This past week perhaps the worst kept secret of the Fourth Republic finally became public knowledge. The rumour mill had been abuzz. The president himself had dropped broad hints of a favoured dark knight among those jostling to succeed him but declined further disclosure on the grounds that the poor fellow might be assassinated thus inadvertently suggesting that his party has become a camarilla of assassins.

Many are the pundits who concluded that as plodding and unhurried as the retired infantry general may appear on the surface, he is too alert and strategically minded to leave the question of his successor to mere chance. He was merely waiting for the right moment to deliver the killer blow. All military generals are masters of subterfuge and ambuscade.

Last week as if reading from the horoscope of political turmoil, this column actually went as far as stating that Nigeria is about to witness another spectacle of a retired general joining battle with the civilian faction of his hegemonic party in another do or die duel of political supremacy which will alter the complexion of the political landscape. The column bears quoting at length.

“In 2007, the departing General Obasanjo singlehandedly imposed Umaru Yar’Adua on the nation. And heavens did not fall. Fifteen years after, another retired general is trying to repeat the same spectacular stunt…. Here is wishing the general from Daura the very best of luck as he takes the nation on an ambiguous adventure”.

Forty eight hours later on Tuesday, and as if reading from the same manual of military subjugation of civilian subalterns, the general from Daura struck. In a carefully choreographed political ambush, the former infantry general read the riot act to twenty two governors serving under the auspices of the ruling party.

In a tersely worded statement redolent of blackmail and psychological intimidation, President Buhari urged his subordinate colleagues to grant him the same courtesy of choosing his successor that he had extended to them in choosing theirs. It was an irrefutable and unanswerable riposte. It was payback time after all one good turn deserves another. Tyranny and misconduct at the sub-national level can be replicated and even surpassed at the federal stage.

Mum was the word from the governors. They had immediately gone into a face-saving brainstorming session which was reportedly deadlocked. It was not the first time the old Sahel cheetah in Aso Rock would be having the governors for lunch. Readers will recall the events leading to the summary imposition of the party chairman by the president after enduring their self-important tomfoolery up to a point.

The president’s plea was quite revealing and it spoke to the structural anomaly bedevilling the country as well as the peculiar peccadilloes of the Buhari administration which have led the nation into a sorry pass. Since when has it become the norm for the federal government to take its cue from state administrations?  In the beguiling oxymoron known as unitary federalism it is a classic manifestation of political dysfunction for the sub-unit tail to wag the federal dog. It destroys the very basis of unitary formation and the argument for its overbearing proclivities.

The problem really is that it takes more than minatory violence to rule a nation, particularly a conglomeration of diverse cultures like ours. Real power, in all its persuasive force, flows from the might of example rather than the example of might. Old unitary nation-states that have survived and weathered the storm of implosion have done so by the force of persuasion rather than the persuasion of force. Nigeria has chosen to learn its lesson the very hard way.

General Buhari’s style of governance is particularly dangerous for the nation at this perilous point. It is not a hands-on mode of governance. It would not have greatly mattered in peaceful and sedate times. But in a country perpetually on the boil, a lackadaisical attitude can actually compound the problem by not acting when it matters most or by leaving things unaddressed until it is too late.

It is obvious that the former infantry officer prefers to watch critical events unfurl in wry phlegmatic humour while quietly plotting the comeuppance of those who underrate his resolve. How else can one explain the belated and rather tepid nature of the federal authorities to the plot to foist Goodluck Jonathan on the party and the nation once again by extension? Not even when some shadowy principalities bought a nomination form for a whopping 100 million naira for the Otuoke man did the federal government deem it fit to raise an eyebrow.

Not unexpectedly, the well-heeled and well-oiled plot was traced to some serving governors in the ruling APC who appear hell bent on truncating the zoning arrangement. That Mr Goodluck Jonathan, a prime beneficiary of the zoning arrangement, should be complicit in the plot to scupper the arrangement that has catapulted him from backwater obscurity to national prominence speaks volume for the quality of leadership recruitment in this country.

