SPEECHES

Black History Month Program
Public Affairs Section

A Speech By
Consul General
Brian L. Browne

Date: February 16, 2007
Venue: Lagos

Since this is the month we celebrate Black History, it is also the month that extols the virtue of human freedom even more than its eleven somewhat longer brothers and sisters.  Thus, I beg your indulgence as I exercise a bit of creative freedom myself.  Consequently, let me exercise the freedom to change the topic of this address.

Please don’t look at what I am about to do as deceptive advertising.  I did not intend to invite you to an address on “Legal Reforms of the Civil Rights Movement” and then not give such an address.  That would have been untoward of me.  However, that address will not be given. 

You see, something happened to my pen as I began to write the speech as intended.  My pen refused to write as instructed.  As it decided not to follow its appointed course, it became incumbent on me to do that which my pen had in mind.  Now that I followed, I am glad I did.  I pray that you too will not be disappointed.
 
You see, the topic of Legal Reform would have been an interesting one.  Yet, given the point we have reached in Nigeria’s history, it would not have been the right topic at the right moment.  True, I could have given you a nice, tight and hopefully somewhat interesting address on legal reforms in America. 

But that talk would not have captured the times.  It would not have sufficiently connected with the situation into which Nigeria has found itself.  It would have been akin to inviting a very hungry man to dinner only to give him the most meager of portions.  Then to compound the situation, I would then call for removal of the food even before he had a chance to eat the little I had provided.

It would have been as if I talked nicely yet spoke small.  At the moment we are in, a moment when history is poised to unfold right before our living eyes, let it be that one speaks of the great issues and compelling themes of the day.  Let it be that I have said not what was easy to say, but that which you have need to hear.
 
Thus, I began to think, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to talk about the lessons Black History can illuminate in order to better light the way for Nigeria’s journey into dawn – its journey into democracy.  After all, was not the struggle of Black America, was not the struggle to which we dedicate this month, one that ultimately transcends place and time?  It was not just a struggle of race against race.  If you view it in that limited context, you have missed its significance. 

It was a struggle for human decency, dignity and justice.  In its essence, this month celebrates not a distinct and separate book but rather it celebrates what is a long chapter in the even more epic account of man’s progress against his own worst vices.  It represents the best stirrings of man to surrender himself not unto oppression and degradation but to give himself unto the nobler if more elusive callings of equality and hope. 

It is a story of a people attempting to stop being put down and pressed down in the very land in which they were born.  It is the story of waking the conscience of a nation so that the hand of prejudice, hatred and ignorance is stayed and is replaced by a more humane treatment of those who suffered under that hand.

It is the story of the battle of right against wrong.

It also teaches us a cardinal lesson. If you don’t get tired, if you don’t quit, if you don’t wilt when the hour is the bleakest and when the strong wind pummels you, both bleakness and storm will pass.  Yet you will remain standing with your objective, your victory, closer at hand.  This is a lesson that Black America has learned the hard way.  This is a lesson I hope to share with you today so that it might not take Nigeria so long or so hard to get its complete victory completely in hand. 

As long as the United States practiced legal discrimination on the one hand but espoused political freedom on the other, it was a nation struggling against itself.  It was a nation that did not have an identity because it had at least one identity too many.  One identity was free, the other was slave and slave-holding.  The two could not live side by side in the long term for they were each other’s antithesis.  One would have to subdue the other.

A person cannot walk in opposite directions at the same time, nor can a nation be part free, part just while part slave, part unequal.  For a house divided against itself cannot stand.

While still imperfect and with more than a day’s journey to go before we reach the point that America as a society is colorblind and race neutral, America has made up its mind to move in that positive direction.

As we are gathered in this fine assemblage, Nigeria has a similar decision to make.  Regarding the impending election, I have heard many people state that Nigeria is at a crossroads.  If only it were that easy.  If at a crossroads, a traveler only has to decide which split in the road he must take, then resume his journey. 

In Nigeria, the question is much more existential.  Nigeria is battling to define itself.  Nigeria is fighting itself for its very soul.

