Recent literature on politics in Africa and the third world is replete with accounts of the rise of “mostly antisystem, mostly grassroots, movements with a variety of political, social and economic goals …which are often beyond the control of the states…” (Haynes, 1997:vii,3). Another account refers to groups which interact with the state “by bypassing it …by defining [themselves] in relation to economic, political or cultural systems which transcend the state, by submerging the state with its spectacular claims and mobilisations” (Bayart, 1991:60; also Bayat, 1997).
The phenomenon described in these accounts is referred to in the literature as exit, defined as disengagement or retreat from the state by disaffected segments of the citizenry into alternative and parallel social, cultural, economic and political systems which are constructed in civil society and compete with those of the state (cf. Azarya, 1988, 1994; Azarya & Chazan, 1987; Bratton, 1989; Young, 1994). This is a deviation from the marriage between citizens and the state which is consumated in terms of reciprocal rights and duties. Exit is commonly regarded as a strategy for coping with “a domineering yet ineffective state” (cf du Toit, 1995:31), but it also represents the resistance of weak and marginalised segments which in extreme cases can lead to separatist agitation or even secession. An analytical distinction can accordingly be made between exit from the polity and exit from the state.
The former involves bypassing or avoiding the organised civil order without necessarily disconnecting from the state. Such qualified exit which is more prevalent amongst the ordinary peoples, for whom exit is a matter of survival, results from the fact that however much they try to avoid the state, those organising the parallel systems continually need the state one way or another. Following the example of the ‘Black Market’ in Ghana where two thirds of the annual cocoa export in the early 1980s was done illegally, it has been observed that parallel systems operate with some measure of collusion from state officials (du Toit, 1995:12). Also, voluntary ethnic and kinship selfhelp associations which have historically formed the bulk of exit sites in most parts of Africa have been the targets of the state’s neopatrimonialist designs (as has been the experience of Harambee in Kenya) or have themselves been involved in the nepotic and corrupt competition for state resources and patronage.
Exit from the state, on the other hand, is more manifestly political and elitedriven, and involves a high degree of, or aims ultimately at, disconnection from the state. This can take the form of emigration (or exile) which has increased with the intensification of globalisation and occasioned by the advent of socalled global citizenship, renunciation of citizenship and, at the level of the group, separatism and secession. But whether from the state or polity, exit amounts to a disclaimer of the state which proceeds simultaneously with a claim to ownership of the parallel sites of solidarity and selfgovernance. This resonates in the cultivation and adoption of counterstate identities, notably ethnic, religious and deviant antisystem identities (such as secret cult identities by students in tertiary institutions in Nigeria). As it were then, exit entails movement away from rather than toward the state, a transfer of identity, loyalty and support from the state to parallel sites in civil society by aggrieved, alienated or marginalised citizens and groups.
This paper is about exit from the state in Nigeria which reached a crescendo in the 1980s and 1990s with the massive emigrations of citizens abroad and an upsurge in the number, activities and significance of parallel and selfgoverning economic, sociocultural and juridical systems. In the face of the increased inability of the state to provide expected public goods and services, and the authoritarian assault of personal military dictatorships which further alienated the citizenry, most ordinary people turned to various parallel sites fundamentalist religious movements, ethnic selfhelp unions, Black Market networks, the streets, secret cults, exile, etc for survival, refuge, reproduction and empowerment. The high profile of shadow state activities performed by social movements and voluntary selfhelp organisations in areas that traditionally belong to the state, such as provision of potable water and electricity, maintenance of public schools, and security of life and property, tell the story of exit from the state.
But this is only the more obvious part of the story. Why, in the first place, is there such massive exit? What forms does exit take and what are the parallel systems and sites that have developed? What identities have flowed from these sites and how are they constructed and sustained? Is exit a recent phenomenon? If not, what changes have taken place over the years? Why, for example, has emigration abroad or exile become a popular form of exit in the recent past? How has the state responded to exit and its attendant withdrawal of support, which has further compounded the chronic crises of legitimacy and national cohesion it has suffered since inception? What are the implications of exit for Nigerian nationalism? Answers to these and other questions will be searched for by first interrogating the factors that predispose and shape exit, as presented in different theoretical formulations. It is after this which is discussed in general and comparative African terms that the more empirical dimensions of exit in Nigeria will be analysed.
