The Dangers Of False Equivalence By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

I was simply following the panache of
the news when I said that President
Olusegun Obasanjo met his American
counterpart, George W. Bush, at the
White House.
Immediately, raw anger stormed
across his face as if Kanji dam just
busted at the center of his skull. The
muscles of his cheek tightened like a
bow tie around a boxer’s neck. Even
the hot moist air coming out of his
mouth curled up with a vicious gait.
“Counterpart, my behind,” the former
MIT Professor said.
It was over ten years ago but I still
remember it as if it was yesterday. We
were watching T.V news at a Boston
apartment of another Nigerian. The
professor rolled out a series of rants
on why nobody should ever make
such comparison. He centered his
argument on what real democracy
and accountability for those charged
with administering the state ought to
be. I listened to him carefully because
he was not another lost soul in the
Diaspora. In the 80s, a democratically
elected governor lured him back to
Nigeria to help open a university of
technology. His dream university was
soon abandoned by the very governor
that brought him home.
At first, I attributed his bitterness to
that experience. And then, the 24-
hour news channel showed a clip of
the press conference at the White
House between President George W.
Bush and President Olusegun
Obasanjo. The question for Obasanjo
was why he sent in soldiers to Zaki
Biam to massacre villagers.
“They butchered my soldiers with
machete,” Obasanjo said, gesturing
with his hands the descent of the
machete on the bodies of his soldiers.
The vulgarity of his posture, the
coarseness of his voice, and the
crudeness of his answer left us in
stunned.
“I rest my case,” the retired Professor
said at the end of the clip.
At the heart of every conflict that
appears intractable is a
misinterpretation of where to place
the equivalence balance. Ethical
standard is supposed to be our guide
in determining the moral line. But
moral relativism has muddled up the
ethical pond and given rise to moral
equivalence. This misnomer is at play
in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, in the War on
Terror. The same thing happened
during the Cold War.
In Nigeria, a similar dynamic has
been playing out in the minds of
those who try to do an in-depth
analysis of the Nigerian situation.
Once an analyst tries to ask the
question, where did water enter the
husk of the melon, clarity gives way
to minefields.
Today, everyone is grappling with the
Boko Haram problem. But it is
impossible to understand it without a
dispassionate comprehension of what
happened in the past. People did not
just wake up and learn how to kill
others with this degree of impunity. It
typically follows a progressive
decline. The degree of such a decline
depends on whether there was any
effort to stop it when it started. If
human failing emerges without the
society putting in control mechanism,
it accelerates over time.
Putting in place and enforcing
consequences is the only way to stop
any society from descending into
anarchy. And that was what we failed
to do. Today, we are left with the only
option facing those whose ship is
sinking – holding on to false
equivalence.
The problem with looking at the past
is often how far into the past we
should look. The farther we look, the
less credible the prism is. But we
must try to decipher through it all
because the past has a way of
stepping on today as it struggles to
control the future.
As we search for solution to the Boko
Haram problem, some compare Boko
Haram to the Niger Delta militants
and recommend the same sort of
amnesty. That is where the
controversial suggestion that “one
man’s terrorist is another man’s
freedom fighter” emerged.
Some Northerners are frustrated that
most Nigerians who look at the Boko
Haram problem fail to see that
northerners are, by far, the majority of
the victims. Some go as far as
complaining that even when these
Nigerians do acknowledge it, they
show no sympathy – instead some
suggest that the chicken has come
home to roost.
But the most frustrating feeling
coming from the north is the idea that
it is only when there is problem from
the north that the call for the breakup
of Nigeria is at the highest peak.
For example, some will say that for
Nigeria, the January 15th 1966 coup
was where the Nigerian crises started.
That on that day, Igbo people planned
a coup killing only Northern leaders
in order to finally take over Nigeria.
And because Igbo people did that,
some bad elements in the north
decided to kill thousands of Igbo
people.
Of course, Igbo people did not plan a
coup. Those who planned a coup
were ambitious Nigerian soldiers
most of whom were Igbo. I
understand this better following the
Gen. Ihejirika Affair- in my own eyes,
army’s promotional decisions have
been interpreted to mean Igbo
attempt to dominate the military.
Though Ihejirika did not consult me in
his decisions, they are already
attributed to the wider Igbo agenda.
Even when the former interpretation
of the January 15, 1966 Coup as
“Igbo coup” is glossed over, the later
suggestion that “some bad elements
in the north decided to kill thousands
of Igbo people” falls into the category
of moral relativism. If a dozen or so
soldiers who met in secret to plan a
coup to install Awolowo as a leader
of Nigeria are seen as “Igbo people”
planning to take over Nigeria, it
follows that thousands of northerners
who went on the streets of the north
to kill thousands of Igbo people are
more than “bad elements.” Following
the same logic, they are all lumped
together as murderous northerners-
even when several northerners
protected some Igbo people from
those out to murder them.
But again, that incident could not
have been the starting point. In 1953
a massacre of non-Muslims, mainly
Igbo people, occurred in Kano. It was
an escalation of what happened in
Jos in 1945. In a report issued by the
British administrative officer that
looked at the incident, he wrote, “No
amount of provocation, short-term or
long-term, can in any way justify
their behavior…the seeds of the
trouble which broke out in Kano on
May 16 (1953) have their
counterparts still in the ground. It
could happen again, and only a
realization and acceptance of the
underlying causes can remove the
danger of recurrence.”
We know that even after the war, we
did not do anything about the “seed
of the trouble.” We did not realize and
accept the underlying causes. We did
nothing to surgically remove the seed.
Instead, we watered the ground and
fertilized it with blindsiding strategies
like political Sharia. Consequently it
continued to reoccur, even when no
more Igbo soldiers were planning
coups. It continued until we got to
where we are today.
Before the Cold War ended, light had
to be shined on the dark parts of the
conflict. For the Soviet Union, it came
when they introduced glasnost and
perestroika. Glasnost is openness
while perestroika is restructuring.
Openness let the pus to drain out of
the wound giving room for the
surgeons to restructure the laceration
before stitching it up. We need
openness and restructuring not
continuing excuse that bygones are
bygones because we said so or
because we were not born when they
happened. Neither are we served by
covering things up out of fear that the
country will collapse. The country is
already collapsing, so why fear doing
something to fix it?
A topical analogy could be drawn
from the recent ordeal of our ebullient
First Lady, Patience Jonathan. When
her stomach started hurting and
protruding, she did not rob Vicks and
Vaseline and put bandage on it.
According to her, she was flown to
Germany where doctors opened not
just her belly but also her small and
large intestines. The doctors cleaned
them up with iodine, Dettol and Lysol
and then rearranged her small and
large intestines. Even though she
died for 7 days, after the stitch up,
she came back to life as ebullient as
ever. The same could be done to a
nation.
That you were not born when the
tectonic plates shifted does not
immune you from the tsunami that
will occur when an earthquake
happens along the fault line. If a
strain of the virus that caused the
1918 flu epidemic which killed 100
million people should escape from the
laboratory, it will kill all those not
prepared to tackle it, including those
not born when it first killed 3% of the
world’s population.
We are still at the false equivalence
point where our failure to establish
and enforce ethical standard has left
us swimming in moral relativism and
its counterpart, moral equivalence.
Those who allow themselves to be
lost in the cyclone of false
equivalence are stuck in recurring
violence, self-deceit, delusion, and
compounding confusion until a final
slide into the abyss. There lies the
danger of false equivalence.
Like the former MIT professor said, I
rest my case.