The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Itse Sagay can’t be right

    ITSE Sagay, Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-Corruption (PACAC), does not only possess a huge intellect, he is also an eminent legal scholar and pro-democracy activist who is not afraid to plunge into any controversy no matter how provocative and contentious. His short intervention two Mondays ago in the debate about which political system Nigeria should embrace brings to the fore once again his immense polemical talent. He says very clearly that seeking a return to parliamentarianism is both chimerical and a ploy to get at President Muhammadu Buhari. The eminent scholar is of course at liberty to come down on the side of presidentialism, and indeed the country sorely needs views like his. But since he took the PACAC job, ostensibly to promote a cause he feels so passionately about, Prof Sagay has consistently managed to reduce every argument and position that even tangentially involves the president to one of for or against the president. This is mystifying for a man of such strong views, moral standing and great accomplishments.

    On a normal day, defending the president is a hard and gruelling task. But when the president goes off on a tangent, as he customarily does, even over the most mundane and uncomplicated of issues, defending him becomes truly a gargantuan feat. Prof Sagay sometimes manages to soar to those implausible and provocative feats. The recent attempt by some lawmakers to get the country to jettison presidentialism in favour of parliamentarianism is a perfect example of how Prof Sagay takes umbrage. If his arguments had been limited to defending presidentialsim — and he gave very cogent and infallible proofs of why the system must endure — his opponents in the debate would have had a herculean task of debunking his premises. But as he has become accustomed to doing in the past two years or more, he simply entangled his arguments in the skein of his vicious words against the opposing side and the president’s problematic image.

    Prof Sagay sees those arguing for parliamentarianism as engaging in wasteful diversion of time and resources. How the eminent scholar construes what is evidently a healthy debate to be a ‘wasteful diversion’ is hard to understand. He mocks parliamentarianism as the new ‘holy grail’, and sneers at the debaters on social media and the orthodox media for pursuing “with excitement and apparent seriousness” what he regards as a political chimera. Then, quite incredibly, he skewers the opposing side with a damning sentence or two: “Let it be made clear, the whole idea of one system being better than the other is ‘poppy cock’, time wasting, arising from either ignorance or mischief. The mischief here being to have a Buhari with reduced powers.” Prof Sagay has a knack for conflating two impossible sides. He may wish to dismiss the opinion of those who see parliamentarianism as better than presidentialism as ‘poppy cock’, but how wise is it to psycho-analyse his co-debaters? Who really cares about reducing the president’s powers when the constitution is clear about the boundaries of those powers, and when the president has himself never given any indication that he wishes to be circumscribed by any document, let alone a constitution he swore to protect and defend?

    President Buhari is only incidental to the debate — to the extent that he subverts and perverts the tenets of presidentialism. Had he been prime minister under a parliamentary system, he would have with equal and disdainful panache, if not total ignorance of how a democratic system works, subverted the other system. What is uppermost in the minds of those who see value in parliamentary system is not what it does to President Buhari but what it means to Nigeria. Prof Sagay is obviously enamoured of the president, but his opponents, so-called, are not obsessed with the president despite his utter lack of democratic composure. Nor, as the eminent professor seems to think, are the parliamentary system advocates fixated on determining which is the better system of the two.

    Prof Sagay recalls the intervention of legal luminary, Rotimi Williams, in the debate on which political system to adopt in the early 1960s. Asked which was the better, Chief Williams had, according to Prof Sagay paraphrasing him, retorted: “Briefly summarized, it was that neither of the two systems was better than the other. The success of governance depended on the quality of the operators of government. Bad operators, i.e., bad politicians and ‘leaders’ would always produce bad and failed governance. In other words, the fault was not in the system of governance, but in the quality of the operators of the system.” On the surface, that response makes sense. But has it occurred to Prof Sagay that the parliamentary system advocates are not engaged in determining which is the better of the two system, but which is more suitable given the cultures and backgrounds of the peoples of Nigeria? Nigeria is an alloy of different civilisations and worldviews: the challenge is to find a system, whether once tried or still operational, past or present, that best guarantees stability and development. Prof Sagay seems to think that despite the huge cost of operating the presidential system, it is still the better option; but others think parliamentarianism will fit nicely, considering its affordability. He should make his case with all the vigour his intellect can command. But he has no right both to dismiss the other side or mock them. Their arguments are as valid, if not even more valid than his, especially considering how he vitiates his own argument by suggesting that what undid the First Republic was the reckless and irresponsible manner the politicians of the time handled power, not the regnant system of the day.

    Prof Sagay makes a sensible comparison between the powers of a prime minister and president. His opponents will not agree with him in toto. Indeed, he forgets that on the average the parliamentary system tends more frequently to produce more robust leaders, in intellect and elocution, than the presidential system. More, it also tends to discard misfits more seamlessly and with less complications. The eminent professor may be dismayed to hear this, but there is really no way a parliamentary system could have produced a Muhammadu Buhari, let alone birth what the professor describes uncharitably as the ‘foolish’ exercise of attenuating the powers of the leader. Twice the professor describes advocates of the parliamentary system as ‘foolish’, and twice he psychoanalyses them as obsessed with targeting and weakening President Buhari. Rather than insults and scaremongering, the professor needs to make a better case for both his beloved president and the presidential system.

    At the right time, this column will weigh in on the debate. But for now it is sufficient to note that only the presidential system or military rule could have produced President Buhari. More accurately, it takes a skewed and inoperable and dysfunctional political structure to produce a president whose methods of fighting corruption is stone age, whose rule of law credential is contrived and ancient, whose democratic instincts are engrafted and laboured, and whose leadership acumen thrives more on division than consensus. Will he be re-elected? It won’t be clear until late January. But if that should happen, it will be partly because the country leans more towards kakistocracy than to epistocracy, and alarmingly because the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential campaign has been unable, at least so far, to soar.

    But for the gifted polemicist, Prof Sagay, many of his admirers must wonder whether he has been best served by a public appointment, especially from a government deeply suspicious and loathing of democracy and the rule of law. Imagine if the professor had worked for, say, the great Zik or Awo, two theoreticians with diverse gifts capable of reinforcing the immense talent the law teacher is capable of exuding under the right climate. It is inconceivable that the professor, like many others who thought the Buhari presidency would be less insular with the passage of time, has not been disillusioned by the direction the government has taken, both in terms of its style and in respect of its policies. It is surprising indeed that Prof Sagay has sometimes felt the desperate need to defend President Buhari than to coax him into committing to rectitude.

    In his short intervention on the debate between the two systems, the professor advised advocates of the parliamentary system to beware of what they wished for themselves. He is indisputably right to ask them to caution themselves and to re-examine their arguments all over again, for nothing is cast in granite, and nothing says this column or any other person for that matter is right or wrong. It is not, however, all too certain that the eminent professor also cautioned himself in taking an appointment from an impossible presidency, a presidency that is difficult to defend, let alone project.

  • Emergency: Yari disgraces Zamfara governorship

    IN response to the killings going on in Zamfara State, academicians, leaders of thought, youth groups, and now the governor, have all lent support to the president issuing a proclamation of a state of emergency in the troubled state. While the killings have been going on for years, and are assuming a dimension that is both destabilising and troubling, it is hard to see any sense in calling for a state of emergency. In fact, as the Arewa Youth Forum excessively and heedlessly put it, military rule would be most expeditious to solve the Zamfara conundrum. Last week, both the governor, Abdulaziz Yari, and a senator representing Zamfara Central, Kabiru Marafa, called for a state of emergency, with the senator suggesting that the call did not imply that the governor had failed in his responsibility. The governor had jumped on the emergency proclamation bandwagon when a group of four concerned academics suggested that the situation in the state had spiralled beyond the governor’s control and needed some strong-arm measures.

    Hundreds have been killed in the state, and some communities have simply become lawless. For years, the government had responded with palliatives, in addition to military deployment. The governor himself has been largely absentee, incoherent and ineffective. The political situation in the state is also riven by division, as the last All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship primary clearly showed. Whole communities are being administered without reference to the constitution, leading to large scale slaughter and violent protests. The call for emergency, Zamfarans hope, is expected to restore peace to the state and stanch the flow of blood. While governance has been desultory and ineffective, and the governor himself irresponsible, it is doubtful whether a state of emergency is the solution. And while Zamfara has its own dangerous dynamics and peculiarities, it is not the only state convulsed by violence or by dire socio-economic conditions and political divisions.

    It is, therefore, shocking that a governor constitutionally empowered to request the president to issue a proclamation of a state of emergency finds himself backing the measure only after groups of individuals began calling for it. If he knew the situation had deteriorated so badly why did he wait for others to make the suggestion? Mr Yari is obviously not proactive enough, and his lack of diligence is being capitalised upon to set a bad precedence that might enable an equally detached and ineffective presidency to put a spanner in the works of democracy. The people of Zamfara may not care anything about the niceties of democracy in the face of widespread breakdown of law and order, but it is dangerous for those who know and care about how the democratic system works and the dangers it faces to supinely acquiesce to the state of emergency measure. It is wrong and short-sighted.

    The federal government controls the military and the police. What deployments does it want to make that it does not already have both the misshapen law on its side and the leeway to do so? It is true that Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution empowers the president to proclaim a state of emergency in any state after fulfilling some eight conditions listed in Subsection 3. But the National Assembly must, under Subsection 2, give assent. It is not certain in this case that they will. The tragedy unfolding in Zamfara is worsened by the fact that under Subsection 4, the governor needs to secure the assent of the State House of Assembly in order to ask the president to issue the proclamation. Yet, the governor, on his return from a trip in Saudi Arabia last Thursday, simply told the press that he backed the idea of issuing a state of emergency proclamation. Obviously he does not even read the constitution.