EXITING FROM THE STATE: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
The various explanations for exit can be summarised into three complementary “theories” of exit which explain why people exit from the state whether as individuals or groups, and which categories of people are the more likely to exit. These are the theory of indigeneity, the theory of marginalisation, and the theory of extraneity or globalisation.
The theory of indigeneity attributes exit to the resilience of indigenous African norms of social organisation, namely the norms of (organic) group solidarity and mutual selfhelp which are expressed in the practices of sharing and community as opposed to individual welfare. Although these norms are often presented as “naturally” African, historical evidence suggests that they evolved and became significant following the failure of pristine states to protect the interests of ordinary people in the precolonial era and defend them in times of adversity. The case of kinship which has remained a key organising principle of exit structures illustrates this historical fact. According to Ekeh (1990, 1995), kinship bonds rose to prominence in the era of the slave trade when precolonial states, many of them slaving states, were unable to protect their citizens from the ravages of slave raids and the dehumanising trade many states in fact sold their very people into slavery! Disowned and spurned by states expected to protect them, the people were forced to rely on the (self) defence offered by parallel kinship solidarity networks they organised to fill the void created by the pristine states. The failures of the colonial and postcolonial states in crucial areas of citizen welfare and protection and, in particular, the violence and terrorism which underlay their operations, reinforced the need for kinshipbased selfhelp networks and structures in the contemporary era.
These networks have taken on various forms hometown associations, ethnic solidarity movements, cultural organisations, community development associations, credit societies, burial societies, etc. They have been mainly engaged in shadow state activities through selfhelp efforts, although governments have also been lobbied to these ends. The main beneficiaries of these activities were and continue to be the hometowns and ethnic home areas of the unions, but in a number of cases where patterns of residence made for ethnic concentration (such as the sabon garis or stranger quarters in northern cities in Nigeria) and/or where strangers suffered structural discrimination, the cities of domicile also benefitted (Osaghae, 1994).
Social change and modernisation have however brought about immense diversity in the organisation of parallel structures beyond kinship and natural affinities. Networks of selfhelp, community welfare, solidarity and sharing have subsequently been organised around youth interests, religion, labour, gender, professions, the community, and their like. These networks are particularly active in the informal economic sector where they have given rise to credit unions, cooperatives, and savings and loans associations. One point that emerges from all this is that exit is not an anomaly from the point of African social structure. It is in fact positive. The other point though, is that it is those who are excluded from state power and denied the resources, privileges and protection that flow from it, that are most likely to seek the comfort and defence provided by parallel structures.
This complements the explanation offered by the second theory which hinges on marginalisation. The premise of this theory is that exit, like voice and loyalty, is a product of the relations of and to state power that exist amongst the various groups or categories of people in a polity (cf. Ake, 1985). Consequently, individuals and groups who are weak, oppressed, deprived, dominated, excluded, alienated, systematically discriminated against, and unable to influence the course of state action, in short, the marginalised, are the most likely to withdraw into parallel systems beyond the control of the state, which offer alternative access to social reproduction, empowerment, selfworth, security, and defence against the ineffectiveness of the state. Conversely, those who wield or control state power or are its beneficiaries are the least likely to exit, but are likely to exit and confront the state when displaced from power.
The question then arises, why would marginalised groups opt for exit rather than confront or challenge the state to seek redress? One answer is that exit is a form of protest which invariably calls for redress. The other, more practical reason, lies in the authoritarian and terrorist character of the state hallmarked by repression, intolerance of dissenting views and opposition, as well as scant regard for constitutional rule, human rights, accountability, consultation, and responsiveness in public policy. The entrenchment of these anomalies breeds cynicism and alienation of the marginalised who then gradually lose the sense of ownership and participation necessary to make them meaningfully engage and influence the state. As the state is perceived to belong to “others”, the need is felt to create “our” own “state” (read as space). This is the logic of exits.