This column will spare the former president further obloquy in recognition of his position. Suffice it to say that his conduct on this matter has been most reprehensible. His attempt to defame the entire political system having failed to benefit from it combines the worst form of cynicism with uncharitable malice. Had he succeeded, mum would have been the word. But if had succeeded, that would have disabled the delicate armature which powers the Fourth Republic and the Obasanjo Settlement of 1999.

The Fourth Republic and the Obasanjo Settlement of 1999 are not short of a legion of undertakers. The PDP has just beaten APC to the tape in the race to scuttle the project of consociational politics which requires structured elite consensus. The irony of the just concluded PDP convention is that however its outcome is lauded and feted for its orderliness and discipline, the victory is enacted on the funeral pyre of zoning and equitable allocation of offices.

By jettisoning and abjuring the vision of their founding fathers all in a bid to secure victory at the next presidential polls, the PDP betrays a power desperation which is the bane of postcolonial politics in Africa. But who can blame them? Power is the shortest route to economic parity in Africa. Sadly demoralised and dispirited having been driven out of power in humiliating circumstances the surviving power hegemons are no longer in a position to brook any political idealism.

PDP has lost all visionary impetus. It is a poor shadow of its former self. This is no longer the original party of Alex Ekwueme, Lawal Isa Kaita, Sunday Bolorunduro Awoniyi, Solomon Lar and the early Atiku. Shorn of its energy and predatory courage, it reminds one of a torpid and senescent crocodile stranded at the bank of a river while waiting for easy prey.

Now chaired by a man who has divested himself of the idealism of his youth for power pragmatism and retrograde hay-making, the less said about the former “comrade” the better. On his road to political Golgotha, Ayu was famously described by a former Marxist colleague and mentor as exhibiting an increasingly brittle temperament and an irascible mien. The call by Chief Edwin Clark on Ayu to resign his position is unnecessary. As the Yoruba will put it, it is the biting cold of the Harmattan that will dissuade a scantily clad woman.

This is not the party that will lead Nigeria to the altar of inclusive politics or the egalitarian distribution of resources. Consociational politics and the elite consensus which led to the formation of the original PDP are made of sterner stuff. They require discipline , forbearance and extreme patriotism on the part of the political elite. It is not about capturing power at all costs. There must be a nation first before any other thing can fall into place.

It is a shame and a major political tragedy that the two state parties have not demonstrated these virtues of discipline, forbearance and extreme patriotism. This is where it is most appropriate to return General Buhari’s marching order to the twenty two APC governors.

When the president stressed the need to strengthen the internal cohesion of the party to power it to victory, he seems to have forgotten that the APC is not an organic party but an unstable amalgam of contrary and mutually countervailing legacy parties. The best it could achieve was a dynamic unity based on dialectical tensions.

But in the unhappy circumstances it has found itself the APC stands the risk of disintegrating into its component parts. The president, a cultural hegemonist of the most fearsome order, has been unable to manage diversity both at party and national levels.

Instead of unifying the party, the cabal that holds him willing hostage has been at its most appallingly polarising and divisive. Rather than making use of the emancipatory progressive politics the dominant tendency in the South West has brought to the table, the president and his antediluvian honchos are more interested in a project of medieval triumphalism.

This is the badly destabilized and politically demoralized party that the president hopes will make electoral hay in the coming elections. But nothing is impossible in Nigeria. Party identity has since lost out to personal identity and the politics of name recognition. But while this can play out at the local level, everybody will have to bear their ancestor’s patronymic at the national level.

As we say in this column, you cannot step into the same river. When General Obasanjo unilaterally imposed Yar’adua on party and the nation, many things were working in his favour. First the opposition parties had been rendered hors de combat by Obasanjo’s relentless destabilization. The AD has suffered an implosion from which it never recovered and the APP was about to die under the military scalpel of the master-surgeon. It was a blood-splattered canvas indeed.