    The killings in Benue, Borno, Yobe and other places, including previously in Plateau, are as severe as those of Zamfara State, if not more, and yet no proclamation of emergency has been issued. It will be illogical to do so in the present situation in Zamfara despite the attacks still going on in the state. By holding on tenaciously to the security apparatuses of the country, the federal government makes itself the chief culprit in any breakdown of law and order. Its security architecture is outdated and incompetent, as demonstrated by the ding-dong in the counterinsurgency operations in the Northeast, while its control and supervision of the law enforcement agencies, chiefly the police, is also backward and negligent.

    President Buhari should avoid controversy and emergency proclamation distractions by simply deploying his security forces to quell the revolt building up in Zamfara. If his government possesses the capacity to do the needful, it must investigate the factors predisposing states to instability and violence so that he can defuse the impending conflagration. Next year, as oil prices plummet far below budgetary estimates, and states are unable to embark on economic intervention projects or pay salaries in line with their monthly obligations, there will be more and widespread restiveness. Unfortunately for the president, restiveness is expected to grow in 2019 by leaps and bounds partly because of both the dire socio-economic conditions of the states and the malformed political structure of the country that inhibits development and stability. Since the government is unwilling to appreciate the nexus between the malformed and dysfunctional political structure of the country and the increasing immiseration of the people, they will be unable to devise the appropriate panaceas. They will stick to poorly conceived measures and showy military operations like Operation Python Dance, and other law enforcement tactics that will neither work in the short run nor prove adequate and relevant in the long run.

    Why the Buhari presidency is unwilling to, or perhaps cannot, connect the dots in the widespread breakdown of law and order in the country, not to say the increasing alienation noticeable everywhere, is hard to fathom. They are unlikely to finally resolve the crisis in the Northeast, despite reiterating that fact during the presidential campaign in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, manage the flare-ups in other parts of the country, make the highways and communities safe for the people, and harness the potentials of hard-working Nigerians to forge a great country. Meanwhile in connection with Zamfara, the government should perish the thought of issuing a proclamation of a state of emergency. It controls the security forces and has deployed them whimsically in many states regardless of the democratic tenets of the country and the protests of the local population. Let it also do the same in this blighted state without further insulting the constitution.

  • Leah Sharibu pricks national conscience

    MORE than 10 months after she was abducted, in company with some 109 other schoolgirls from a girls college in Dapchi, Yobe State, the teenage Leah Sharibu is still languishing in the detention of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) faction of the Boko Haram insurgents. She is not the first schoolgirl to be abducted and detained endlessly, nor, given the virulence of insurgency in Nigeria, particularly as orchestrated by a conscienceless terror group like the Boko Haram, is she likely to be the last. But her case has elicited global and sympathetic attention because of the unusualness of her worldview, not to say its clarity, and the circumstances of her abduction and continued detention.

    Miss Sharibu was abducted in February, 2018, the only Christian among 110 schoolgirls taken by the terrorists. About one month later, with provocative and garish splendour, the terror group drove into Dapchi with 104 of the girls and released them to a grateful, ululating and idolising crowd. Miss Sharibu was not among. The federal government, which negotiated the release of the girls, did not give any indication it knew any girl was held back. In a culture now indicative of the shambolic nature with which the Nigerian government transacts national businesses and political affairs, the news of Miss Sharibu’s plight was first broken by her schoolmates and parents. No one is sure that during negotiations the government even knew the young girl was denied freedom on account of her defiance and religious convictions. But if they knew, excluding her from the final deal was both indefensible and scandalous.

    Before the release of the 104 schoolgirls, it was far easier to accommodate Miss Sharibu in the freedom deal. Since March 21, 2018 when the girls left captivity, the government has made very heavy weather of freeing the only schoolgirl still left in the camp of the increasingly vicious ISWAP militants. And so whether the abduction itself or the mishandling of the initial negotiations for the release of the girls, the federal government is culpable. Dapchi town should have been secured, not to say the school itself, after the more infamous abduction of the 214 Chibok, Borno State, schoolgirls in 2014. And the negotiation to free the girls should have been more painstaking and comprehensive. The anti-terror war has proved very costly and intractable, much more than anyone ever envisaged when the crisis began actively in 2003 but breaking out again in 2009. Families have been shattered, including those of serving military personnel whose losses have exposed the desultory manner the country has prosecuted the war against a group of some 5,000-7,000 militants lacking in training, doctrine, discipline and coherent ideology, while the economy has taken a severe beating.

    But much more than anything else, Miss Sharibu, who has been chosen by this newspaper’s Board of Editors as their Person of the Year, has demonstrated that in the midst of a national whirlpool of vices, all hope is not lost. On the surface, she demonstrated a rare attachment to her faith on a level that is clearly transcendental, far nobler than the general conception of religious conviction in a country where many wear their religions on their sleeves, where religion has for all practical purposes been politicised and transformed into business and commercial ventures. There is of course nothing wrong with devotion to one’s faith, and it is even possible that given the subtle persecutions and intimidation people like Miss Sharibu have endured over the years, they have become more disposed to an instinctive defence of their faith. It is also possible, and much more likely than anyone has perceived, that Miss Sharibu’s family background had sensitised and primed her to stand up to be counted when her faith is being subjugated or subjected to various official intimidatory practices.

    Indeed, given the fact that she was the only Christian schoolgirl among the about 110 abductees, it is likely she had lived with a constant and refining reminder of her Christian background — in school prayers, dressing and social relations. These and many more experiences probably made her inured to the dangers she faced in defying her abductors, regardless of their guns and cruelty, and irrespective of the slothfulness of the government in projecting neutrality in matters of faith or protecting and defending religious minorities. The government may protest their innocence, but they have done enough in many parts of Nigeria to indicate only subjective neutrality. Having thus faced the ordeal of sticking out like a sore thumb, and being constantly reminded of that difference, Miss Sharibu and her ilk may think nothing of the defiance that has become both culturally and experientially intrinsic to their worldview. Occasional harassments may elicit transient shock and uncoordinated and unpredictable responses; institutionalised harassments, such as many of Miss Sharibu’s ilk are familiar with, have on the other hand and over the decades provoked the coordinated and contemplative responses regarded today as truly and deeply inspirational. If only on this superficial level, Miss Sharibu is undoubtedly deserving of this newspaper’s Person of the Year.

    But her story must be contextualised better than this, and must be analysed on a far more subliminal basis than just a young girl standing up for her faith. In a multicultural and multi-faith country where religion has been both politicised and vulgarised, where shockingly many leading government officials are themselves closet religious extremists who secretly nurse the purgatory schemes redolent of political rightism and Nazism, analysts must be careful to accurately contextualise the profound courage displayed by Miss Sharibu in the face of her mindless and relentless persecutors. Hers was unlikely to be a campaign to project Christian values per se, nor, strictly speaking, was it a scheme to deploy faith attributes and values in order to defy her abductors and persecutors. Had it been both these, one month with her abductors would probably have been enough to cure her of the desire for either martyrdom or heroism. She is now more than 10 months with her captors; her courage is, therefore, more likely intuitively defensive than projective, not designed to claim rights or stand grounds or sharpen faith-based identifications, but formulated as personal and psychological imbuement quite unrelated to the man, terrorist or faith next door.

    By making Miss Sharibu the Person of the Year, this most secular and liberal of newspapers is merely drawing attention to a different narrative about faith-based actions, that rather than estimate the value of a person in terms of his religious identifications, the society must begin to acquire the culture of examining the more transcendental theme of man as a principled person whose leitmotif speaks to grander values and virtues. Miss Sharibu was neither defending nor projecting her faith; she was, perhaps unconsciously given her age, standing up for the larger perspective and ideal of tolerance in a way that is richly accommodating, never exclusive nor isolationist, but also ultimately not threatening. Her principled stand can therefore not be rhapsodised on the basis of religious purity but on the basis of her attachment to and projection of human essence: that no matter the cost, a person must stand for something or die trying; and that certain causes may in fact be found to be so noble and enriching that a person must be willing to die for it, far beyond culture, far beyond faith, far beyond class.

    When she was abducted, Miss Sharibu was 15 years old. Her stand and life are probably more emblematic of high ideals than her age signifies. But that stand, whether related to her age and faith or not, is reassuringly indicative of greatness and maturity anchored on principles and courage. In recent years, Nigeria has shown how clearly destitute of such virtues her people have become. For Miss Sharibu to look her captors in the face and defy them in their imperious demand that she recant, despite the force they could muster, reminds the analyst of Nelson Mandela’s statement from the dock when he opened his defence at the Rivonia Trial on April 20, 1964. Said the iconic South African and statesman: “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

    Miss Sharibu’s stand also reminds the analyst of Winston Churchill’s statement during a crucial cabinet meeting in May 1940 in the opening months of World War II. Referring to the question of whether to appease Adolf Hitler’s Germany or not, the new British prime minister had said: “If this long island story of ours is to end at last let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” This is of course not an attempt to draw a parallel between Miss Sharibu and the British prime minister, but it probably indicates, upon a consideration of the fierce argument that accompanied the initial policy of appeasing Hitler, that the seed of a man’s principled stand on any issue is probably both intrinsic and unmistakeably complex. It cannot be easily explained, nor does it depend on age, faith, birth or association. Comparisons are odious, but it is enough that Miss Sharibu’s freed classmates told his family that their daughter was kept in captivity because of her refusal to recant. Had she been kept back because of any other reason, it would probably not have qualified her for more than a mere mention as has been done for so many other abductees. Her defiance and courage in the face of her armed tormentors and captors, her young age, and her loyalty to her ideas and worldview in a country impoverished by poverty of ideas and lack of values and principles, qualify her for more than a mere mention. She is an unusual person.