Will Nigeria continue to emerge from the mire and fog of military rule and its attendant ills which benefited a small few, but placed a yoke across the neck of the rest of the populace? 

Will Nigeria emerge a better, more healthy nation of expanding political and economic freedom for all, without regard to ethnicity, religion and region or will its progress be throttled so that it slides back into the costly ways of an unproductive past?  This is nothing short of a contest for the collective spirit of the nation. 

One should turn to face reality squarely when it has tapped you on the shoulder.  So let’s face it.  There are some people who have benefited from the way things were.  They are not eager to see Nigeria as it should be.  Having taken full advantage of the imbalances of the past, they seek to resurrect that past.  Fortunately, there seems to be a growing corps of people who realize that a system which provides the opportunity of freedom, prosperity and fulfillment for all is the best insurance for securing these things for themselves.   While the number of people moving to this side are swelling, none should rejoice just yet.  For, although the numbers grow, their collective voice is still feint and uncertain.  If we are not careful, they could still be drowned out or muted by the stentorians of inequality who do not want to see Nigeria develop into a more economically and politically just society.

Before I go any further, let me warn you that I will not talk in subtle phrases.  The situation is too compelling and the hour is much too short for that luxury.  It is time to say what needs to be said for there is no certainty that a second chance will come our way.  Thus, there will be no double or hidden meanings in this address, so subtract nothing from what I say.  Neither add to it.  What is said shall be no more and no less than what you hear.

Also, do not think what I am saying is intended to favor or oppose any person, group or organization.  I am here not to condemn or commend any particular person or party.

If you are looking for whom I support, don’t go to any elected official’s office.  You won’t find me there.  Don’t go to any party headquarters.  My footprints will neither be there.  I am singularly disinterested in who beats whom in the political game.  What has my abiding interest is that Nigeria continues to improve its ability to look after the well being of those of its citizens who do not have the capacity to fully look after themselves.

Thus, if you want to see whom we support, get out of your chair, walk out of this hall and go to the schools to see young children struggling to obtain an education that will give them hope for the future.

Go to the marketplace.  See the somber-eyed mother with too many needs to meet but too little money with which to meet them.  Go to the farms.  See people working and tilling the soil from sun up to sun down in order to scratch out a living, to feed their family and feed this nation.  Go to the bus stops.  See the men and women who wake up tired in the morning and come home even more weary from work late at night.  These are the people I support.

Now, there came a point during my rather long conference with my independent minded pen, where we could not decide how best to present the key lessons to be gleaned from Black American History.

Then in one of the rare instances during which I guided the pen and not have it guide me, I realized I was lying on a patch-work quilt handed down to me from family generations long past.  The quilt was made of different pieces of cloth but woven together in a pattern to express a theme.  It dawned on me that the quilt provided a clue on how we should present this address.  Consequently, let me distill from the Civil Rights Movement, from Black American History, a few major themes and then weave them together to form a fabric relevant to Nigeria today.

The first theme is “Don’t forget the forgotten”.  This is the very essence of Black History Month.  For so long a portion of my nation’s existence, Black people were either bondsman or citizens with neither rights nor recourse, they were also not considered agents nor subjects of history.  It was as if they were not part of the national family but part of the family assets as if a human being could be reduced to a chair or table, bench or plow.  And no sane person would ask a table or chair how it feels or thinks.  A table, a plow, or any similar prop is to be acted upon but never is considered an independent actor.

Nor were Black Americans.  Thus their story was not told, for it was thought they had no story.  Their struggle to stay alive in the bowels of overcrowded ships that trafficked human cargo from one coast of the Atlantic to the other is a courageous example of human endurance against the glare of death.  But it was a story not to be told.  The struggle to move from slave to freeman, from freeman to equal was not being told.  But it was an inspirational tale of the lowly, the poor and powerless contesting against the weight of privilege and prejudice.  And as such it is a story that belongs to none of us exclusively because it belongs to all of us as human beings.  It is the story of the forgotten man claiming his place in the world and his right to be heard above the din of the machinery of power. 

