The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Jonathan for life!

It is baffling that Nigerians can’t see the good in PDP’s own ‘Mandela’

It is now I am beginning to understand that indeed, no one can please the world. So, this is the way Nigerians want to reward our hardworking President Goodluck Jonathan, a man who has been trying to transform the country in the last 56 months? Many Nigerians say they are angry over the president’s performance. They say he has not given them light; he has not given the school leavers jobs; he has not delivered good roads and that virtually all sectors of the economy have worsened under his watch. The critics say education is in a shambles; they say our hospitals are far worse than the ‘consulting clinics’ that General Muhammadu Buhari and Co. met in 1983.

Not done, they say under the Jonathan presidency, corruption is emperor. They claim we thought we had proofs before that this was undeniable; but all these disappeared when the real proof emerged: General Ibrahim Babangida said given what he has been reading about corruption in the Jonathan presidency, then he and his team hitherto thought to be the most corrupt public officials Nigeria ever had were saints and angels. That was the end of discussion. What other proof do we need, the critics asked?

Even Revd. Father Ejike Mbaka, founder of the Adoration Ministry, Enugu, Enugu State, who should have hidden under the canopy provided in the scriptures: “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people- 2 for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness” (1 Tim. 2 verses 1 and 2) to drum up support for the president was unsparing in his criticism of his government. The man of God really threw spanners into the president’s campaign because his scathing criticism of the government must have done incalculable damage to the speculated support the south east was thought to have for the president’s reelection bid. Father Mbaka is, among others, unhappy at the rate at which blood is being shed in the country. Here, the Revd Father was talking about the blood that the Boko Haram people have been ‘drinking’; but the way many Nigerians interpret it, it is as if it is the people in government that are blood-thirsty or that have an insatiable appetite for blood. Nobody in government has been able to reply the man of God, not even the most vociferous of President Jonathan’s attack goons. Mum’s the word from them all.

Many Nigerians even say the most annoying thing is that this is the first time the country would be having a doctorate degree holder as president, yet, things are this bad. As if it is the president’s fault that the country he is working so hard to transform has simply rebuffed every transformation agenda capsule he has been administering on it.

Not tired, the critics say the presidency is now employing all manner of subterfuge, seeing defeat staring it in the face. Even when some concerned eminent Nigerians (some of them better eminently forgotten though) thought they were doing the country a good service by suggesting that we consider Interim Government, the critics saw the hands of the presidency in this otherwise patriotic suggestion. They say it was a road we travelled before which did not work. So, if it did not work before, that is enough evidence to conclude it would never work?

To show the depth of resentment the people have for an otherwise performing government that will be sorely missed by the time the president leaves, the people even did not see any big deal in the issue of the certificate of General Buhari that the ruling party had thought was its joker to knock the general out of the presidential race. Nigerians say even a buffoon should know that was a non-issue given the general’s antecedents. They are saying the matter is all about performance, integrity and corruption and the government people are here talking about cerfiticate. The people even went to the ridiculous extent of saying since this is how far a PhD holder can take us in about five years; maybe we now need a stark illiterate for a change. Now, Baba (Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the president’s political godfather) has said the PhD has K-leg, and some people are now saying, ‘no wonder’! Can you imagine? Is it not fit and proper for them to ask Baba to prove this beyond reasonable doubt since Baba is fond of detecting K-leg at critical junctures like this, before believing him? I guess that is why the president’s men are not dignifying him with a response.

Another laudable suggestion by the National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should postpone the elections by three months to allow it more time to get the Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) across to more Nigerians has been made dead on arrival. Gibberish! The critics are asking if INEC is better prepared now than it was for the 2011 elections when the president was elected; that they did not call for postponement then because things were looking up for them. The critics say the INEC chair, Prof Attahiru Jega, should know that he is on the threshold of history and it would be tragic for him to allow himself to be dragged into the mud by those benefiting from the rot of a sinking government.

These critics, they think they are God or what? How do they know that this government is sinking, after all the blessings that the president has got from almost all the religious groups he had visited and that had visited him in Aso Rock? It is disheartening that the critics cannot see the magic that the president has not been able to do in almost five years that he is now set to do if the election is postponed by just three months that the NSA is seeking.