Second, the National Question had not become so intractable and neither has the mismanagement of the nation’s diversity occasioned such a nightmare. Despite his incarceration and the lingering unease and suspicion over the June 12 debacle, Obasanjo continued to treat his former military subordinates and top members of the northern establishment with wary affection and regard.

He did not show his hand until he had fully recovered the initiative. It is useful to recall that the Yar’Adua plot later blew in Obasanjo’s face with the impeccably principled Katsina nobleman refusing to play ball while an irate Owu general would dismiss him as an “ungrateful wretch” in his memoirs.

Fifteen years after, history appears to be repeating itself but the circumstances could not have been more inauspicious. The benign collusion and complicity of events which allowed Obasanjo to have his way have now been severely curtailed by further developments. The falcon can no longer hear the falcon.

Under General Buhari’s watch, the National Question has so badly deteriorated that the resulting fissures cannot but impact any national election or presidential nomination. The ruling party under Obasanjo was far more cohesive and organically structured.

The opposition parties these days, unlike the induced somnolence which pervaded the atmosphere under Obasanjo, are a lot more vibrant and rampart.  They have been joined by new party formations that appear bent on having their pound of flesh making the APC look increasingly like a bear at bay tortured and tormented to death by a hundred hounds.

To compound the problems of the ruling party, the advance of technology and the advent of electronic voting have made the kind of egregious rigging which characterised the 2007 presidential election technically inconceivable unless INEC goes completely rogue. The tide is high indeed and there is time for everything.

A surly and sullen mood now pervades the political landscape. With the ruling party, ambushed by its own perfidies and treacheries, still dithering and quarrelling about its choice of presidential nominee this late in the day and with one of its leading stakeholders openly chafing at the shenanigans, something nasty is afoot. One must pray at this point for Nigeria’s legendary luck to intervene and save the greatest project of the Black race this past century from self-inflicted ruination.

But the omens are not very reassuring. At this point given the rancour and disaffection that pervade the nation, Nigerians must prepare for the possibility of a “hung” presidency a situation in which no party is able to convincingly prevail at the presidential polls, presaging a descent into anarchy and chaos given the dismal state of elite consensus. On a more positive note, it may well be that a dramatic miracle of national emancipation may be loading.

Omo wohira (Be discerning in your choice)
K’oma r’erukeru (do not buy a useless and good for nothing slave)
Erukere abi lala l’enu (A useless and good for nothing slave that sleeps soundly, drooling when it is time for work.)

Please permit this column some strange reflections this morning. Erukeru is abroad. The above is a panegyric or praise chant of an illustrious Yoruba lineage which admonishes the members of the clan not to make the mistake of procuring an Erukeru, a devious and good for nothing slave, from the slave market. The import of the admonition will become clearer as the political fable unfolds.

In fifty two years of watching and participating in struggles for the democratic emancipation of Nigeria nothing has prepared one for current developments in the country’s post-military Fourth Republic. One can now say that having been taught a valuable lesson by political developments in Nigeria those who insist that nothing is impossible are probably right.

A slave market democracy is a strange coinage indeed. It is a troubling oxymoron. Slavery ought to belong to the classical antiquity of human evolution. What has slavery got to do with democracy? But the fact remains that a particular human mode is not always eradicated in one swoop. It continues to exist in actual or vestigial forms in many other areas.

How else does one describe a political system which conforms to the surface realities of democratic rule while maintaining fidelity to the internal format of classical slavery? A mode of production can exist side by side with other modes until one supplants the other or they are both pushed aside by an emergent mode.

Democracy bears strange fruits indeed. There are democracies and there are democracies. There is no ideal democratic society anywhere in the world. They all tend to approximate the ideal form even though it can be said that certain societies are more democratic than others. Sometimes, there is a trade off with certain societies (China for example) enjoying economic democracy while losing out in terms of political democracy.

