Enduring Legacy of Muhammed
Thirty nine years after his passage, there are still instructive lessons in the legacy of the late military Head of State, General Murtala Muhammed, writes Akin Rotimi
One of the greatest tragedies of our nationhood is the lowly regard given to history in the nurture of succeeding generations. There is a dearth of historical substance in the content of education our children are given, thus socialising them into the cycle of anomie that characterises citizenship in our country. We cannot make progress as a country until we realise the need to take lessons from our history seriously, while also being guided by the fact that we as a generation of Nigerians are only holding the soul of our nation in trust for future generations.
Nigeria is at crossroads again. As we hope (and work) for a peaceful passage through this turbulent times into a glorious future, it is evident that Nigeria and her chances of greatness is dependent on how we manage the web of events from our rich past and how we take instructions from their lessons as we contend with present day challenges.
It is momentous that a season, in which Nigerians are preparing to go to the polls to consolidate our Fourth Republic, coincides with the 39th anniversary of the passing of General Murtala Muhammed, Nigeria’s fourth head of state. With the nation about to engage in selecting leaders for presidential, gubernatorial and legislative positions, it seems entirely appropriate to reflect on the legacy of one of Nigeria’s most dynamic national leaders. In his seminal critique of contemporary Nigeria, The Trouble with Nigeria, the late Chinua Achebe held up the stirring possibilities of exemplary leadership that he perceived as being embodied by Muhammed. In the mid-1970s, Nigerian civil servants had earned a not entirely undeserved reputation for tardiness.
But the day after Murtala Mohammed seized power in July 1975, the habitually late civil servants in Lagos were at work by 7.30 in the morning, and even the legendary traffic jams that had defeated every solution and defied every regime vanished overnight from the streets. Achebe noted that the new head of state’s reputation for discipline had been sufficient to transform in the course of only one night the style and habits of Nigeria’s unruly capital and her cream of the crop inhabitants.
It is not often remembered that Muhammed was in power for just six months – a mere two hundred days before his leadership was tragically cut short by assassins. That he is still warmly regarded is proof positive that the most important thing is not how long one leads but how well. In other words, a leader’s legacy is not defined by the duration of his tenure in office but the quality of his actions while in power.
Democracy gives us the opportunity as an electorate to reject leaders that fail to meet our aspirations or to renew their mandates for another four years. The topicality of term limits in our political discourse and the intensity with which public office holders seek to prolong their stay only serves to highlight the point so eloquently demon- strated by Murtala. Leadership is not about duration of tenure but about the depth of the convictions and values that leaders bring to bear upon their offices.
Murtala’s most striking quality was the obvious rootedness of his leadership in the sheer force of his convictions and beliefs. His actions thus carried an unmistakable authenticity about them that could rarely be gainsaid. He modeled a near Spartan lifestyle that was at odds with the sort of vulgar extravagance that has subsequently come to define officialdom.
Indeed, it could be said that his exemplary simplicity – his rejection of long convoys, lavish escorts and a massive personal security apparatus in favour of a single official car moving freely without fanfare was not only in marked contrast to the style of earlier regimes; it still poses a serious challenge of conduct at a time when a huge distance separates politicians from those they purport to lead. It is instructive that the Mercedes Benz limousine in which he was murdered has been preserved as a tourist attraction at the National Museum and is one of the museum’s most sought after exhibitions. Murtala was a decisive leader that moved swiftly once he had come to a conclusion on an issue. Within his two hundred days in office, he created seven additional states acting on the report of the panel headed by Justice Ayo Irikefe, purged the civil service of the corrupt and the indolent, reformed the local government system, decongested the seaports which had become an international embarrassment, and made plans for the establishment of more universities across the country.
He carved out Abuja as the federal capital territory following recommendations from a committee headed by Justice Akinola Aguda, set up a 50-man committee headed by the late Justice Rotimi Williams to see to a new draft constitution, and set the 1979 deadline for a return to civil rule. Above all, he gave the nation a sense of direction and purpose-driven leadership.
For all his achievements on the local scene, it was on the international stage that Murtala’s forceful personality shone brightest. It is not for nothing that his tenure is regarded as part of the golden age of Nigeria’s foreign policy. He became the prime advocate of an activist Afrocentric foreign policy and consciously positioned himself as a leader determined to sweep the last remnants of colonialism and imperialism out of Africa.He invested much in the financial and moral support of liberation movements in Southern Africa and positioned Nigeria as a counterweight to the apartheid regime in South Africa and its super power supporters such as Britain and the United States.
To his great credit, Murtala rallied other African nations in defiance of Anglo-American pressure in support of Agostinho Neto’s faction as the legitimate liberation party in Angola and made clear to the US and other Western powers that “Africa would no longer take orders from any country, however powerful.” Africa has come of age was his foreign policy battle cry. The eventual freedom of Angola owed a great deal to Murtala’s leadership and diplomacy.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Murtala was a successor to the great Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African spirit in the way he marshaled Nigeria’s oil wealth and diplomatic influence as weapons for the liberation of Africa. He clearly subscribed to Nkrumah’s view that the independence of a single African nation was meaningless as long as any inch of the African continent remained under colonial or imperialist control.Comparisons are inescapable. -Rotimi, a diplomacy and strategic communications professional, wrote from Lagos