    By making her their Person of the Year, this newspaper not only acknowledges her essence and role as a model for everyone, young and old alike, they may also coincidentally help to renew focus on her plight, and perhaps even inadvertently endanger her life by putting a higher premium on her being. But overall, they will hope that her rescue someday, in addition to her fortitude, will enable her reach a potential comparable to or even exceeding that of Yousafzai Malala, the Pakistani schoolgirl who survived an attempt on her life in 2012 in the course of advancing girl-child education. More, this newspaper hopes her stand and her plight would continue to prick the national conscience in a way nobody or any single event has done for a very long time.

    The Chibok and Dapchi abductions are a blight upon the reputation of Nigeria, an indication of the increasing impotence of government policies and ineffectiveness of national security policies. Like other sundry crimes laying the society waste, abduction of schoolgirls and sometimes their murder continue. The young schoolgirls were entrusted into the care of the country and its government. Now many of them are lost forever. When Chibok happened, few thought that after some sort of rescue had been managed another abduction could ever happen again, at least not on the massive and embarrassing scale that gripped world attention in 2014. But four years later, it happened, this second time with flourish and with theatrical overtones added by the abductors for effect. To underscore national impotence, Miss Sharibu has been left behind in captivity, her abductors sneering at the country and making jest of its effete leaders, while her family has been left inconsolable to publicly nurse their private grief. Could another major abduction not happen again? No one can say for sure. But if Nigerian leaders still have a conscience, if Nigerians still have any shame left, they would swear that the Chibok and Dapchi abductions would be the last. But there are no guarantees in a country so tentative and so unstructured that its leaders lack the imagination to connect the dots between their dysfunctional polity and their abysmal resistance to new paradigms. No matter how the Miss Sharibu affair is resolved, the government is still unlikely to examine the foundations of the crimes inundating the country, let alone recognise that real change is the key to a stable and prosperous future.

     

     

     

     

  • Akande, presidentialism and parliamentarianism

    THE debate over which is the better system of government between presidentialism and parliamentarianism is really yet to take off. It is subsumed under a far more fractious and cantankerous debate over the country’s structure. Since there is no agreement yet over structure, it appears there can be no lasting agreement over systems. The restructuring debate is unfortunately so bad-tempered that it is mediated through cracked ethnic prisms. At the press conference to mark his 79th birthday, former Interim Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bisi Akande, last Tuesday exhumed the debate over both restructuring and systems of government. He easily voted for parliamentarianism for its inclusiveness, transparency and accountability; dismissed presidentialism for being too costly and complicated; and assumed that restructuring the country was ineluctable.

    Whether they call restructuring by the name of true federalism or devolution of power, as the ruling party describes it in its manifesto to the amnestic convenience of its leaders, or restructuring, as most patriots would prefer to see it, it is inevitable that the country must one day come to terms with its misshapen structure and take concrete steps to remake it along the visionary postulations of the country’s founding fathers. Regardless of the country’s preoccupation with the politics of re-election, which is set to heighten in the coming months, Chief Akande is right to draw attention to the system of government he thinks is most appropriate for Nigeria. His view deserves more than a cursory glance, for it is really difficult to separate structure from system. Let the debate be taken together, as indeed quite a number of debaters have done in the past few months.

    In Chief Akande’s words: “President Buhari is my friend and I want him to succeed but he is running a difficult system of government. Nigeria’s democracy is a military democracy of sharing and if we continue like this, there is no how we can succeed. Up to this present age, evidence based analyses has proven parliamentary democracy to be the most accountable transparent form of government in the whole world…It has made the United Kingdom prosperous, and Israel stable, and is also transforming India from acute poverty and hunger into self sufficiency and reliability virtually in all fields. Apart from being transparent and accountable, parliamentary democracy is absolutely inclusive. It appears to be the best form of governmental structure for Nigeria now. In Nigeria’s presidential system of government, lawmakers are elected on party platforms, but as soon as they get to the parliament, the party on which platform they get the opportunity, becomes less important.”

    The former APC chairman is actually right about the evidence-based analysis he referenced. He is also right to conclude, as his party has shown at state and national levels, that lawmakers diminish their parties the moment they take their seats. He knows, as everyone else does, that the APC as a party has exercised little or no influence on both the polity and government since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office. Worse, the party’s lawmakers have acted as if both the party and the executive are aliens. Chief Akande was not just interim chairman of the ruling party, he was also governor of Osun State, making him to experience politics at both party and executive levels. His views and arguments deserve to be examined with seriousness and candour. At least he has shown that since vacating office, he has ruminated on why he had trouble with the Osun legislature, and why the country has appeared not to make tangible progress both in the practice of democracy and in the pursuit of economic development. More importantly, he is willing to engage in debate in order to see whether a common ground could not be found to engender development and stability.

    But in his New Year’s Day address to the nation, President Muhammadu Buhari was characteristically dismissive of the quest for both a new national structure, aka restructuring, and a more workable and less acrimonious system of government, especially the calls for a return to parliamentarianism. Said the president, first with his customary paternalistic airs, then irritably: ” In respect of political developments, I have kept a close watch on the on-going debate about “Restructuring”. No human law or edifice is perfect. Whatever structure we develop must periodically be perfected according to changing circumstances and the country’s socio-economic developments. We Nigerians can be very impatient and want to improve our conditions faster than may be possible considering our resources and capabilities. When all the aggregates of nationwide opinions are considered, my firm view is that our problems are more to do with process than structure. We tried the Parliamentary system: we jettisoned it. Now there are shrill cries for a return to the Parliamentary structure. In older democracies, these systems took centuries to evolve so we cannot expect a copied system to fit neatly our purposes. We must give a long period of trial and improvement before the system we have adopted is anywhere near fit for purpose.”

    The president spoke inaccurately of the impatience of critics, which he summed up as a national attitude. Yet, the parliamentary system was in operation after independence for essentially less than six years, when it had hardly been subjected to adequate stress tests. Meanwhile the presidential system has been in operation for about 19 years since the beginning of the Fourth Republic without any indication that it would get better. So, whether parliamentary or presidential, the country has passed through the whole gamut of patience and impatience. What is more crucial, as Chief Akande says, but which the president apparently fails to understand, is that the country must determine whether holistically the presidential system is not more opaque, more costly, and less responsive than the parliamentary system. Entwined in both is the indispensable factor of the country’s superstructure, its national question. What is obvious is that Chief Akande has had time to reflect; and President Buhari has hardly found the time.

    It is even clearer that judging from the president’s January 1, 2018 address he has not found time to study the parliamentary system of government, nor, it seems, can he convince anyone that he has patiently examined the weaknesses of the presidential system. Like anyone else, he is of course entitled to reason and maintain a position, but that position must be informed by knowledge, experience and brilliance, all far above the national average. In his speech, he did not mention one great virtue of presidentialism, nor one great vice of parliamentarianism. Beyond coming down hard on critics, it is important that he must argue his position persuasively, much more than just holding it tamely and inflexibly. Indeed, it must be clear to the president what the definitions of both systems are, and what great political principles distinguish and undergird them.

    It is not the country that is impatient, as the president surmised; he is in fact the one who is condescending. Even if he did not take a position as president and a reformed democrat, as he described himself, it was expected of him to invite rather than stifle discussions on those pertinent subjects. That is what Chief Akande has done. The former Osun State governor did not imperiously advocate one position over another; instead he simply put his observations and convictions before the public, asking them to consider whether the country should not make a recourse to the past. On the other hand, the president, without substance and foundation, called for an end to the discourse on systems and restructuring, when he should have invited more debate. The country needs the debate, only that it must be held civilly. Nigerians must be living in denial to conclude that the current system works and only needs tinkering. Even if there is no agreement on the prognosis, there can be little doubt that the current structure is not working. What will make it work is not patience.

    The president has no reason to stifle the debate on systems of government and restructuring. He should encourage it. In fact, he should join it from an informed perspective. He must not only update his knowledge on systems and structures, as these are crucially vital and indispensable, he has a responsibility, as president, to inspire and lead the debate at a level that is both productive and regenerative. It is not enough for the president to get bogged down with policies and politics, he must find quiet moments to renew himself through the aspiration and eventual application of knowledge. Had he engaged in that refining task of knowledge acquisition as president, he would definitely have anticipated the herdsmen/farmers clashes, developed alternative models, harnessed the debates on the changing structures of the Nigerian economy with reference to dairy farming, and helped the country avoid the needless bloodletting in which it is immersed.

    It is apposite to draw the attention of the president to an entry in Encyclopaedia.com by Maxwell A. Cameron, a scholar who attempts to differentiate the two systems of government. Said he: “A constitution is presidential if the executive and legislative branches of government are elected separately for fixed terms. In parliamentary systems, the executive (typically led by a prime minister) is selected from among the members of the legislature and may be removed through a vote of no confidence. The difference between these types of democratic constitutions hinges, therefore, on two distinctions. First, in a presidential system, candidates compete for seats in the legislature or for executive office by running in separate elections. In a parliamentary system, candidates run for seats in the legislature, and then form a government based on the ability of a party or coalition to win the confidence of a majority of the members of parliament. Second, presidential systems follow fixed electoral calendars. Once elected, the president and the congress typically hold office for a specified term. In parliamentary systems, the government’s term can be brought to an end at any time by a vote of no confidence or an act of dissolution.”