The third theory, that of extraneity, sees exit as the product of a constellation of global factors. The point of departure here is the view popularised by dependency and world system theorists that by the nature of their inequitable integration into the global (capitalist) system, African countries have been at the receiving end of global forces elicited in the metropole. Accordingly, aspects or forms of exit may be explained as part of the susceptibility to global forces and trends (a la diffusion effect) or as responses to external impulses and conditions which enable local formations. One of the most established strands of the theory of extraneity attributes the patterns of statesociety relations in general to the enduring effects of colonialism. Specifically, the fact that the colonial state was an imposition whose raison d’etre was at variance with the interests of the colonised who were thereby alienated, has been identified as one of the historical antecedents of exit from the postcolonial state, as it provoked the problem of ownership (Osaghae, 1998a). This strand of the theory has been criticised on the grounds that the colonial state was not a wholly colonial creation and that, even if this was the case, the postcolonial state has been reappropriated by Africans in significant ways (Bayart, 1991). The critique is valid, but it does not detract from the primacy of colonialism in understanding postcolonial formations (cf. Ekeh, 1975). Admittedly colonialism was not a one way traffic, in that it was not a simple process of osmosis between coloniser and colonised, but its effects were not cancelled by the granting of political independence; in significant ways, the pathologies of the postcolonial state are a legacy of its colonial precursor.
The other strand of extraneity analyses exit first, as an instance or local variant of current global trends, and, second, as the consequence of certain global factors which encourage and facilitate exit. In terms of trends, studies in different parts of the world, including the advanced industrialised countries, suggest that large segments of mostly marginalised groups are exiting from the state. This is attributed not only to the growing incapacity of states to satisfy the material and welfare aspirations of citizens, but also the failure of the state to respond to the demands for inclusive, difference, social and political democracy which have exploded all over the world with the rise of gender, labour, and youth movements and the asendancy of issues of human rights and equality. People have not only retreated from the state into criminal gangs, drug networks, parallel economies, and so on, there has also been a phenomenal increase in emigration which has given rise to the concept of global citizenship. The popularity of braindrain and exile as exit forms should be analysed in this context.
The effect of globalisation is more directly seen when we consider the conducive and facilitating roles of global factors for various forms of exit. Parallel economic systems Black Markets, smuggling rings, piracy and trade in pirated and fake goods, and scam syndicates cannot thrive without the collusion of international syndicates and networks which produce and purchase the goods. Drug, pornographic, criminal and prostitution networks also owe a lot to supplies and patronage from abroad, while the spread of popular music such as rap and reggae, fashion, and religious movements have been supportive of the cultivation of new, mostly deviant identities by youth and other categories. For example, the rise of fundamentalist Moslem sects in Nigeria has been aided by generous external support, including the awards of scholarships to students.
Also, the activities and support of various transnational nongovernmental organisations, as well as the World Bank, IMF and other members of the international donor community who have ditched the pathological state for civil society as the engineroom of development, have been crucial to the phenomenal increase of NGOs and shadow state activities in Africa. The political forms of exit which involve minorities and other marginalised groups demanding local political autonomy and the right of selfdetermination have been boosted by the rise of international human rights organisations and the oversight functions performed by the United Nations, European Union, Commonwealth and other international organisations which have become more interventionist in the domestic affairs of African countries ostensibly in furtherance of good governance and democratisation. Finally, the revolution in information technology that has produced the electronic mail, cable satellite systems and the internet, has further opened up the society in Africa to global trends and forces.
Although globalisation is crucial to analysis of exit in these terms, the temptation to assume that Africans are passively or uncritically receptive to the impulses it generates, or that domestic forces do not also shape those of globalisation should be resisted, which is the point made in Bayart’s critique of the theory of extraneity. For example, the exit constituencies constructed around gay and lesbian identities in Western society have not been openly embraced in most parts of Africa because of cultural and social taboos of a country in Nigeria for example Exit needs therefore to be analysed within the context of the realities of the African situation, as resulting from a combination of both domestic and global forces. For this reason the theory of extraneity should be considered alongside those of indigeneity and marginalisation which emphasize domestic factors. It is in this sense that, as was indicated at the beginning of this section, the three theories are complementary.