Well, it is not that President Jonathan has not been trying to make the people see reason or explain his own side of the story. The man has been talking through paid advertisements, but it seems the people have an obsession with selective perception: seeing only what they want to see in those adverts. They say the Jonathan government is not campaigning like an incumbent government; otherwise it should have its achievements speaking for it in the adverts. The critics, in their warped reasoning, then concluded that this is because the government has little to showcase in about five years. I don’t know where they got that impression from.

Just to show how difficult it is to satisfy human beings, even when President Jonathan, during his campaign rally in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, saw a train passing by and quickly pointed to it as one of his achievements, the critics, rather than applaud, countered that it was an ancient locomotive. I wonder what people in a rustic ancient town have to do with civilisation that modern fast moving trains that the critics had in mind represent. How does that fit into the government’s transformation agenda? Can you transform a people beyond their level of civilisation?

But these critics, I never knew they were so daft. None of them deemed it fit to remind President Jonathan when he chose to start his campaign in Lagos that it was the same Lagos he had in the heat of the fuel subsidy crisis in January 2012 lampooned for their spoilt brats being the sole beneficiaries of the subsidy. If I may add, even at the risk of doing the critics’ job for them, that was the time Nigerians should have been noticing the divisive tendencies that eventually killed the PDP, in the president.

Anyway, in all of these, it is the president’s handlers that messed up his case by insisting that he did well. If they are honest enough to admit that their principal has failed, Nigerians will graciously allow him to ‘repeat’. If the old time religion was good for Paul and Silas; and Chief Gabriel Igbinedion’s joke that Lucky, his son, should be allowed to “repeat” if he failed as Governor of Edo State worked for the junior Igbinedion, then what says it would not work for President Jonathan? But, first things first; the president must admit he has failed and that he is now ready to take both the country and transformation agenda to the theatre for surgical operation and that, this time around, they definitely will respond to stimuli. Having spent about five years to lay a solid foundation for transformation, Nigerians should be rest assured that the president is now set to build on that solid foundation.

But if President Jonathan has done well and therefore passed as his aides are trying to force us to believe, why then should he ‘repeat’? He should go to the next level: that is join the league of the country’s elder statesmen so that his immediate and subsequent successors would also be coming to him for advice whenever they are at the cross- roads. And, if the president is afraid of his own shadow, having called a prominent member of that league a ‘motor park tout’, that should not be a problem. Baba as a Yoruba elder knows that no matter how a child knows how to eat cold pap, it must always soil his hand.

At any rate, why should the president bother about the ingrates called Nigerians that he has been labouring for in the last 56 months but who still do not appreciate that it is because of them that all manner of insults are being hauled at him by people, some of them not capable of unlacing his shoes? That is the way it has been since the days of Jesus Christ. A prophet is not without honour except in his own town. As the president himself said before, it is long after he would have left office that Nigerians would begin to appreciate him. The ingrates can’t wait any longer for that longing, when they should be making a fetish of Jonathan for life!

January 25, 2015
Voting against one’s interests: identity politics and the 70% in dire poverty (2)

The politics of identity will play a huge role in the forthcoming presidential elections in Nigeria. This is not unusual because identity politics is an important aspect of electoral politics in all the democracies in the world, especially in nations that are multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural. What is or will be unusual in the elections next month is that identity politics will operate in a way that is unprecedented in our country’s political history. This is because there is a vast disparity in how the politics of identity will be used by the two main contending parties, the PDP and the APC. Because this is a very crucial matter that also happens to be a subject that easily lends itself to being manipulated and distorted, I wish to write about it here concretely and with as much clarity as I can muster in the hope that nothing I write will be misinterpreted or misunderstood.