    The president will find that these systems are not as forbidden or unapproachable as he thinks, nor as abominable as those who have taken positions one way or the other imagine. Let the president enrich his understanding by patiently studying these systems, asking for debates and contributions on whether the systems cannot be adapted to meet local needs, as the French and many other nations have done, and seeing whether instead of being constantly and discourteously reactive and offended, he can’t find the good grace and open-mindedness to champion Nigeria into the future. Chief Akande has belled the cat; let the president imitate his courage and learning.

  • Lawmakers seek parliamentary system

    LATE last week, 22 members of the House of Representatives, acting on behalf of some 71 lawmakers, addressed the press on a bill they were sponsoring at the lower legislative chamber. The bill, if it passes, is designed to return Nigeria to a parliamentary system of government. In January, former Osun State governor and interim chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bisi Akande, had told the media while marking his 79th birthday that the parliamentary system of government was to be preferred over the cumbersome, opaque and expensive presidential system currently in operation. In response to his erudite contribution, this column had penned a short exposition on the debate about which system of government is best suited for Nigeria. That short piece first published in January is reproduced above.

    But last week, some members of the lower legislative chamber weighed in on the debate and, without mincing words, pointedly asked for the support of their colleagues to vote for the parliamentary system. They adduced reasons, many of them in sync with what Chief Akande ably argued on January 16, 2018. Here is an excerpt from the 71 lawmakers’ arguments, as presented by their spokesman, Nicholas Ossai: “Studies have shown empirically that countries run by presidential system consistently produce lower output growth, higher and more volatile inflation and greater income inequality relative to those under parliamentary ones. Little wonder the rich continue to be richer whilst the poor get poorer, and we have become the poverty capital of the world…There are countless empirical records which show that output growth under presidential systems are in zero points (negative) while output growth under parliamentary systems clocks from one point and above (positive). Great Britain is an example. France is another example. Australia is also an example of countries with high positive output. …Due to the excessive powers domiciled in one man under the presidential system, consensus building that is often required for economic decision is always lacking. If it is under a parliamentary system, the prime minister is part of the legislature. The over-centralisation of government decisions that is prevalent in a presidential system obstructs economic development when compared to the parliamentary or hybrid system…The decentralisation of powers in parliamentary system helps to douse tensions in countries – like Nigeria – where ethnicity, race, religious differences and ideological divisions are prevalent, thereby promoting peace and unity which are ingredients for economic growth and development…Parliamentary systems promote inclusion and collectiveness which is critical to equality of income distribution and opportunities.”

    It is not clear whether this intervention by the 71 lawmakers is not coming late in the day, especially given the nearness of the debate and the amendment effort to the next set of elections. Nor is it clear that 71 lawmakers actually and wholeheartedly back the intervention. And if the number of those sponsoring the bill is accurate, there is no proof, until it is shown to the public, that the 71 legislators are actually representative of the country’s geopolitical sensibilities. But if these misgivings are finally settled, the lawmakers must be applauded for their thinking and courage. The present Nigerian structure is inoperable, through and through. It is also inordinately expensive, unrepresentative, ponderous, monarchical, and simply too inadequate for the future.

    A cursory look at the economy, and particularly the inability to pay wages and guarantee development and infrastructural renewal, indicates very clearly that something urgently must be done to snatch Nigeria from the jaws of impending chaos. Tinkering with the system or hoping that the people and their elected representatives can suddenly become altruistic, is simply insufficient for the crying need of the times. Something drastic must be done. Chief Akande was dispassionate and visionary enough to lend his voice to the need for substantial change; now 71 lawmakers have added their weight. Nigeria must find the boldness to conquer their fears and address the future. So far, sadly, they have done nothing to show that they are thinking of that future.

  • PDP’s brinkmanship far worse

    THE opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is desperate to win next year’s presidential election in order to bury the ghost of the crushing and dispiriting defeat it suffered in 2015. But the party has taken no step, said nothing inspiring, and shown no spark to indicate its readiness to retake office. Like the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) that took the presidency from the fumbling hands of the incumbent more than three years ago, the PDP never quite managed to be run like a political party. Except boasting about the decades it hoped to stay in office, the PDP was incapable of envisioning anything great for Nigeria. Also, in recent days, the campaign of the party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has teetered dangerously on the brink. With both the party and its candidate fumbling with structures and ideas, and with internal dissension coursing through the campaigns, fewer PDP leaders and external observers are nursing hope of victory as they did some two months ago when the party held its boisterous convention and freshly crowned their mercurial standard-bearer.

    There was no presidential election year that the PDP and its undistinguished presidential candidates were not vulnerable in their 16 years in office. President Olusegun Obasanjo never quite sat pretty in office in his first term. He was vulnerable in 2003, and could have been beaten fair and square by an enterprising and daring candidate. Alhaji Atiku was nearly that candidate. President Umaru Yar’Adua, who was foisted on the country by Chief Obasanjo, was even more vulnerable than his predecessor, going by his poor health, lethargy and, despite his education, his provincialism. Had he completed his first term, he would have been defeated inside or outside his party. And President Goodluck Jonathan, the fabled third man, was never more vulnerable than when he proved conclusively by his manners, policies and appointments that he was available for target practice. Nearly 20 years after that bewildering display of serial presidential incompetence, President Buhari has revived the worst in the PDP, blended it with his own unforced blunders, and opened himself and his party for a knockout blow.

    That blow may, however, never be delivered. For though the Buhari presidency is tottering on the brink of defeat, the PDP itself is gyrating on the cusp of surrender and implosion. While the APC has elevated political brinkmanship to an art form, and its leaders are quite unable to press their advantage by uniting themselves behind a great candidate and an even greater cause, the PDP, on the other hand, simply seems to have a death wish. They were, like their hated enemy, never a party nor run like one, and they have compounded their unstructured existence with a gnawing absence of ideology or even the most elementary idea that appeals to a college student. They were always practical, but they were mostly ad hoc. Chief Obasanjo birthed and proved that ad hocism; the dogmatic Alhaji Yar’Adua groped around for it and embraced it; and Dr Jonathan sneered at it but finally surrendered to it. They managed some feats in their 16 years in office, but it is doubtful whether any other president in a third-rate African country could not have managed similar or even greater feats.

    No one who has followed the trajectory of the coming presidential contest can fail to grasp the fact that the PDP unconsciously rests its chances in that election on the inexperience and political, judicial and legislative malfeasances of the ruling party. They are not sure their luck would hold out in the weeks ahead, a luck that depends almost wholly on the APC aggravating its internal squabbles, and the president naively hoping that his trashing of the rule of law and the propaganda he had engineered to pillory the corrupt would, in combination, excuse the party’s many faults. There are, however, some signs of healing taking place in the APC. The president has sensibly and quietly walked back the advice he gave to aggrieved APC aspirants to seek legal redress, and the pugnaciousness of party chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, has proved paradoxically relevant in restoring some form of tenuous discipline to the party. Grumbling governors who bristled at their party chairman’s methods have since given in to despondency by seeking new berths for their protégés.

    Increasingly, therefore, both Alhaji Atiku and the PDP will find narrower latitude to fumble and play the political harlot. The party and its standard-bearer anchor their drive for the presidency on the complete amenability of the Southeast and South-South. That calculation is, so far, far-fetched. The Southeast governors in the PDP column are not only non-committal, they even look eager to stymie the PDP’s march towards the presidency. Two factors explain their indifference. One is their belief that Alhaji Atiku has given no commitment whatsoever on whether he would do only one term and then engineer an Igbo politician to succeed him. He has of course nodded an agreement of sorts, the nodding being hardly perceptible, but like Chief Obasanjo in 1999, he will append no signature to anything. Indeed, there is no politician in Nigeria who is brave enough to sign such a deal. It is naive to expect anyone to sign, given the monarchical proclivity of the Nigerian presidency.

    Second, the Southeast PDP governors and national lawmakers grumble that Alhaji Atiku has so far run an exclusive campaign that admits no consultation or inclusiveness. The campaign has tried to paper over the cracks, but success in that direction has been slow and tedious in coming. But more significantly, and closely leashed to that complaint, is the fact that the ruling APC has done its best to bait the governors, including Imo State’s Rochas Okorocha, insisting that their best bet for an Igbo man to assume the presidency in 2023 lies with supporting President Buhari for another four years instead of supporting Alhaji Atiku for a possible eight years. The governors ignore the more sensible views from among their kinsmen who caution that the best chance to enthrone an Igbo man as president lies with neither President Buhari nor Alhaji Atiku, but with any Igbo politician who is able to equip and project himself as a leadership material.

    Governor Okorocha of Imo State is perhaps the most colourful politician in the Southeast today, but his colourfulness evokes nothing inspiring or serious, nothing visionary or principled. He is in fact a dramatist par excellence, a politician who is mesmerised by how he speaks than by what he says. Yet, of the lot in the Southeast, he is the most noticeable, perhaps also the most gregarious. It is, therefore, not surprising that the governors of the region have been unable to examine Alhaji Atiku properly and unsentimentally, and worse, have been woefully incapable of weighing the dominant political issues pertaining to the goals and ambitions of their region. None of them stirs any emotions, and the PDP candidate must be stupefied to have to deal with them. But deal with them he must if his presidential bid is not to miscarry, as some have begun to fear. He will eventually get their approvals, but those approvals would be next to worthless. The candidate will have to find ways of reaching the disenchanted people of the Southeast directly, hoping that their other leaders, such as the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, whose discriminating and analytical views of politics are more reliable, can find the time and resources to corral  the region for the PDP.