While it manifests itself differently here, the call to not forget the forgotten is also a challenge in Nigeria.  Look at how we view the Nigerian elections.  All of us are guilty of focusing on the top candidates and parties.  But is the election solely about these famous personalities?  If so, we have all already lost the election regardless of our partisan or nonpartisan stripes.  No, for Nigeria to move forward the election cannot be about the well-known, the famous, and even the infamous.  It is more about the welfare and aspiration of the anonymous farmer, cabdriver, seamstress and school teacher. 

It is about whether they can wake up and work more productively for their families.  It is about whether they can look at their sons and daughters and tell them that the future will be better and mean it as the truth and not just something one says just so their children can go to bed at night without tears.

Consequently, as we look at the political leaders and their quest for elective office, let’s not lose sight of the real object of the elections.  Which is not to obtain office but to bring good governance and a better life to those anonymous people we will never know.  While we do not know them, they should not be forgotten as they form the backbone and future of the nation more than any elite can. 

The second theme is that it is easier to change a law than to change a person’s mind or heart.  This implies that we must not place too much emphasis on form.  By form, I mean the institutions and laws that purportedly govern the nation.  By substance I mean how things are actually done and practiced. 

The image of the founding of the United States is one of men fighting against the most powerful nation of their age in order to secure their political freedom.  However, the very underbelly of that same image is one of these same men intentionally enshrining the enslavement of other human beings simply because of a difference in the hue of their skin.

When the fight against slavery was won, the Black man became legally free.  The U.S. Constitution explicitly called him out as a free and full citizen.  However, someone forgot to tell his former owners. 

He still had to endure all manner of indignity and danger.  Those who opposed his freedom, after a momentary retreat, launched a well planned counter offensive that ended up re-defining and diminishing the status of the freeman until he was little more than an indentured servant. 

During the last century, the Civil Rights Act and several other laws were passed to guarantee legal equality.  Notwithstanding this bevy of laws, the scores of Black History Months we have celebrated, and the very language of the U.S. Constitution itself, there are still too many Americans who still harbor antagonism toward people of another race.  The enlightenment implied by such a law often takes time to finally shine the light into the heart of a racially prejudiced individual.

This lesson is an important one in Nigeria where you now have the formal institutional trappings of democracy but not enough people have sufficiently imbibed the spirit of democracy so that we can state with confidence that democracy has been secured on these shores. 

You have a presidential and federal system.   You have state and local government.  You have had and will continue to have elections.  Despite these institutions and forums, Nigeria is not as democratic as it ought be. 

Too many people look at winning an election as a type of coronation or investiture and not the assumption of a public trust.  Too many people see victory in the election as not making them the representatives of the people but as a form of elected royalty.  Thus, instead of them believing they should act in the public’s interest, they believe the election means the public should act in their interest.

Democracy in its true sense is not something found on a piece of paper, or in the organizational structure of an institution.  Democracy flourishes or is buried by how we relate to each other as human beings.  For it to thrive, democracy must be etched in the hearts and minds of the players in the national drama.  It must seep into how we act daily, into our discussions, our decisions, into how we view the world and each other’s place in it.

For Nigeria, the battle to establish the institutional forms of democracy has been won.  Congratulate yourselves yes but do not overly celebrate for the victory has been only partial.  We still have work to do.  The next phase is to move from giving Nigeria the trimmings of a democratic outfitting to making democracy feel so welcome in Nigeria that democracy feels as if it has come home to a family reunion.

The third theme is that, we all should develop a healthy regard for diversity.  Give the racial context of this topic, the prior statement seems like a mere telling of the profoundly obvious.  But here, I mean more than meets the eye.

For I am not talking about harmony across the racial or ethnic divide.  Here I refer to what often happens within the movement for equality.  Often those who are ostensibly fighting for the same objective became the bitterest enemies because of differences in tactics or emphasis.  This internecine squabbling retards progress and provides nothing but moments of undiluted joy to the opponents of progress.