Concerning the APC, this is the main implication of identity politics as it is expected to structure the 2015 presidential election: the Presidency will return to the North and the Vice Presidency will go to the Southwest whereas within the scheme of things within the “zoning” politics of the PDP, neither the Presidency nor the Vice Presidency was expected to come to the Southwest in the next one decade – at the very least. Of course identity politics is not the only factor in the coming elections. There is also the universally contemned reality of colossal corruption that is mostly supervened by the PDP’s grip on power at the centre in the last sixteen years. Nigerians in general and the whole world as well is focused on corruption as a huge factor in the elections. And there is also the sublime mediocrity, the aimlessness and the mendacity of the ruling party’s bosses and operatives, particularly Goodluck Jonathan himself. While these are also important factors, there is not the slightest doubt that the main driving force of APC’s momentum and PDP’s crippling fear of defeat rest on this basic expression of identity politics: the Presidency returns to the North and the Vice Presidency, a heartbeat from the top position, goes to a Yoruba man, to a man from the Southwest. We shall see in fact that consistent with the normative problems associated with identity politics, things are in actuality far more complex than this. But for now, let us turn to the subject of PDP’s great disadvantage in identity politics as it will play itself out come February 14, 2015.

The plain fact is that identity politics is in total confusion in the PDP. True, much has been made by Jonathan’s most determined and militant supporters that as an Ijaw man from the oil-rich Niger Delta he is entitled to two full terms in the presidency. But Jonathan is the hapless victim of the abuses and misuses of the ruling party’s zoning politics. As the whole world knows, it was Obasanjo who first more or less rubbished the zoning principle of the PDP by reneging on his promise to be in office for only two terms and thereafter committing all the resources of the federal government to his third term bid. After Obasanjo, the zoning wahala in the PDP took a bizarre turn when Hajia Turai, Yar’ Adua’s widow, sought to cling to power after her husband’s death on the claim that the “North” had not yet finished the time in the presidency that her husband’s mandate entitles to the zone. It took the extra-constitutional measure of the so-called “doctrine of necessity” to restore constitutional order and confirm Jonathan as President for the last two years of Yar’ Adua’s term. And then, and then in his own fateful ensnarement by the twists and turns of the same zoning principle of the PDP, Jonathan went back on his own promise to serve for only one term of four years as a condition for getting PDP’s nomination for the 2011 presidential elections. So far, so good.

But what Jonathan and his supporters apparently did not know and seem incapable of appreciating is the fact that the North-South divide at the core of ruling class politics in our country is the heart and soul of the zoning principle in the PDP. Obasanjo rubbished it but could not quite overcome it; Turai mangled it but could not prevail in her bid to make it the basis of her unconstitutional hold on power; and then Jonathan tried to sidestep it altogether but it blew up in his face. It may well turn out that in the process he has also blown the ruling party into historical and political oblivion.

Could Jonathan have successfully sidestepped the zoning principle at the heart of PDP’s identity politics if he was an inspiring Head of State and Commander-in-Chief? Would his opponents within and outside the PDP have been able to prevail against him if there was not so much suffering, so much insecurity, so much loss of respect and credibility for our rulers at home and abroad? Let us put these same questions in a more positive register. What if Jonathan was a widely and deeply beloved President and not, according to Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, “the most abused and negatively profiled President in Nigerian history”, would he not have prevailed against the zoning principle as the PDP’s ultimate incarnation of identity politics?

For me, there is not the slightest doubt that the answer to all these questions is a resounding yes and yes again. Constitutionally, it is within Jonathan’s right to seek a second term in office. But both in his move from Acting President to President and in his bid to get his party’s nomination in 2011, he had benefitted from and irrevocably committed himself to extra-constitutional measures or instruments in which adherence to the zoning principle was a key element. Thus, the only way that he could have gotten around his dilemma and successfully actualized his constitutional right to a second term in office would have been through the achievement of a reputation for being a widely respected, high performing and beloved President. But as Nigerians know and the whole world concurs, Jonathan is the ultimate negation of such accomplishments. In other words, the collapse of identity politics around zoning within the PDP wouldn’t have in the end mattered if Nigeria under Jonathan was a much better and totally different country than the hellish nightmare from which the great majority of our peoples are trying to wake. The lesson that we can or must glean from this observation, this claim is that identity politics is a necessary but vastly insufficient force with which to engage all the problems, crises and challenges of any and all the nations of the word in the 21st century.