    The South-South used to be a natural habitat for the PDP. It is increasingly doubtful whether that identity has not been compromised or entirely supplanted by the arrival of fifth-rate and less scrupulous politicians and governors like Rivers State’s Nyesom Wike. Since 1999, every succeeding election cycle has unleashed far less endowed governors and political leaders on Nigeria. The South-South is evidently not immune. Absurd drama is playing out in Akwa Ibom, Cross River is seething, and Rivers State, which is governed by a man with an oversized sense of entitlement and unmanageable temper, is witnessing a descent to the doldrums. Edo and Delta have quietly sunk into a vacuum of indescribable emptiness.

    Alhaji Atiku’s presidential bid is thus plagued by the confusion and morass inundating the South-South and Southeast. He will require the talent of a genius and the patience of Job to find his way through those nauseating warrens. It is doubtful he has any of those virtues in his moral armamentarium. For a presidential contender facing both a chaotic APC and a president whose ambition for a second term is nothing more than just to snooze away the lazy days in office, the PDP candidate must feel very desperate about what to do with nature that has blessed him with a weak opposition. But that same nature, he must ponder ruefully, is playing a cruel joke on him by cursing him with an even much weaker and internally riven team.

    And to cap all the maladies the PDP candidate will have to battle with on the rough road to the presidency, he is the standard-bearer of a party that has not felt the urgency of reforming its ways, purging its ranks, and developing a great and attractive platform upon which its contenders can stand to fight bitter and epochal political battles. Barely two months to the elections, it is too late for the opposition party to reform and reposition itself. After all, the ruling party is also stuck with its Neanderthal structure and leaders. The APC recognises the weaknesses of its candidate and has tried to circumnavigate around his jaded and provocative style and policies. The PDP will have to depend on Alhaji Atiku to define the campaign, shape it, promote the party’s new false face, and hope that the weaknesses of the APC will prove far more telling, off-putting and catastrophic than the puny strengths of the PDP and its candidate. At no time in Nigeria’s dizzy election periods has such a huge ambition been left in the arms of so frail a fate.

     

  • APC’s unending brinkmanship

    A LITTLE over one week after the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ordered its aggrieved members to stop litigating the acrimonious party primaries in their states, President Muhammadu Buhari distanced himself from the party and uncharacteristically reaffirmed his faith in the courts as the last arbiter. The party had on November 19 warned members who had taken the party to court to withdraw the suits or face sanction. Citing Article 20, Subsection 10 of its constitution, the party had insisted that failure to exhaust the party’s intermediation processes before going to court was a flagrant subversion of party regulations. But on November 26, the president weighed in and asked those aggrieved to disregard the party’s threat and continue to explore their chances in the courts.

    The party may well have been right and shrewd to caution and restrain its litigious members, especially in the light of the provisions of its constitution, and had obviously hoped that the prospect of peace, whatever the cost, would brighten or at least sustain the chances of the party in the next polls. But to the angry and despondent in the party, three of whom are close to the president, and are well known and celebrated for their temper and intransigence, the party’s order was foolish and intemperate. They had sworn to fight the party to the death over the primaries dispute, but increasingly it was looking like the only ones dying were the angry party leaders. So, to save face, and perhaps to ply the party with more discomfort and unbearable pressure, they headed for the courts. To be then told by their party that even litigation was unacceptable was to subject them to indignity beyond their natural forbearance.

    Sensing that the aggrieved chieftains had reached the end of their tethers, the president waded into the fray and overruled the party’s orders. The bitter chieftains, said the president, could go to court to seek redress, for the party must never carry itself so imperiously as to be the final authority in any dispute. It was not clear whether the president really thought any good could come out of the litigations, or whether the chieftains would get the redress they sought, but he was clearly happy to make what appeared to many observers to be the first really philosophical suggestion he had ever made since joining partisan politics. He suspected the courts, and felt they were slow and ponderous and mysterious, but here he was sounding concerned about the disaffected in the party and eager to assuage their hurt. And he capped his concerns with a little philosophy.

    Said the president: “We can’t deliberately deny people of their rights. We agreed that party primaries should be conducted either through direct, indirect or consensus method, and if anyone feels unjustly treated in the process, such a person can go to court. The court should always be the last resort for the dissatisfied. For the party to outlaw the court process is not acceptable to me.” It is reassuring that the president spoke about the people’s rights, and why they must never be denied, and of the courts as the last resort, admitting that nobody had the right to abridge it or arrogate it to themselves. The president’s philosophical undertones may be trite and sophomoric, but they were nonetheless somewhat engaging and pleasant to the ears, and even to the rest of the senses. If only the president had taken his own counsel and applied it to the Sambo Dasuki case and the Ibraheem el-Zakzaky rigmarole, both of which he not only prejudged but had sounded a note of finality on them that fully scorned the courts.

    The suspicion is indeed rife that President Buhari reached deep into his philosophical core in order to mollify the anger of certain party chieftains who, in action and speech, had all but deified him. They had been with him for much longer than many others in the APC, and had submitted both their will and their souls to him to lead as he pleased. The president was therefore torn between subverting the party to please his friends or reinforcing the party to brighten his electoral chances. It obviously did not cost him anything, nor, it seems, the party too, to keep the legal channels opened to the aggrieved chieftains. He was smart enough, and experienced had taught him too, to know that the legal channels had become occluded long ago for the chieftains. They were unlikely to get the redress they sought, and even if they got a hearing, and assuming the ponderous judicial system could be catalysed to deal with the case, the result would still be futile.

    Yes, the president knew all this, but the aggrieved chieftains were not so dim-witted as not to know that coming so close to the elections and the end of the nominations, the courts were also effectively powerless, reduced as it were to only rubber-stamping the processes the chieftains complained so bitterly about. For conscience sake, the president had taken the rather safe and placatory step of disagreeing with his party leaders, a measure the bitter political leaders had waited for him for so long to take. Well, he finally repudiated his party’s administrators, but the outcome of the dispute was never in doubt both to him and anyone else. It was brinkmanship all round, but brinkmanship only in theory. No one was in doubt how the president had voted in the controversial primaries, despite his initial and lasting squeamishness.

    Realistic and sensible, the aggrieved chieftains finally threw in the towel and played their jokers. They inspired a few defections, and importantly got their factional governorship candidates, the ones left in the cold by the party, to move to other parties where they easily secured tickets as standard-bearers. They will stand for the governorship elections, but they will not have a big and solid party structure behind them but the ephemeral structures of the flailing governors. Their intention is that while they remain in the ruling party, they will work for their candidates who had taken shelter in other parties. How they hope to run with the hare and hunt with the hound will be one of the most difficult balancing acts of this political season. It has never worked, and no party has ever tolerated such flagrant display of disloyalty. But the aggrieved politicians will hope to have their cake and eat it in the presence of an indulgent president who, they think, understands their plight.

    Having achieved his aim couched in altruistic terms, party chairman Adams Oshiomhole wisely refused to join issues with the president after being overruled. He knew the court cases would peter out into fatuity, for after all, the aggrieved factional candidates had left for other pastures to graze, and cannot any longer diligently prosecute their suits against their former parties. But he also knew that he had outplayed those he regarded as state emperors in the ruling party. Curiously, he kept on protesting his innocence in the whole drama, and even reiterated his friendship with the aggrieved chieftains. They swore at him and promised him hell, but he responded gamely by blowing hot and cold, reaffirming his loyalty to their common friendship and in the same breath determining to cut them to size. But against the president, he said not a word. Next, he will probably find ways to stifle the aggrieved chieftains, choke their candidates, and threaten their remaining interests in the party. For a party chairman whose position seemed precarious a few weeks ago, it must puzzle observers that he has not only come out on top, but that he has spectacularly worsted his enemies to the bargain.

    But despite Mr Oshiomhole’s notable triumphs and the president’s byzantine philosophy, the party will without question go into the next elections divided and petrified. They have embraced political brinkmanship of the worst variety. In their private moments — and perhaps this viewpoint would have been impressed on the president — they will wonder whether it was not wiser to adopt affirmation rather than the elective convention they organised in June. They knew they were buffeted by so many demons, and had hoped to keep those powerful dragons chained in the bottomless pits dotting the states under their control. But by opting for an elective convention and later embracing the devil’s metaphysics of direct and indirect primaries, it was clear to them that all the demons congregating under their fragile roof would soon break out in open revolt. They were not disappointed. But they were surprised that the revolts were much fiercer than they had hoped, and lasted longer than is good for their political objectives.

    The party made a lot of money through their obscene pricing of nomination forms, and as the ruling party, they will have more access to free cash for their campaigns than the opposition. Above all, while their spooks and anti-graft agencies will sniff around the finances of the opposition to put a cog in the wheel of their campaigns, the finances of the ruling party will permanently smell of roses. Soon the president and his party will close ranks and train their guns on the opposition, but their mutual suspicion and rivalries will never really go away. The opposition is battling its own demons, perhaps hamstrung by shortage of cash and lacking the kind of confidence and daredevilry the APC summoned in 2015 to telling effect. But in the next one or two weeks, as the campaigns shape out, it will become a little clearer whether the APC has been hurt by its internal turmoil and unending brinkmanship, and the opposition helped by the country’s powermongers and the meddlesome coalition of foreign and domestic forces convinced that President Buhari had in his first term given his all and can do no other and go no further.

    Should the APC win, it is expected that the party will eventually find its feet. Mr Oshiomhole’s cataclysmic ideas and political antecedents seem to imply that tempting possibility. He has been accused of running the party with the brutal firmness and candour of a chief executive officer, and he seems to have made up his mind on most things, and those things have often grated on the nerves of those disadvantaged by his decisions. And though he sometimes sounded conciliatory, they allege that more often than not he seems to court and relish a fight. The Zamfara State governor, Abdulaziz Yari, loathes him with a passion, and was caught on tape recently swearing at him. Ogun State’s Ibikunle Amosun cannot stand him, and Imo State’s Rochas Okorocha regards him as the devil incarnate. Many more goblins lurking in diverse recesses in the party are bidding their time for the opportune moment to floor or incinerate him. Notwithstanding this fiery opposition, Mr Oshiomhole has made up his mind to reposition the party and mould it after his likeness. He has survived the attempt to unseat him, and will very likely lead the party through the coming campaigns, his enemies be damned.