Having attempted to explain why citizens exit from the state, we now turn to the more empirical aspects of this paper: the forms and character of exit from the state in Nigeria.
EXITING FROM THE STATE: FORMS AND CHARACTER
To situate analysis of the various forms of exit in proper context, we shall begin with a brief outline of the empirical state of exit in Nigeria. From what has been said so far, it is clear that exit has characterised relations between the state and important segments of the citizenry for quite a long time. But the 1980s and 1990s were remarkable for the unprecedented levels and dramatic forms of massive retreat from the state. The construction of parallel economic systems, proliferation of ethnic and kinship organisations and scores of grassroot nongovernmental organisations, expansion of the scope of ‘selfhelp’ shadow state functions performed by these groups, the rise of secret cults and other deviant networks in institutions of higher learning, as well as of religious fundamentalism, and the phenomenal emigration of Nigerians abroad as exiles, all attest to the heightened levels of exit. Based on the theoretical insights provided earlier, this can be attributed to the following empirical factors.
(i) The rapid economic decline in the country, foreign debt, structural adjustment and all, which further emasculated the capacity of the state to provide jobs, subsidise education and health care, maintain social services, protect lives and property, and even pay salaries to civil servants. This forced people to devise various coping strategies to fend for themselves by all means, fair and foul. Some of the more popular coping strategies, especially for the ordinary people and the lumpenproletariat, involved exit from the state.
(ii) The unprecedented levels of violent repression and personal dictatorship unleashed by the unpopular military governments of the period. Extant and potential sites of opposition and counterhegemony (independent media, grassroots organisations, labour unions, ethnic minority organisations, student organisations, professional associations, opposition parties, human rights and prodemocracy groups) were outlawed and suppressed, while political activists and opponents were harassed, detained, and assassinated. The execution of Ken SaroWiwa and other Ogoni minority rights activists, the assassinations of Dele Giwa, a popular journalist, Alfred Rewane, an old democrat, and Kudirat Abiola, wife of the late Bashorun Moshood Abiola, winner of the annulled 1993 presidential election, and the large numbers of political detainees and prisoners, were some of the highlights of the reign of terror which, in defiance of condemnation and sanctions by the international community, decimated nonstate political space and destroyed the social basis of democracy in Nigeria. The reign of terror drove many people into the safety of exile. It also drastically curtailed the vibrant culture of protest and resistance for which critical segments of civil society, notably the press, popular musicians and university students, became well known, thereby making confrontation with the state a less likely or attractive option.
(iii) The capture of state power by regional and religious hegemons and the marginalisation and virtual exclusion of others, notably southerners, ethnic minorities and nonmuslims from enjoying the benefits of belonging to the state. The annulment of the 1993 presidential election which was won by the late Bashorun Abiola, a Yorubasoutherner, was believed to be the culmination of a grand design by a powerful Northern cabal to keep southerners out of power.
(iv) The high degree of insensitivity to the sufferings of the masses of the people, as well as a lack of responsiveness and accountability by successive military governments in their dealings with citizens during the period. These nurtured a culture of cynicism on the part of most ordinary people and organisations, which was conducive to the stepping up of exit structures.
(v) The corruption and virtual collapse of governmental structures and agencies which further worsened the crisis of legitimacy afflicting the state. The police ft been unable to keep pace with the explosive levels of violent crimes, due partly to poor funding and partly to the corruption of the force; the impartiality of the judiciary has been called to question because of pervasive corruption; public utility boards, including oil refineries, are unable to provide amenities and services even with the phenomenal increases in costs which have taken them beyond the reach of most ordinary people; and the civil service has been wrecked by all forms of corruption. The worsening crisis of confidence and credibility provoked by the decay of public institutions has encouraged and accelerated the construction of parallel economic, sociocultural and political systems. In particular, it has fed the rise of pseudocriminal networks, syndicates and gangs of smugglers, drug dealers, and their like.