On the other hand, the denizens of western societies seem to enjoy more political democracy:  egalitarian rights, freedom of speech and association while the economy is concentrated in the hands of a few plutocrats. Yet there are others such as the postcolonial societies of Africa and Latin America where progress on both fronts is painful and negligible.

Several millennia after the Greeks first planted the idea in human imagination and several centuries after the Americans, French and British thought they had reinvented the practice, Democracy, or demos kratos, the power of the people, continues to fascinate and to surprise. Local conditions, the political fauna and fossilized tradition in conjunction with the stage the historical dialectic has reached have a way of imposing themselves on the complexion and colouration of democracy.

Nigerians are famous for not doing things in small or half measures. As Chinua Achebe would ask, why should a person who lives by the bank of the Niger River wash his hands with spittle? This week as the four-yearly ritual of Delegates Summit to elect presidential candidates of the principal parties opened, it has not been short of high octane drama and outlandish conduct which would beggar the most hilarious comedy of the Theatre of the Absurd genre.

It has been a spectacular bazaar of horse trading, or properly speaking an outlandish tragi-comedy of slave-trading and slave-raiding with the prize often going to the person with the deepest pocket or the person with enough state backing to browbeat or outwit the others.

At the end of the day, there are no real victors only the least vanquished who must have accumulated both baggage and political IOUs heavy enough to weigh him down in office and preclude any entertainment of brave reform or visionary derring-do. Meanwhile, there is a run on the naira because most of the transaction has to be carried out in foreign denominated currency. This is the reason why after twenty three years the political space has contracted as the economic circumstances have also worsened.

In a functioning political culture, a delegate is a person to whom authority and legitimacy have been delegated by a larger body. He his therefore expected to vote according to the dictates of his conscience and certain principles shared with the delegating authority. But the average Nigerian delegate lacks principles and conscience because those who “run” him also lack principles and conscience. The party itself lacks ideology and deeply held convictions.

In the circumstance, the convention becomes a free for all trades fair with the delegates freely offering themselves to the highest bidder and showing no qualms of conscience whatsoever. When he is reined in, that is if he is reined in at all, it is to remind him of the consequences of his action. But at that point in time, the delegate couldn’t care a hoot.

Like all mercenary soldiers who dream of emancipation, the opium of fake manumission has kicked in irredeemably. With his pockets bulging with his loot, the slave-delegate knows that he has collected his meal package for the next four years. He has become an Erukeru, a soulless and merciless slave who sleeps soundly and snores while the master goes out to work.

But his term of enslavement has just begun. As the bulge in his pocket disappears, so does the illusion of freedom. He will soon be back to square one. Having paid his dues, the master is in no mood to entertain any pleading for an amelioration of his pitiable and pathetic condition. A female senator from Ekiti State was once heard to complain that she didn’t owe her constituency any obligation having paid for their votes. These are the wages of slave market democracy.

This past week, the son of a former vice president of the republic was overheard asking the delegates who collected two million naira to vote for him to return the money or face the consequences. He is wasting his time. He should ask his father how much he was able to recoup from the failed presidential bid of 2015. If he is lucky the person who vanquished him will act on his behalf against the rogue electorate. That is how it works.

You cannot begin to accuse a lame man of carrying a misshapen luggage. If we are going to free this country from the antediluvian morass of economic, political and spiritual backwardness, we must begin by tracing where the rains started beating us. It was not like this in the First and Second Republics.

The principal parties had distinct ideologies and discernible worldviews. Most members subscribed to these worldviews and were willing to die for them. As Awolowo observed of Ahmadu Bello: “you may not like the Sardauna, but you always know where you stand with him”.

The military excursion into politics and their attempt to create a new political class in their own image led to the introduction of big time money politics in Nigeria. It led to the twin evil of the militarization and monetization of politics.