    But in this excessively turbulent party that seethes with plots and revolts, a party headed by a president who would rather be deified than cast in the image of a wholesome democrat and primus inter pares, nothing is guaranteed. The only thing that will be guaranteed will be the president’s position and his amorphous ideas and policies — not the chairman’s position, nor the party’s constitution, nor their detached manifesto, nor their convoluted and unreliable succession plan. They do not have an administrator par excellence in their midst — Mr Oshimohole is a unionist — nor an ideologue, nor a visionary. This was why right from the beginning they struggled to stand for something but ended up standing for nothing, and had had to submit to wholesale confusion and spawned small-minded imperators. There is no proof that even electoral success can mitigate their maladies.

     

     

    A LITTLE over one week after the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ordered its aggrieved members to stop litigating the acrimonious party primaries in their states, President Muhammadu Buhari distanced himself from the party and uncharacteristically reaffirmed his faith in the courts as the last arbiter. The party had on November 19 warned members who had taken the party to court to withdraw the suits or face sanction. Citing Article 20, Subsection 10 of its constitution, the party had insisted that failure to exhaust the party’s intermediation processes before going to court was a flagrant subversion of party regulations. But on November 26, the president weighed in and asked those aggrieved to disregard the party’s threat and continue to explore their chances in the courts.

    The party may well have been right and shrewd to caution and restrain its litigious members, especially in the light of the provisions of its constitution, and had obviously hoped that the prospect of peace, whatever the cost, would brighten or at least sustain the chances of the party in the next polls. But to the angry and despondent in the party, three of whom are close to the president, and are well known and celebrated for their temper and intransigence, the party’s order was foolish and intemperate. They had sworn to fight the party to the death over the primaries dispute, but increasingly it was looking like the only ones dying were the angry party leaders. So, to save face, and perhaps to ply the party with more discomfort and unbearable pressure, they headed for the courts. To be then told by their party that even litigation was unacceptable was to subject them to indignity beyond their natural forbearance.

    Sensing that the aggrieved chieftains had reached the end of their tethers, the president waded into the fray and overruled the party’s orders. The bitter chieftains, said the president, could go to court to seek redress, for the party must never carry itself so imperiously as to be the final authority in any dispute. It was not clear whether the president really thought any good could come out of the litigations, or whether the chieftains would get the redress they sought, but he was clearly happy to make what appeared to many observers to be the first really philosophical suggestion he had ever made since joining partisan politics. He suspected the courts, and felt they were slow and ponderous and mysterious, but here he was sounding concerned about the disaffected in the party and eager to assuage their hurt. And he capped his concerns with a little philosophy.

    Said the president: “We can’t deliberately deny people of their rights. We agreed that party primaries should be conducted either through direct, indirect or consensus method, and if anyone feels unjustly treated in the process, such a person can go to court. The court should always be the last resort for the dissatisfied. For the party to outlaw the court process is not acceptable to me.” It is reassuring that the president spoke about the people’s rights, and why they must never be denied, and of the courts as the last resort, admitting that nobody had the right to abridge it or arrogate it to themselves. The president’s philosophical undertones may be trite and sophomoric, but they were nonetheless somewhat engaging and pleasant to the ears, and even to the rest of the senses. If only the president had taken his own counsel and applied it to the Sambo Dasuki case and the Ibraheem el-Zakzaky rigmarole, both of which he not only prejudged but had sounded a note of finality on them that fully scorned the courts.

    The suspicion is indeed rife that President Buhari reached deep into his philosophical core in order to mollify the anger of certain party chieftains who, in action and speech, had all but deified him. They had been with him for much longer than many others in the APC, and had submitted both their will and their souls to him to lead as he pleased. The president was therefore torn between subverting the party to please his friends or reinforcing the party to brighten his electoral chances. It obviously did not cost him anything, nor, it seems, the party too, to keep the legal channels opened to the aggrieved chieftains. He was smart enough, and experienced had taught him too, to know that the legal channels had become occluded long ago for the chieftains. They were unlikely to get the redress they sought, and even if they got a hearing, and assuming the ponderous judicial system could be catalysed to deal with the case, the result would still be futile.

    Yes, the president knew all this, but the aggrieved chieftains were not so dim-witted as not to know that coming so close to the elections and the end of the nominations, the courts were also effectively powerless, reduced as it were to only rubber-stamping the processes the chieftains complained so bitterly about. For conscience sake, the president had taken the rather safe and placatory step of disagreeing with his party leaders, a measure the bitter political leaders had waited for him for so long to take. Well, he finally repudiated his party’s administrators, but the outcome of the dispute was never in doubt both to him and anyone else. It was brinkmanship all round, but brinkmanship only in theory. No one was in doubt how the president had voted in the controversial primaries, despite his initial and lasting squeamishness.

    Realistic and sensible, the aggrieved chieftains finally threw in the towel and played their jokers. They inspired a few defections, and importantly got their factional governorship candidates, the ones left in the cold by the party, to move to other parties where they easily secured tickets as standard-bearers. They will stand for the governorship elections, but they will not have a big and solid party structure behind them but the ephemeral structures of the flailing governors. Their intention is that while they remain in the ruling party, they will work for their candidates who had taken shelter in other parties. How they hope to run with the hare and hunt with the hound will be one of the most difficult balancing acts of this political season. It has never worked, and no party has ever tolerated such flagrant display of disloyalty. But the aggrieved politicians will hope to have their cake and eat it in the presence of an indulgent president who, they think, understands their plight.

    Having achieved his aim couched in altruistic terms, party chairman Adams Oshiomhole wisely refused to join issues with the president after being overruled. He knew the court cases would peter out into fatuity, for after all, the aggrieved factional candidates had left for other pastures to graze, and cannot any longer diligently prosecute their suits against their former parties. But he also knew that he had outplayed those he regarded as state emperors in the ruling party. Curiously, he kept on protesting his innocence in the whole drama, and even reiterated his friendship with the aggrieved chieftains. They swore at him and promised him hell, but he responded gamely by blowing hot and cold, reaffirming his loyalty to their common friendship and in the same breath determining to cut them to size. But against the president, he said not a word. Next, he will probably find ways to stifle the aggrieved chieftains, choke their candidates, and threaten their remaining interests in the party. For a party chairman whose position seemed precarious a few weeks ago, it must puzzle observers that he has not only come out on top, but that he has spectacularly worsted his enemies to the bargain.

    But despite Mr Oshiomhole’s notable triumphs and the president’s byzantine philosophy, the party will without question go into the next elections divided and petrified. They have embraced political brinkmanship of the worst variety. In their private moments — and perhaps this viewpoint would have been impressed on the president — they will wonder whether it was not wiser to adopt affirmation rather than the elective convention they organised in June. They knew they were buffeted by so many demons, and had hoped to keep those powerful dragons chained in the bottomless pits dotting the states under their control. But by opting for an elective convention and later embracing the devil’s metaphysics of direct and indirect primaries, it was clear to them that all the demons congregating under their fragile roof would soon break out in open revolt. They were not disappointed. But they were surprised that the revolts were much fiercer than they had hoped, and lasted longer than is good for their political objectives.

    The party made a lot of money through their obscene pricing of nomination forms, and as the ruling party, they will have more access to free cash for their campaigns than the opposition. Above all, while their spooks and anti-graft agencies will sniff around the finances of the opposition to put a cog in the wheel of their campaigns, the finances of the ruling party will permanently smell of roses. Soon the president and his party will close ranks and train their guns on the opposition, but their mutual suspicion and rivalries will never really go away. The opposition is battling its own demons, perhaps hamstrung by shortage of cash and lacking the kind of confidence and daredevilry the APC summoned in 2015 to telling effect. But in the next one or two weeks, as the campaigns shape out, it will become a little clearer whether the APC has been hurt by its internal turmoil and unending brinkmanship, and the opposition helped by the country’s powermongers and the meddlesome coalition of foreign and domestic forces convinced that President Buhari had in his first term given his all and can do no other and go no further.

    Should the APC win, it is expected that the party will eventually find its feet. Mr Oshiomhole’s cataclysmic ideas and political antecedents seem to imply that tempting possibility. He has been accused of running the party with the brutal firmness and candour of a chief executive officer, and he seems to have made up his mind on most things, and those things have often grated on the nerves of those disadvantaged by his decisions. And though he sometimes sounded conciliatory, they allege that more often than not he seems to court and relish a fight. The Zamfara State governor, Abdulaziz Yari, loathes him with a passion, and was caught on tape recently swearing at him. Ogun State’s Ibikunle Amosun cannot stand him, and Imo State’s Rochas Okorocha regards him as the devil incarnate. Many more goblins lurking in diverse recesses in the party are bidding their time for the opportune moment to floor or incinerate him. Notwithstanding this fiery opposition, Mr Oshiomhole has made up his mind to reposition the party and mould it after his likeness. He has survived the attempt to unseat him, and will very likely lead the party through the coming campaigns, his enemies be damned.