We now turn to the forms of exit. The various forms of exit may be distinguished on the basis of the extent to which they approximate complete disconnection from the state (call this degrees of exit) or, in more qualitative terms, according to the character of exit which relates to the original impetus for that option. The latter approach is adopted here, degrees of exit having earlier been discussed in terms of the distinction between exit from the polity and exit from the state. Following the qualitative criterion, the forms of exit in Nigeria can be analysed according to the following sectoral categories.
POLITICAL EXIT
This involves the construction of parallel political structures typically autonomous political organisations (not including political parties), and aspirant local and state units within the federation, seeking varying degrees of autonomy from the state for reasons of dissaffection with extant political structuration and power relations. Political exit which often entails a dosage of confrontation with the state and the construction of parallel political and juridical systems, can take on a wide variety of forms. The most extreme of these include demands for or assertion of local political autonomy, separatist agitation or secessionist movement, all of which directly challenge the state and invite countermobilisation. The unsuccessful attempt by the Igboled Biafra Republic to secede from the Nigerian federation which led to civil war (196770), the declaration of a Niger Delta Republic by Adaka Boro and other aggrieved youths of the Niger Delta minorities in 1967, the loud demands in the 1980s for an abrogation of the federal system and its replacement by a confederal system by disaffected southern, especially Yoruba politicians, the threats of secession by aggrieved majority ethnic groups including most recently, those by some Yoruba leaders to secede as Oduduwa Republic on account of Northern domination, and the separatist agitations and assertion of local political autonomy by oilbearing minorities of the Niger Delta and other minority groups, exemplify this extreme form of exit.
So also do the politicoreligious Muslim fundamentalist sects and movements, notably Maitatsine, Izala, Shiite and, to some extent the Muslim Students Society, which have since the early 1980s operated in various parts of the north of the country especially, to oppose the secularity of the Nigerian state and demand the establishment of an Ayattolah (Iran)type Islamic state. Members of these movements have disconnected from the state and are governed by their own strict code of sharia law (parallel juridical system); refuse to subject themselves to the (supposedly unjust and illegal) authority of the secular state or to pay taxes (parallel political system); and attack adherents of other faiths who they believe must be conquered, jihad style, in order for their desired Islamic state to be established.
Next to these would be the assertion of cultural, linguistic and political rights and identities, often involving a drive for selfdetermination and selfgovernance by weak, marginalised, excluded and dominated groups, typically minorities. Milder forms of political exit include civil disobedience, refusal to vote in elections (such as the decision by the Ogonis to boycott the 1993 presidential election) or to pay taxes, and the symbolic assertion of the autonomy of parallel political structures through the adoption of (alternative) ‘national’ flags and anthems and the resuscitation of traditional political institutions. The declaration and celebration of “national days (and weeks)” by panethnic organisations in several parts of the country, especially the Yoruba southwest, in the 1980s and 1980s, were auspicious for the articulation of such symbolic political exit, in this case by retribalisation.
The activities of a typical national day or week which is presided over by the traditional leader of the ethnic group, and during which ethnic national flags are hoisted and anthems sung, include the adoption of a development plan for the next year or longer, and cultural activities and rituals which reinforce the group’s identity, solidarity and autonomy. An interesting variant of exit by retribalisation is to be found in the emergence of what elsewhere I have called migrant ethnic empires, which involves the construction of “tribal authorities” headed by elected “kings” by Igbos and Yorubas in most cities in the north of the country. These “empires” perform a host of important parallel political, social, economic and judicial functions, ranging from traditional shadow state functions to cultural revivalism, political representation and mediation of disputes (Osaghae, 1994, 1998b).