According to the late Professor Oyeleye Oyediran in a perceptive analysis, the new class project opened up, leading to the co-optation of important sections of the new moneyed class, the intelligentsia who believed their bread was better-buttered under the military, retired military brass hats, the old bureaucracy and other ill-assorted wannabes.

What would have been an important and beneficial trade off was the emergence of a new political class with national and nationalist orientation. But that illusion was soon dispelled by the June 12 debacle which was a product of ethnic exceptionalism and old hegemonic war-mongering. In the absence of solid ideological mooring and a nationalist outlook, the relentless monetisation of politics became the order of the day.

The conventions of the two state parties, SDP and NRC, witheringly dismissed as government parastatals by Chief Anthony Enahoro, particularly the SDP convention in Jos where MKO Abiola emerged as the flag bearer was a pointer to things to come. Big money changed hands freely and the prize went to the highest bidder.

The same scenario was to repeat itself five years later at the PDP convention in Jos after General Sani Abacha’s baneful interregnum. There, a hitherto penniless and fiscally emasculated Obasanjo carried all before him in an unstoppable momentum. In a classic instance of the militarization and monetization of politics, General Obasanjo famously took his delegates to Jos in a sealed train and promptly bivouacked them outside the city.

Thereafter, every subsequent presidential election in the nation, including the egregiously rigged elections of 2003 and 2007, betrayed the influence of money politics and the militarization of democratic procedure. With mass poverty biting harder and the general immiseration of the populace proceeding apace as a result of an absence of visionary politics and bold structural and institutional reform, the slave market democracy became the norm.

It must be said that General Buhari’s anti-democratic populism, a combination of authoritarian intolerance and messianic posturing, is the obverse of this bad coin. A situation in which twelve million votes are permanently warehoused waiting for the word of the Mai Gaskiya, like a rough and ready militia on a short leash, is a classic example of slave market democracy which bodes ill for the nation. This certainly cannot lead to a pan-Nigerian democracy but to ethnic exceptionalism and a flagrant veto on the aspirations of many.

Now with President Buhari all set to impose his choice of presidential candidate on the ruling APC in the name of an authoritarian and undemocratic consensus principle, we are about to witness the ultimate test of slave market democracy.

To be sure, this political duel unto death often takes place under an ideological occlusion in which the principal combatants are led to believe that they are acting in the best party and national interest when in actual fact they are motivated by the basest and grossest of personal and hegemonic interests. But this illusion of disinterested patriotism and pure national interest does not last long before other countervailing realities intervene. That is when the gloves must come off.

We can now see how slave market democracy is driving the parties to the end of their tether and the nation itself to the edge of perdition, if care is not taken. Having collected their shekels, having had their field day and their feeding frenzy, the delegates, both the mob and their mobsters, will be summarily decommissioned for the selectorate to select and the electorate to follow suit in routine affirmation of choicelessness and helplessness.

It can now be seen why the nation needs a fundamental reset. The Fourth Republic is a product of its time, of a particularly traumatic post-military emergency. It has served its purpose. Slave market democracy can only lead to the emasculation of parties, of politics and the people. Eventually it will consume the polity itself. The auguries are very dire.

We can view and review the process of deterioration and decline as it seems to reach the last bend of the river. In 1993, it took about twenty three men in military uniform to annul the electoral wish of fourteen million Nigerians who voted. The selectorate thereafter took charge of the political fortunes and misfortunes of the ensuing Fourth Republic. In 2007, the departing General Obasanjo singlehandedly imposed Umaru Yar’Adua on the nation. And heavens did not fall.

Fifteen years after, another retired general is trying to repeat the same spectacular stunt. But Obasanjo’s legendary luck held in two significant respects. He was lucky in the choice of political conjuncture: the National Question had not become this volatile and foreboding as a result of the gross mismanagement of our diversities. Second, the wily titan from Owu got his ethnic sum and regional calculations right. Here is wishing the general from Daura the very best of luck as he takes the nation on an ambiguous adventure.