During the period of slavery, two schools of thought emerged regarding how to free the slaves.  One sought emancipation through force of arms – through rebellion.  One sought it through peaceful change in the Nation’s legal infrastructure that provided the legal justification for chattel slavery.

The rebellions lead by Nat Turner and Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey proved that slaves were willing to go to war and die to win freedom. 

Their attempts destroyed the notion of undermining that slavery was a form of benevolent servitude embraced and welcomed even by the slave himself.  These efforts also frightened the slaveholders to no end.  Beyond these two ancillary contributions, the attempts were futile.  The culmination of this approach came during John Brown’s fateful raid on Harper’s Ferry.

As irony would have it, John Brown, a white man, was unsuccessful in convincing Frederick Douglass, a black man and former slave, about the utility of armed rebellion.  Douglas believed rebellion was doomed to failure and suicidal and that it would direct greater fear and hatred at the already downtrodden slaves who need not carry such an extra burden.  Disagreement between Douglas and Brown was fierce. 

Those who believed in the abolition of slavery but differed over its method became almost as implacable foes as they were with the proponents of slavery.  The rift between Douglas and Brown presaged divisions among the Black population once slavery had ended and Blacks were legally free.

Then the question became of how best to improve the lot of black people and to win equality.  Personified by W.E.B. Du Bois, one group believed that black people should focus on advancing their civil and political rights.  The other group, with Booker T. Washington and later Marcus Garvey at the helm, believed racial equality was better pursued through economic development.

The arguments between Du Bois and Washington were historic, sometimes profound and almost always unfortunate.  They worked at cross purposes and grew to become rivals. The enmity between Du Bois and Garvey was even worse.   Regressive forces tried to pit each against the other and to a degree these forces succeeded because Du Bois and Washington could not see the inconsistency of their own positions. 

While advocating white society to be more tolerant or accepting of Blacks, both men were intolerant of different shades of opinion within the Black ranks.  Their perpetual feuding and concomitant failure to break bread and forge an agreement regarding points of view that were essentially reconcilable hurt the Black movement and wasted precious time, resources and human effort.

A similar feud erupted in the 1960’s.  Martin Luther King became the pillar of the non-violent Civil Rights Movement.  While many whites reviled him at that time, some of his most unforgiving critics were fellow blacks.  Malcolm X, H. Rap Brown, and Stokely Carmichael all at one point or another branded King.  Interestingly, Malcolm X was not assassinated until he began to turn a less confrontational leaf.  Even more interestingly he met his demise at the hands of black authors.

Even among the radical groups, there was pushing and tugging from pillar to post.  Each group wanted to be the foremost.  Each wanted to be seen as the most radical and militant.  Each wanted to be the authentic voice of Black America.  Each group tried to out black the other one.  This was not only reflected in fiery rhetoric but in actual gunfire against each other.  People who should have been allies tried to and actually killed each other.  Again the differences of opinion seem almost inconsequential compared to the differences they had with the guardians of racial prejudice.  Yet these individuals and groups fought each other almost as much as they did their stated enemy.

In Nigeria, we have myriad civil society groups that have among their stated purposes the promotion of democracy in Nigeria.  Yet to get them to work together, to get them to pool resources, is often as difficult to do as convincing a lion to sit at the dinner table and eat with knife and fork. 

The aim of democracy should be so transcendent that it compels these organizations to overcome other considerations and work together.  Unfortunately, such cooperation is more the exception than the rule. 

Too many groups are mere extensions of their founders or of their leadership.  Ethnicity, region and even religion act as barriers to collaboration.  Instead of cohesion, often an unspoken coldness exists among the group.  They stand apart as neither friend nor foe.  Sometimes this coldness erupts into outright and embarrassing hostility.

Instead of consolidating resources to better promote democracy, groups often bicker over who is the truest and fairest democrat of them all.  By trying to “out democracy” each other, the groups do not advance the cause to which they claim to be wedded. 

Instead, they sow the seeds of confusion and disillusion as the public finds it nigh impossible to draw a distinction between the behavior of the proponents of democracy and the behavior of the guardians of the past.