    But in this excessively turbulent party that seethes with plots and revolts, a party headed by a president who would rather be deified than cast in the image of a wholesome democrat and primus inter pares, nothing is guaranteed. The only thing that will be guaranteed will be the president’s position and his amorphous ideas and policies — not the chairman’s position, nor the party’s constitution, nor their detached manifesto, nor their convoluted and unreliable succession plan. They do not have an administrator par excellence in their midst — Mr Oshimohole is a unionist — nor an ideologue, nor a visionary. This was why right from the beginning they struggled to stand for something but ended up standing for nothing, and had had to submit to wholesale confusion and spawned small-minded imperators. There is no proof that even electoral success can mitigate their maladies.

     

     

    • Next week: PDP’s unlimited brinkmanship

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Buhari, Atiku and 2023

    GIVEN the enormity of the social, economic and political problems confronting Nigeria, voters had hoped that the 2019 elections would be mostly about issues. The opening salvoes of the campaigns, however, seem to indicate that the campaigns will be significantly about geopolitics and to a lesser extent, and almost as an afterthought, about issues. It is not clear why this is so, indeed, why it has been so for a very long time. Is it because Nigerians lack the depth to appreciate and champion issues? Or is it because their leaders fear that voters are themselves alarmed by issues, with most of them preferring the rather simplistic attachment to the more comprehensible and immensely satisfying crumbs of primordial fancies?

    Whatever it is, the two leading parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), will make gestures in the direction of issues, as they are already routinely doing with their ‘Next Level’ and ‘People’s Policy’ plans, but take more determined steps in the direction of introducing geopolitics into the election equation and profiting from it. By now, everyone knows that the APC standard-bearer, President Muhammadu Buhari, is mystified by issues, and has for more than three years stuck stubbornly and rigidly to his political and campaign slogans, most of them poorly conceived and in dire need of rejigging. He is, therefore, unlikely to promote any debate or discussion about issues beyond regurgitating his campaign promises of combating insecurity and fighting corruption.

    But he has aides and technocrats whose polemical gifts help the party to decipher and advocate great and impactful issues. In fact, when the president kick-started his campaign in Abuja last Sunday, and some of his ministers made presentations, it was abundantly clear that they, rather than the president, owned their ideas and were captains of their projects. Three years and scores of cabinet meetings were enough for the president to have acquired and owned the disparate ideas subscribed to by his ministers. But, so far, both domestically and in his foreign travels, the president has been unable to give any indication that he understands the dynamics of those ideas and projects, let alone own them and give them added fillip. Overall, issue for issue, the president’s aides and ministers will be able to hold their grounds, and to some extent pass off the ideas and projects as the president’s.

    Former vice president Atiku Abubakar loves to luxuriate among issues, and quite easily adumbrates those issues as much as he promotes them. He can be said in fact to be enamoured of issues, and will hope that the 2019 campaigns can be restricted to mainly issues. Issues — at least talking about them — are his forte, and he will hope to lure President Buhari to those treacherous grounds to be perfectly skewered. Should the president envision himself as capable of walking on water, and decide to take on Alhaji Atiku in debating issues, the combat will be fierce but brief, with the outcome not in doubt even to an infant. The former vice president will try to restrict the campaigns, as much as he can manage, to issues, but no one will let him — not the country, and not, especially, the president and his abrasive and cantankerous crew. The APC may not be able to disembowel Alhaji Atiku on issues, but they can crucify him on the matter of integrity. They have said it repeatedly that the former vice president has no integrity, regardless of the absence of judicial conviction. What is more, the country seems persuaded that if indeed he has integrity, the onus of proof should be on him to confirm it, assuming the people are still amenable to persuasion.

    Barring a celestial miracle to herald a dark horse into the presidency, the two leading candidates of the APC and PDP will dominate the political space and campaigns in the coming weeks. They know they have their failings, and are galled by their own weaknesses, but they will pretend all is well, and will argue issues and debate integrity as much as the voters will give them a hearing. It is unclear whether the candidates will succeed in portraying themselves as supermen in the estimation of sceptical Nigerians miffed by their terrible shortcomings and mortified by their unworthy dominance of the political space. Despite their hesitations, both the president and the former vice president will, at least on the surface, talk issues. But more realistically, they will concentrate on permutating geopolitical advantages for themselves and their parties. The politics of issues will be abandoned somewhere halfway, with the country witnessing only occasional and half-hearted eruptions.

    Instead, as the aides and minders of the two standard-bearers have shown, more attention will be devoted to cobbling together a winning geopolitical formula. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that strategy in a multilingual, multi-religious and complex society. Merit-based system has its shortcomings, and no standard-bearer can hope to win a national election without a scrupulous and idolatrous gesture in the direction of balancing ethnic configurations, whether they mean it, as Alhaji Atiku has sometimes demonstrated through his marriages, or they don’t mean it, as the president’s one-sided appointments have shown. But because the two parties are adept at this game, having at least superficially satisfied the geopolitical yearnings of the country, they have upped their game by attaching the issue of 2023 presidential ambition to the ruse. The South, it is believed, wants the presidency in 2023. The 2019 presidential campaign is thus about to be reduced, firstly, to who can better promise to deliver that 2023 goal, and secondly to who better understands which geopolitical zone to deliver it to — the Southwest or the Southeast.

    By selecting Peter Obi, a former Anambra State governor from the Southeast as his running mate, Alhaji Atiku is widely believed to have made his stand known, even without saying it clearly. When Igbo leaders endorsed the former vice president in Enugu on November 14, winning the presidency in 2023 was believed to be at the back of their minds, for it was assumed, without any substantiation, that a departing president would find it easier and more attractive to hand over to his deputy. But notwithstanding the PDP candidate’s policy plans lasting beyond his first term should he win, and extending to 2025 as indicated in his working papers, the Southeast appears to be prepared to take their chances with Alhaji Atiku. Such optimism is unprecedented.

    However, the Buhari camp seems to be in a quandary over the Alhaji Atiku gambit. Should they not make a promise of their own to woo the Igbo into the Buhari column? reasoned some of the president’s top aides. And so, to utopia they went, with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, leading the charge sometime last October, and again last week. He prevaricated, no doubt, but at least he offered something that looked like a promise to the Southeast, alerting them to the possibility of the PDP candidate going for two terms should he win. President Buhari, on the other hand, he said, had only one term left. The message is clear: if the Southeast desires the presidency in 2023, the better route is to endorse a president who has only one term to go.

    Said Mr Mustapha to the press after some Southeast leaders met with the president last week: “This obviously might not be most appropriate time. You remember there was a programme in the south-east where Mr. President asked me to represent him and I flew the kite by telling the south-eastern states that their quickest and easiest means to presidency is to support President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term… You can’t negotiate from the point of weakness and I believe that that message resonated with the people and their response now is attributable to the fact that even before the flag-off of the campaigns, we have laid it bare on the table for Southeastern states to consider the prospect of working with us to ensure that at least by the time President Buhari finishes his second tenure, they can make a shot at the presidency depending on what they bring to the table.” If the Southeast leaders read the caveat about “depending on what they bring to the table” and missed a heartbeat or two, they were too squeamish to show it.

    But the same APC also saw Works and Housing minister, Babatunde Fashola, admonishing the Southwest not to ditch President Buhari in 2019 if they want to retake the presidency in 2023. In other words, from the same presidency, two leading party apparatchiks have emerged who are perfectly eager to promise the next presidency to the Southwest and Southeast. The Southeast is yet to produce a president since 1999. Should they take it in 2023, for example, it will, all things considered, take the Southwest another 16 years before they can angle for it again. That will mean waiting till 2039 on the assumption that they will not emulate President Buhari in shunning all zoning formulae to contest the presidency.

    Sadly, these geopolitical calculations are likely to influence the next presidential election more than issues. They are damaging to the health of the republic, and are  short-sighted and dangerous. There is absolutely no way to avoid a future implosion. If Nigerian leaders were smart and knowledgeable, they would see how delicate and tenuous the future is, and they would be prepared to take the bold and courageous steps needed to snatch the country from a foolish and futile end. The current system will not work, and no amount of tinkering or doctoring can get it to deliver the great and noble future the people want. If Nigerian leaders are not persuaded by logic and media campaigns to restructure the country, should the tragedies unfolding in many parts of the nation, including insurgency, rampant banditry and kidnapping, and the near total breakdown of law and order, not be sufficient enough to convince them?

    But probably the most profound and insightful statement to come from any Nigerian in recent months was the conclusion reached by octogenarian Mbazulike Amaechi, a First Republic Aviation minister, who argued that neither President Buhari nor Alhaji Atiku would give the Igbo the presidency in 2023. Hear him: “My attitude is that anybody who will enthrone restructuring is the person Ndigbo must support. What is happening in Nigeria is baffling. The country is not in any state of emergency nor the southeast nor any other area, but I am worried about the high level of dictatorship; it is becoming alarming. I have always said that presidency is not dashed; you have to work for it, plan for it, strategise to take it because it is not given. Buhari or Atiku will not give Ndigbo presidency. Nobody will give it to them except they work for it.” He is right. In fact, much more, nobody will give the presidency to anybody except the aspirant is able to put together a coalition of zones, peoples and religions, and then prove himself as the most acceptable man for the moment. But by far the most sensible thing to do in the present circumstance is to take the sting out of the present unhealthy and frenzied competition for presidential office if the country is not to continue immersing itself in impotent and tragic shuffling between its peoples.

  • Nigeria not as independent as imagined

    HISTORIANS often say poetically of colonialism that “The forcible possession of our people (slave trade) has given way to the forcible possession of our land (colonial rule)”. Furthermore, the perceptive patriarchs of Africa’s decolonisation struggles also warned that political independence did not amount to complete independence when the economy remained shackled to foreign powers and post-independence leaders still thought in terms of the philosophical confines of their former colonial rulers. Neocolonialism, the progressive and thoughtful among them chorused, is as pernicious and deadly as colonialism itself because it deploys economic, political and cultural pressures to control and influence dependent countries.