SOCIOECONOMIC EXIT:
This is by far the most popular form of exit for most ordinary people (the urban poor, youth, students, women, unemployed, rural dwellers, the disabled or handicapped, street children) who feel alienated, neglected, marginalised, and unprotected, and have a basic distrust of the ability of the state to redeem them. Most of these people consequently attach greater importance to the selfhelp associations, networks and social movements they organise and belong to, which give meaning to their lives, meet their sociopsychological needs, and perform shadow state functions which the state is unwilling and unable to perform. Many youths have turned to ethnic and religious organisations for solace in the face of unemployment; women’s and credit associations have become more significant for those lacking capital to begin microenterprises; traditional health care institutions have increased in popularity as most ordinary people cannot afford the high costs of modern health care; parents who cannot afford exhorbitant fees are withdrawing their children from primary and secondary schools to Quaranic schools and informal sector training centres from where, on graduation, they become mechanics, traders, tailors, cobblers, carpenters, masons, drivers, etc.
The parallel structures of socioeconomic exit can be classified into formal and informal. Formal structures which have one form of institutional organisation or the other include the various ethnic associations (hometown, village, lineageextended family, and panethnic associations) whose speciality is the broad spectrum of shadow state activities, market women’s associations and credit (esusu) societies which advance loans to set up enterprises for members, farmers associations, secret cults, religious and spiritualist organisations, neighbourhood associations such as ‘landlords associations’ which have virtually replaced the state in the provision of security and supply of water and electricity in their localities, and a host of traditional associations and movements such as agegrade societies, guilds, and women’s societies. The number and variety of these organisations, especially ethnic associations, student secret cults, fundamentalist Muslim sects and bornagain pentecostal churches have steadily increased since the 1980s, suggesting an upsurge in the number of ordinary people retreating from the modern public sector controlled by the ailing state.
The informal structures on the other hand have fleeting membership and organisation. They mostly represent the exit (read as protest or resistance) of the lumpenproletariat: lower and under classes, the unemployed, alienated youth, slum dwellers and their like. At one end of these structures are the relatively autonomous informal sector constituents the associations and networks of street traders, hawkers, artisans, unskilled labourers, and so on whose goal is to dominate or control the space claimed by their members and keep the authorities at bay as much as possible. There are also the social movements arising from religious practices such as faith healing, from popular music, such as “Fuji”, “Afrobeat”, and “juju”, and from popular fashion which express popular antisystem sentiments.
At the other end are pseudocriminal networks and gangs of “area boys”, prostitutes, drug addicts, drug cartels, fake documents syndicates, urban street children and touts, piracy, smuggling and Black Market operators who control the illegal trade in foreign exchange, pirated goods, fake drugs, smuggled goods, and counterfeit currency. There are also the advancefee fraud syndicates, popularly known in Nigeria as “419”, which use local and international connections, including government officials and lawenforcement officers, to dupe rich people within and outside the country. While also emphasizing autonomy from the state in their daytoday operations, the main interest of these latter networks lies in furthering the welfare of members and protecting them from the lawenforcement agents of the state.
EXILE:
A third form of exit which straddles the political and socioeconomic divide is exile, or emigration abroad. This form of exile which has increased in popularity since the 1980s especially among the youth, academics and professionals, is highly individualistic, as the impetus for exit varies from one person to the other. Most people go into exile to escape political persecution or death by repressive governments, or for socioeconomic reasons of material enhancement, better life (“greener pastures”) and selfactualisation. As it were, exiles prefer the status of (political or economic) refugees, legal and illegal immigrants and naturalised aliens, to the threat to life and immiseration of remaining at home. The opportunities offered by the American visa lottery and illegal visa syndicates have further encouraged the exile traffic.
But exile is not altogether an individual matter. Exiles have formed various associations and movements abroad. Many of these resonate, or are in fact external branches of, popular (kinship, ethnic, religious, traditional, regional, gender, alumni) associations at home, and persist in various forms of selfhelp development activities, some of which are targetted at constituencies back home. However, in the 1990s, with the suffocation of opposition groups at home, exile organisations underwent some form of radicalisation in response to the deteriorating political and economic conditions at home. Thus most of them, including the ‘traditional’ ethnic and religious organisations, became outspoken critics of the government at home, demanding one form of social justice or the other on behalf of their groups.