If Nigeria is to advance as it should, civil society will have to act in accordance with its stated priorities.  This means that proponents of democracy must be intolerant with regard to compromising on the ultimate objective. 

Yet when it comes to the means and methods for attaining the fullness of democracy for Nigeria, they must be tolerant and receptive to different views and approaches.  For out of diversity should come discourse and through the crucible of discourse and debate, our ideas are further wrought and refined.

The fourth point is that Black History teaches us human advance is usually a gradual process.  Now this gradual process can be punctuated by major events or breakthroughs that seem to suddenly herald a new day.  Yet, upon more thorough study, we see these breakthroughs are but the interest the present is
paying on deposits placed into the bank of history at an earlier date. 

We all know the cataclysm that was the Civil War in the United States.  For four years, North battled South over which section’s vision of the Nation would be ascendant.  In the balance hung the fate of slavery and the Black American.  Yet the tension that gave rise to the Civil War began to simmer at the very inception of the United States of America. 

In drafting the Constitution, North and South bickered over population figures.  For the North had a larger White population and population totals would be important because they would determine the number of representatives in the Lower House of Congress. 

A compromise was thus reached so that the South could augment its population numbers by counting 60% of the slave population.  This came to be known as the infamous 3/5th Compromise. 

Later as the Union expanded, attempts were made to keep the number of slave and free states equal while also trying to limit slavery to the Southern part of the continent. 

With each addition of Western territory came a crisis that threatened this delicate balance.  Each time this balance was threatened it became increasingly harder to reset.  Thus the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was straightforward and lasted 30 years.  Conversely, the Compromise of 1850 was a complex amalgam of different compromises that despite or perhaps because of its convoluted nature lasted only 10 years. 

There was really no way that compromise could endure.  Year by year, attitudes in the different parts of the country hardened and became more antagonistic.  In the North, slavery was initially viewed as a rather peculiar institution that was more a curiosity than a national curse. 

At this stage in history, Southerners were even less forgiving of their own region, deeming slavery a necessary evil that had to be left in place due to its economic importance to the South.

Over the first few decades of the 19th century opinion changed, at first imperceptibly.  Northerners began to look upon slavery as a blight on the nation.  Meanwhile, stung by Northern moralizing, Southerners began to tout slavery as a positive good. 

While more and more Northerners wanted slavery’s abolishment, more Southerners vigorously defended it as the foundation of their way of life.  In one of history’s bitterest ironies, some southerners began to cry that the North sought to enslave them by freeing their slaves.

There was no way these two antithetical worldviews could exist side by side.  Thusly seen, the American Civil War was not a sudden eruption but the culmination of many events over a period of time.

In Nigeria, the journey toward democracy is also a gradual process.  Democratization is not like a light switch one can just turn on and off.  Democratization is more like the gradual movement from dusk to dawn. 

Given the pace of the 21st Century, Nigeria does not have the luxury of taking as much time as Black America took.  What used to happen in several decades must now unfold in the space of several years.  Although timeframes will be more compressed, it is still the case that change will be evolutionary.  This also implies that change is best done when done peacefully.

In the final analysis, Nigeria can take these and other lessons from the American Civil Rights Movement.  If applied correctly, Nigeria not only will advance but will become a model from which future generations will take inspiration and guidance.

As I conclude let me state, should Nigeria fall in this democratic enterprise, succeeding generations will look back and be baffled at how, given the corps of talented people and the ample store of resources Providence has lent this nation, we let it run aground.

To be found waiting at this moment would be allowing your destiny to pass through your fingers as if it were the wind we were attempting to hold but it is not the wind.  It is our very selves.  So we must hold fast.  We must act wisely and well to justify why we have been placed here in this special hour.  Remember, what Nigeria does today, Africa will do tomorrow. 

What Nigeria becomes today, is what Africa will be tomorrow.  You have a responsibility that extends beyond your borders and your shores.  Great is the responsibility.  Great is the potential reward but also great are the consequences of failure.  Let not that responsibility crash against the shoals of failure because of indecision, indifference and want of vision.

Thank you.