ERRATA

In this column last week, the name of the iconic late Mozambique leader, Samora Michel was inexplicably substituted with the name of Joseph Savimbi of Angolan infamy. This is political sacrilege of the highest order. Savimbi caused so much pain and trauma to the Angolan people in a needless and pointless war of attrition with the ruling MPLA. His name cannot be mentioned in the same breath as Samora, a much beloved hero of the Mozambican people. Also, the last three paragraphs of the second piece were yanked off due to production error. The whole piece is reproduced below.

A day after Jide Sanwo-Olu, the urbane, even-tempered and level-headed governor of Lagos State, announced a total ban on Okada motorcycle drivers, yours sincerely woke up to a fearsome din of cheers and applause coming from the street below.

Bleary-eyed, Snooper frantically pulled the curtains. The whole scene was hazy and blurry at first. In the distance and amidst the total confusion, one could only make out the half-crazed dustbin woman of Sierra-Leonean ancestry screaming on top of her voice in wild excitement.

“Oga, oga!!! You still dey sleep? Something done dey happening oo. Mama done do am again. He come finis dem Okada boy who come run like Saro wayo man”, she screamed on top of her voice.

At that point the outlandish spectacle became discernible. It was the irrepressible and indefatigable Mama Igosun. Dressed in her husband’s ancient PWD uniform which had become her default mode for hell-raising, she had dismounted from a motor cycle and was dragging the poor machine towards the house heaving and panting as the crowd cheered and hailed.

At this point, the mad dustbin woman of Saro extraction burst into an old, naughty Sierra-Leonean ditty.

Woman dey pantap

Man dey bottom

Come see something wey happen ooo

Mama had been in a quiet surly mood of late ever since her latest request to return to her Igosun homestead was firmly rejected. She had become mildly disruptive in the house often urging Gbabi-Magbabe, the driver and former NNDP thug, to finish off Okon by slamming him with an amulet from his deadly repertoire of charms. One blow and Okon would fold in convulsive spasms like a stung millipede.

The previous day after a fearsome altercation with Okon over Sukuniyan, an ancient delicacy made from  unhatched eggs, the ancient amazon barged into snooper’s room.

“ Wo, Akanbi, I say I wan go home. I wan reach Igosun. I don tire for this yeye Lagos people. Na so so grammar, no action. All dem Yoruba leader dem don chop dodo(plantain) and dem no fit talk ododo (truth) again,” the old woman screamed in choleric rage.

“Mama, you cannot go to Igosun. There is nobody there for you”, snooper replied.

“Akanbi, na becos I dey respect you. I sabi my way well well. Na Akanran road I for take. So if you say make I no go home, go bring my shrine make I dey worship Orisha Oko”, the fiery contrarian sulked.

“Mama you can’t do that here. I am a born again Christian”, snooper objected.

“And who born you again? I sabi when dem born you for Seven Day Hospital and my sister come dey cry like dem Agege fowl”, the feisty warrior screamed, resuming ancient sororal feuds. At this point, snooper walked out on her in mock anger.

But this morning as one beheld the old woman beaming over the motorcycle with great pride and satisfaction it was obvious that a public relation fiasco was unfolding.

“Mama what is all this about?” snooper asked pointing at the motorcycle.

“Ha Akanbi, I seize am from dem yeye Godogodo boy. As I dey lawyer am why him still dey ride dem okada, he wan stab me. Him don forget say person no dey stab dead wood. Naim I come whack him head with them wheel spanner and as he come dey run, him come fall and I come carry him okada come home”, the old woman noted breathlessly.

“No mama you can’t do that. It is against the law”, snooper shouted.

“Which law again after dem don ban them? You see na law, law, law go kill Yoruba people. I say I wan go home, abi na by force? Kilode gan gan?”, the old woman screamed and stormed out on snooper.