“Is your country a he or she in your mouth?” This is the title of one of Patricia Lockwood’s poems. The poem struck me because its title aligns with a question that has bothered me for a while: Is Nigeria a male or a female country? As far as it goes, this is a seemingly harmless question. But it is not.The answer complicates the question because our country is not simply male or female.
Two of our national symbols, the national anthem and the national pledge, are at loggerheads regarding our national identity in relation to gender. Line three of the national anthem “to serve our fatherland,”depicts our country as male. The national pledge, a 33- word oath of allegiance to Nigeriatwice deploys the pronoun “her” in representation of the country.
Lines four and fi ve: “to defend her unity,” and “uphold her honour and glory” are the two instances where the national pledge projects Nigeria as female. Nations elect to be either of these (male or female), and appropriately are regarded by their citizens as either fatherlands or motherlands. Although the two terms appear to be synonymous, the values they convey are not the same. As a practice, nations are gendered according to the type of emotional and psychological infl uence which they want to exercise over their citizens.
In effect, fatherland evokes the image of the nation as a strong, powerful, authoritative father fi gure that has to be obeyed and served. Nazi Germany adopted the most extreme version of this and rendered their nation as an alpha-male before whom certain other nations seen as female by the Nazi must submit for ‘rape’.
Motherland, on the other hand, evokes the mother figure image of benevolence, care, love, and protection, among others. The defeat and consequent shaming of Nazi Germany entailed that most nations of today prefer the feminine identity to the masculine one. Soldiers and patriots lay down their lives for their nations on the basis of these two ideals.
A soldier called to arms in a fatherland responds to it in the name of service. But one called to do so in a motherland responds for the sake of defence, of protection of motherland. Whether the modern day feminists agree with me on this or not, most societies socialisetheir young ones to think that while the all-powerful male figure must be served and obeyed, the all-beautiful and fragile female is to be defended and protected against attack. It is pitiful that we ended up with the representation of Nigeria as both male and female. This is symptomatic of the many ills besetting the country.
First, it is sign of our aversion todeep thought. Any nation that is deprived of the advantages of thought ends up lacking a spiritual soul. Second, it is also symptomatic of the haphazard manner with which we approach national aff airs in such a way that they are devoid of coordination. New decisions are taken without recourse to the ones before them. In this case, the contradiction created by the national anthem and national pledge can be explained by the fact that the two symbols were produced by diff erent individuals. While the lyrics of the national anthem is said to be the combined eff ort of B. A. Ogunnaike, EmeEtimAkpan, John A. Ilechukwu, SotaOmoigui and P. O. Aderibigbe, we owe the national pledge to Prof Felicia AdebolaAdedoyin. Instructively, the producer of the national pledge, being a woman ensured that our country was feminised whereas the creators of the national anthem, all of whom were male, envisioned a male nation and was unsuccessful in their attempt todethrone the female nation. The outcome is a nation that is at once male and female.
Thus, that Nigeria we know is one in which this practice is an on-going aff air is not in doubt. We have erected an edifi ce where chance has trumped planning, irrationality trumped rationality. Daily we see national and state governments roll out drums in celebration of their achievements without raising a single question about how the so-called achievements align with the others before it.And here lies my fear with the current cry for restructuring. If the agitators have their way, will they be magnanimous enough to look back and ensure that their new decisions cohere with the older ones.