But the radical stage belonged to the newstyle manifestly political and sometimes revolutionary prodemocracy and antimilitary government movements. Notable among the new groups are the Association of Nigerians Abroad which has branches all over Europe and America, Nigerian Democratic Movement, National Democratic Coalition (NADECOAbroad), and the National Liberation Council of Nigeria led by Wole Soyinka. The activities of these groups have centred around exposing the atrocities of the military governments in Nigeria, mobilising the international community against them and, in concert with prodemocracy organisations at home, championing the cause of democratisation in the country. These groups have made elaborate use of informa if on hitech as the site of exit. The internet and electronic mail have been used to stimulate debates on political issues, and to conscientise and mobilise members of the exile community against the undemocratic governments at home. The groups are also believed to have set up Radio Kudirat, an international opposition radio station that has been used to further the cause of the opposition movement. One interesting dimension of the political exit expressed in Radio Kudirat which is symbolic of the construction of a parallel political system and rejection of the state as presently constituted, is the use of the old national anthem, “Nigeria we hail thee” in place of the current anthem, “Arise O compatriots” (several student organisations within the country do the same thing when demonstrating). Another is the mobilisation and funding of nongovernmental organisations within the country to oppose the state.
The other significance of exile lies in how its composition reflects the interface of power and exit. Where it involves large numbers of people from particular segments of the citizenry, exile becomes a good indicator of which groups suffer discrimination, marginalisation or exclusion, or whose members feel most aggrieved. The profile of those going into exile from Nigeria shows the following.
1. That youths, academics and professionals constitute the vast majority, with women making up a significant proportion;
2. That most of the others are opposition elements human rights and prodemocracy activists, leaders of separatist minority movements, retired military officers, fugitives and so on who had to flee the country under threat of assassination, detention and repression;
3. That roughly 90 per cent of all exiles come from the south of the country.
These details reveal a lot about the nature of marginalisation in Nigeria. They indicate that youths, academics and women form the bulk of the socially and economically marginalised, and that southerners are both economically and politically marginalised. With regard to the latter, it is not surprising that the activities of the opposition organisations and networks formed by political exiles centre around southern opposition to northern domination of political power and control of the country’s resources.
THE RESPONSE OF THE STATE
We shall conclude this paper by examining the response of the state to exit as we have analysed it. What are the implications of exit by important segments of the citizenry, and what dangers (or benefits) does it portend for the state? These questions need to be addressed before the response of the Nigerian state can be meaningfully analysed. Although exit involves retreat from the state, it seriously challenges the state’s totalising legitimacy and nationbuilding projects. This is because at the core of exit is a process of denationalisation, that is a weakening of the individual’s loyalty to and identity with the nationstate, and a simultaneous strengthening of sites of counterhegemonic and rival loyalties and identities. In particular, the strengthening of sites of ethnic, religious and regional solidarity which are themselves claimants to rival statehood, directly challenges the state’s first claim to the citizen’s loyalty.
The politicisation and manipulation of these nationchallenging identities by mostly disaffected and aggrieved, it has been relatively easy for displaced and ambitious elites to mobilise exit constituencies against the state, thereby transforming exit into confrontation. Indeed, counterstate mobilisation has been on the increase since the 1980s. Some of the more prominent examples include the violent eruptions of the Islamicstate seeking fundamentalist Muslim sects (Maitatsine, Shiite) in various parts of the north; the uprising of the Niger Delta oil minorities, notably the Ogoni, led by the late SaroWiwa and the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni people, to demand local political autonomy and adequate material compensation for the hazards of the oil industry; the rise of revolutionary opposition movements among the ranks of the exile communities abroad; and the rise of ethnoregional hegemons and separatists especially in the aftermath of the annulment of the June 1993 presidential election which was regarded as the height of an alleged grand design by Northern elites to exclusively control federal power.
Although resurgent ethnicity, religious fundamentalism and regionalism constitute the most potent threat to the state because as we have said they involve claims to rival statehood, the effects and implications of other exit sites and identities are equally foreboding for the state. Sites of deviance and pseudocriminal networks such as secret cults on campuses, Black markets, smuggling rings and underground movements have been used for sabotage activities which represent the resistance of the oppressed, defiance and other authoritychallenging acts. For one, smugglers and foreign exchange Black Market operators, sometimes with the backing of powerful elites and state officials, sabotage official policies and regulations on trade and currency.