    If you ever thought Nigeria was independent in any sense of the word, you had not looked closely at Nigerian leaders who are not only unimaginative and timid, but are indistinguishable from house Negroes — and you had not read what the acting British high commissioner Harriet Thompson told the Nigerian senate leadership last week in Bukola Saraki’s office. Hear her reporting the meeting to the press: “We met with the Senate President and the Majority Leader of the Senate in order to talk about very important legislative business that the National Assembly should undertake even before the elections especially with the start of the official campaign period at the weekend. We are very pleased to hear from both the leader of the majority and the Senate President that there is a great commitment to continue their important work.” She claimed to be delivering the message to the Nigerian parliament on behalf of the United Kingdom and the international community.

    Addressing the media after the meeting, the high commissioner said she was pleased to get a commitment from the parliamentary leaders to continue their important work. She said a few more things that gave clear indication that Nigeria remains truly subservient. In his new book, former president Goodluck Jonathan also made reference to how the United States virtually browbeat him and the Nigerian government over the 2015 elections. Well, now, it is clear that Nigeria is not independent, and certainly the present set of leaders cannot help procure that independence. Neither President Buhari nor his challenger, ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar, can be trusted with fighting for that independence. Former Asian vassal states have nearly all seized their independence and become captains of their own souls, and they have much to show for their efforts. But African leaders are busy pussyfooting over their destinies and quaking in their boots before the West. Those among them who show some courage are conspiratorially denied the chance of winning office or are bumped off altogether, perhaps because they lack the requisite wisdom and tactics to procure real change. Who will save Africa and restore their dignity? As for Nigeria, alas, the waiting game will continue for much longer than this election cycle, as the country remains enshrouded by gloom and despondency. If only their slave-trading and slave-holding great-great-grandfathers had seen the future. And sigh upon sigh; if only their children were not chips off the old block, and as blind as their forebears and destitute of common sense.

  • Demonisation of restructuring

    BEFORE long, President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo will move closer to each other in their understanding of and positions on the controversial issue of restructuring. In their public service careers, they did not start out from the same position on the spectrum, for the president was contemptuous of the topic, and the vice president was somewhat more accommodating. Both are now eagerly approaching the equivocatory median that pleases no one, and in no time, given their rate of progress, they will become indistinguishable. The president, long used to military ethics and the unitary system of government, puts proponents of restructuring on the back foot, and the vice president, also accustomed to legalisms by training, wrong-foots advocates of restructuring with his discourses and definitions. Judging from their harsh and censorious statements last week, when they once again waded into the debate on restructuring, both leaders have put the onus of defining the subject and convincing the populace on the advocates.

    Of the two leaders, President Buhari is the more unyielding. He does not give a damn about restructuring, and has been very consistent about not touching any part of it, any whiff of it, with the longest pole available. He has derided its advocates, accused them of acting in bad faith, and described their efforts as an attempt to do the impossible or, worse, even balkanise the country. He has stuck to his guns, and in all his travels abroad he has met advocates of restructuring with utter derision. He loathes restructuring, and has remained very eloquent about his stand on the controversial and objectionable position. Prof Osinbajo on the other hand has not been quite as persuasive. That is the problem with intellectuals, especially with their on the one hand and on the other hand methods. More, as a son of the Southwest, where restructuring is de rigueur and indeed has become the intellectual and political staple, the eminent professor has squirmed over his views and laboured unconvincingly to take a position that agrees more with his vice -presidential duties to the nation than with his private and intellectual understanding of the hot topic.

    Their opinions, as quoted by newspapers last week, bear these observations out. Speaking in Paris last week during his interactive session with Nigerians on the sideline of the Paris Peace Conference, President Buhari angrily damned the advocates of restructuring. He said: “There are too many people talking lazily about restructuring in Nigeria. Unfortunately, people are not asking them individually what they mean by restructuring. What form do they want restructuring to take? Do they want us to have something like the three regions we used to have? And now we have 36 states and the FCT. What form do they want? They are just talking loosely about restructuring. Let them define it and then we see how we can peacefully do it in the interest of Nigerians. They are just saying they want Nigeria restructured and they don’t have the clue of what the form the restructuring should be. So, anybody who talks to you about restructuring in Nigeria, ask him what he means and the form he wants it to take.”

    Prof Osinbajo, on the other hand, was more discursive, but with some of his premises warring against his conclusions. He should have kept it simple and sparse like the president. After second-guessing the public and determining that their definition of restructuring was skewed towards mainly geographical understanding instead of strengthening of the states, the professor added: “…Going back to the old regions and creating more states would not solve our problems. One of the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference is the creation of 18 more states. Can you imagine a situation where you have 18 more states?…This would entail devolution of more power to the states to enable them control more of their own administrative decisions, such as the creation of councils and community police, special courts or tribunals etc. The point I am making is that the state must have more powers and more rights…The states, as they are currently constituted, now with better educated people and with more people working, do not generate enough tax for the economy to survive. So, when we talk about restructuring, we must ask ourselves the question, what type of restructuring? Today, everybody depends on oil; every month state governments gather in Abuja to share revenue.”

    It is obvious that both the president and vice president will not take any step to effectuate restructuring. They are sure that they and their party will come to no harm in this or any other election despite shunning and insulting the issue and its advocates. What is even much clearer, judging from the temper and structure of their arguments, is that sadly both leaders have little understanding of the topic, and an even lesser competence in setting out their arguments in skilful, persuasive and visionary formats. Start with the professor. He snickered at the 2014 national conference that proposed 18 additional states. Why would he conflate the 2014 conference with restructuring? There have been many other conferences in the past; why would he fail to mention them? The truth is that all the national conferences remain exactly what they were, conferences, not restructuring, with some of their ideas quite far-fetched and others sensible. But overall, regardless of any overlap, they remain distinct from the issue of restructuring.

    Prof Osinbajo also spoke unflatteringly of regionalism, as if it had become both a bugaboo and a taboo. He is of course at liberty to oppose the return to regionalism, though that doesn’t make him right and its proponents wrong, but who told him that advocates who argue for regionalism insist that that is the only structure they could embrace? Like the president, it is shocking that Prof Osinbajo makes the fundamental error of assuming that restructuring advocates have taken an inflexible position on the nature of restructuring . This error is compounded by their suggestion that those proponents must first come up with a universally acceptable definition of the concept before any discussions would be entertained. This is inconsiderate. Then, thirdly, among the many errors the vice president committed in his opposition to restructuring, he bemoans the insolvency undermining governance in the states and the general view that with the exception of two or three states, the others are unviable. But is that precisely not what the advocates of restructuring are complaining about, that the country must be structured geographically, economically and politically in such a way that makes the states or regions efficient and viable? Why turn round to use unviable states harassed and repressed by a unitary constitution and unimaginative governments over the decades as litmus test for restructuring?

    President Buhari has never managed to present dispassionate and engagingly analytical views on the subject. As far as he is concerned, there is nothing wrong with the present structure, not now and not in the future. However, a leader must be in denial to suggest that the current structure is sustainable and productive, and, worse, he must lack vision to argue that that structure will suffice for the future. Some parts of the country may fear that restructuring could disadvantage them, but what really ails these patriots is paranoia and a troubling lack of understanding of the fundamentals of state structures and equilibrium. The president derides the pro-restructuring group as lazy talkers bandying imprecise definitions about, loose talkers who can’t seem to find the right structure between regionalism and the current 36 states. How does an analyst begin to take on the president, seeing how alarmingly misadvised on the subject he is and will remain whether the country likes it or not. Had he developed an intellectual and deeply analytical foundation for his position, he could be taken on. But his views are merely sentiments, without foundation of any kind, and without form and direction.

    The question to ask the president is what would he have done had he found himself in the position of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, in the 1920s? Would he summon the depth and courage to abolish the Ottoman Sultanate, undergird the republic with secularist principles, including abolishing Islamic institutions and emancipating women, and replace Arabic script with Latin script, among other revolutionary changes? It takes vision, and it takes a huge amount of courage. Instead of thinking about Nigeria’s future, instead of being honest in their observations of the factors predisposing Nigeria to decades of instability and ethnic and religious rivalries, instead of thinking expansively about creating a national identity which would form the fulcrum of the existence of the people, Nigerian leaders are asking a harassed and oppressed people to define what they mean by restructuring. Could both the president and his deputy, who always claim to know how the people feel in their moments of sorrow, not own the idea of restructuring and find a definition sensible and functional enough for the people to embrace?

    Nigerian leaders may not want to hear it, but the fact is that their economic panaceas — they have no social and political panaceas — are both simple and simplistic. Worse, they have no understanding of the position of Nigeria in the world, at the centre of the black people of the world, and as potential liberators and innovators of the continent. That is why they have elevated simple solutions to arcana, and spoken contemptuously of the yearnings of the people who call on their leaders to, for once, rise to a higher level of statesmanship. There will be no definitions of restructuring from the people, and there will be no expatiation on what system of government the people want. If Nigerian leaders cannot see into the future nor perceive the revolutionary changes needed to stabilise the country and unleash the people’s energies and creative potentials, then let them continue to ossify in their conservative and reactionary politics. The problem with the call for restructuring is that having read copiously about great empires and great statesmen, and having been inspired by these statesmen from the Babylonian Empire right down to the last century, Nigerians are numbed by their leaders’ inability to read very widely or be inspired by any person or idea. With no one to bridge the chasm, it is not surprising that the country is wobbling and Nigerian leaders do not even perceive it.