to
define our struggle. Unless
this is done, we will continue
to be plagued by shape
shifters like Reuben Abati,
Segun Adeniyi and the
countless others who have
used mere words as a
Passover ticket.
Five years ago, no one would
have believed that strident
voices for progress like
Abati’s or Adeniyi’s could
ever be compromised. No
one would have believed that
a champion for the
downtrodden like Abati could
be coopted in the vocation of
sycophancy. No one would
have thought that a voice
that powerful, that strident,
could be turned into a
groveling Nightingale’s high
pitched cacophony.
But perhaps if we had looked
deeper, if we had asked
more questions of the man,
we would have found reason
to be cautious. We would
have discovered that at the
height of the Babangida and
Abacha dictatorships, when
Chima Ubani, Ogaga Ifowodo,
Sowore Omoyele, Beko Kuti,
Gani Fawehinmi, Bamidele
Aturu, Femi Falana and Dele
Giwa were staring down the
barrels of guns, being
hounded out of their
campuses and jobs, being
locked up at Gashua and
KiriKiri, or in Dele Giwa’s
case, dying for the cause, Mr
Abati was busy writing
romance stories at Hints,
Chanelle and Hearts. He was
in the business of theater and
literature, but he was not in
the theater of struggle. His
skills were deployed towards
furthering his own career and
creating pleasurable fiction.
Nigeria’s leadership problem
did not start with Obasanjo,
and it will not end with
Jonathan. There were
leadership problems under
Buhari, Abacha and
Babangida. Curiously, Abati’s
voice was silent in those
years of his youth. Clearly, in
Abati’s case, he simply
changed careers. He is in
many ways still a writer of
romantic fiction, and these
days, he writes of his love
affair with a system that he
once lampooned.
We must demand more than
just words or the ability to
write or speak. There was a
time when we could take for
granted the fact that those
who spoke in the public
square were men and women
of conviction. Those days are
long gone. Now, we must
demand to know what our
public commentators are
actually doing to change the
system. Tai Solarin fought for
change at the national level
using platforms such as Daily
Times, The Tribune and
Public engagements. But he
also brought about change
one student at a time at his
school in Ikenne. Claude Ake
wrote opinion pieces in
Newspapers and battled the
governments of the day, but
he also churned out world
class policy work from his
center in Port Harcourt. Gani
Fawehinmi personified social
criticism and activism, and he
was engaged in the battle for
Nigeria’s soul as a Senior
Advocate of the Masses, and
as a Philanthropist offering
succor to indigent students.
Fela Kuti was perhaps the
fieriest of critics. But he did
more than sing songs of
struggle. He took his vision
for society one step further
than most, establishing his
own Kalakuta Republic.
Whatever we might think of
the paths and actions that
these men took, there is no
denying that they brought
credibility to their cause by
their records of active
participation and
engagement. They lived the
struggle.
We are fast losing credibility.
Our words increasingly mean
nothing. The public has seen
enough of us fail to live up to
our lofty rhetoric that their
conclusions that all those
who speak out are in it only
for what they too can get, is
becoming harder to refute. It
is becoming increasingly
difficult to counter these
charges. If we are not
careful, those of us who have
elected to speak truth to
power will no longer be taken
seriously. We will be like the
boy who cried Wolf in jest,
only to be met with studied
indifference when the real
threat emerged. Too many
jesters have entered the
market place of social
criticism.
There are also dire political
ramifications. When you
engage Nigerians and ask
them why they vote for
rogues who openly buy their
way into office, they will tell
you that they have no faith
in those who claim the high
ground: “Bros, all dat one na
story. When dem enter
government now na different
tori dem go dey yarn. All of
dem be thief. At least, dis
one no try take big big
English cover himself.”
Each betrayal hurts Nigeria
and makes our path forward
more challenging. Each critic
and activist whose actions in
government are contrary to
the rhetoric voiced in their
public criticism confirms the
belief that many Nigerians
now hold, that those who
engage in activism do so only
to further their own
interests. So next time you
read that critical article or
opinion piece from a writer
who is over thirty five years
of age, ask the writer to tell
you where they were and
what they were doing when
Obasanjo, Buhari, Abacha
and Babangida were ravaging
the land. And for all social
critics, regardless of their
age, we must ask to know
what they have done lately to
try to improve the lives of
their countrymen and
women.

#CONSENSUS 2015