Area boys, touts and members of criminal gangs have been responsible for the theft of electric cable wires which cause prolonged outages of power supply, and the theft of other materials which paralyse public amenities and services. The phenomenal rise of violent crimes, including assassinations, armed robberies, and mysterious explosions of bombs all over the country are partly attributed to elements within these exit sites. For example, the Edo state police command attributed the increase in armed robberies and other violent crimes in the state in the 1990s to students of institutions of higher learning in the state, especially those who belonged to secret cults (aspirant members of these cults are usually required to prove their bravado which is a condition for membership by leading or taking part in robberies, rape, drug use, or assaulting lawenforcement officers).
The wideranging challenges and threats posed to the state by the various forms of exit cannot therefore be overemphasized. In line with its authoritarian nature and totalising agenda, one would expect the state to suppress or eliminate if possible the bases for these threats indeed, the typical Africa state is said to be hostile to grassroots and nongovernmental organisations (World Bank, 1989). But the response of the Nigerian state to exit in general has been more mixed. As long as the sites of exit do not constitute any apparent danger, successive governments have embraced, manipulated and even supported them to gain political support, as we discuss shortly. This has been the lot of associations, especially ethnic associations, which operate as selfhelp community development associations. Even informal structures such as area boys networks have also received rehabilitation support from government. In the case of exile, the state initially pursued a patriotism campaign, urging people to remain and “salvage” the country, until the political complexion and interests of exile constituents changed.
As it were, it is when exit sites cross the threshold of tolerance and out of control, that is, once they become politicised against the state or are perceived to be so, that they attract proscription, intimidation and repression. The sites of political exit, in particular the manifestly political organisations and movements, have received such treatment, while their leaders and members have been subjected to the full force of state tyranny. But even so, attempts have been made at the political and constitutional levels to address some of the underlying problems of marginalisation which give rise to political exit. The creation of more states and local government units, introduction of such consociational or power sharing devices like the federal character principle which requires that the composition of government and its agencies should be reflective of the country’s federal character, and rotational presidency, are some of the more prominent of these attempts. But they do not go far enough, and in a sense only heighten the Father Christmas conception of the state which sustains neopatrimonialism, because the fundamental disjunctures between the state and society which alienates large segments of the ordinary people and causes them to disclaim it, remain unresolved.
On the other hand, the response of the state has been more embracing of the positive dimensions of exit especially those embodied in the shadow state activities of parallel structures which, in a sense, have helped to paper over the failings of the state and prevent what could very well have been incessant confrontation with the state by aggrieved and disaffected masses of the people. As the World Bank (1989:60) puts it, “In selfdefence individuals have built up personal networks of influence rather than hold the all powerful state accountable for its systemic failures”. But the gains from these positive aspects of exit have not been lost on state power holders who have consequently capitalised on them especially for purposes of buying political support.
Thus, selfhelp development activities have received various forms of support from the federal and state governments. These have ranged from the encouragement given to groups to form community development associations and cooperatives, to the creation of special agencies such as the National Directorate of Employment which activated small and medium scale private enterprise, the People’s and community banks which were expected to advance credit to grassroots organisations, and corporatist programmes like the Better Life (later Family Support) programme whose goals included poverty alleviation through partnership with and funding of parallel structures. However, although they address some of the material problems that lead to exit, these measures do not address the more fundamental problems of distrust and lack of confidence in the ability or willingness of the state to protect the interests of ordinary peoples and their resultant disclaimer to ownership of the state. Solutions to these problems would require changes in the character and orientation of the state, possibly through democratisation, that would make accountability, consultation and popular participation key principles of governance. These would hopefully reduce the high incidence of exit attributable to the pathologies of the postcolonial state, leaving the positive forms of exit which derive from indigenous traditions of solidarity and selfhelp.
Dr Osaghae is Professor and Head of Political Studies at the University of Transkei, Umtata, South Africa. He most recently published Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence (London Bloomington: C. Hurst Indiana University Press, 1998).
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