This lesson also applies as well to the APC, even if this is so prospectively since the party has not yet become Nigeria’s ruling party. There is absolutely no guarantee that the alliance of the mainstream politicians of the “core’ North and the Southwest, two of the most populous zones in the country, will automatically transform our country into the functioning, just, respected and peaceful land for which we are all yearning. For now, all that an APC victory guarantees and signifies is that you need a workable system of identity politics to become and remain the ruling party in a diverse multiethnic and multicultural country like Nigeria. Beyond that, things are extremely volatile, especially given the yawning and widening chasm between the haves and the have-nots in our country and the manner in which the present socio-economic environment sustains and even consistently expands that chasm. What does this portend for an APC victory next month that might very well launch us into a post-PDP political space?

All over the world, both in merely formal and institutionally substantial democracies, the history of electoral victories gained primarily through identity politics is rife with poor and marginalized people who end up voting against their own economic and political interests by voting only or primarily on the basis of thinking that once their “own son”, their own “people” are in office things will be better than when they didn’t have their own sons and daughters in power. Although much of the support for the APC in the North and the Southwest, the zones in which the party is expected to do very well, is based on this thinking, it is necessary to point out that many supporters of the party in these two zones are also driven by expectations that the policies and acts of the APC in power will be fairer and more progressive than anything we ever experienced from the PDP. However, there is a danger of complacency here. For lack of space, I will indicate only two crucial areas in which this complacency manifests itself.

The first and perhaps the more important one is a pervasive thinking in the Southwest that the region brings an inherent and even natural progressivism to the alliance that gave birth to the party. This is too simple for in reality, progressivism in the Southwest, as in all other zones and regions in the country was always constantly and bitterly fought for and consolidated. Things will not be different if the APC comes to power. Secondly, primitive accumulation through massive privatization is as much a driving force for leading figures within the APC as it was/is with the PDP. For me, the real sign that things will be different under the APC, that what we will get is not just a mere change in the cast of characters, is how curbing looting, waste and squandermania will be used as tools to mobilize the economy and our peoples for a Nigeria that is no longer under the heel of a barawo, agbero and “area boy” capitalist and capitalism.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

January 25, 2015
Postponing Poll 2015?

There are indications elements within the Goodluck Jonathan government might be disposed to the postponement of next month’s polls . They fear that given the current momentum in favour of the opposition, the president could lose. That indication is now lent spurious weight by the National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, a retired army colonel, who has suggested that in view of the delay in issuing permanent voter cards, a three-month postponement would be advisable and even constitutional. The electoral body, INEC, which had nearly four years to produce and distribute the cards, has happily not asked for a postponement.

Both Dr Jonathan and his party should be advised to perish the thought. If everyone cannot receive his PVC, the use of temporary voter cards should be sanctioned. Postponement in the circumstances some are campaigning for it would be risky, unconstitutional, crisis-ridden, and perhaps be interpreted as an attempt to shift the goal post in favour of Dr Jonathan, a political chicanery whose consequences may be difficult to manage.

January 25, 2015
Presidential poll: it’s a question of character

If Nigeria fails once again to elect the right man as president, it will be because the country has focused on the wrong priorities. So far, as the campaigns for the polls intensify, Nigerians are preoccupied with what they describe as weighty election considerations. They try to see how much President Goodluck Jonathan has implemented his so-called transformation agenda, evaluate his opinions and policies on corruption, agriculture, social and infrastructural programmes, the tertiary institutions he has established, and his counterinsurgency strategies, among other things. If they judge he has been faithful in nearly all the items he promised to deliver, it seems likely the electorate will enthusiastically return him to office. Should that happen, it would be because the voters and their president understand one another, have met at a common junction down the road, and shared values, cultures, politics and philosophies — in short, that they reflect a common depth of wisdom and vision, no matter how shallow these are.

But the voters could also assess the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, and judge him a good substitute for, perhaps, a non-performing Dr Jonathan. The voters may be persuaded that Gen Buhari’s programmes and his party’s worldview would rejuvenate Nigeria and take the country to a great height, the so-called lunar landing Dr Jonathan has obsessively dreamt of without a scintilla of effort in that direction. Even if Gen Buhari is elected and the APC is endorsed, no one can be sure what factors would procure him that electoral victory: his programmes, his party, voter frustration with Dr Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the urge and desperation to try something new, a consideration that anything but Jonathan would do just fine, etc?

Less than four weeks to the nation-defining presidential poll, the PDP and Dr Jonathan’s supporters have sensibly avoided any reference to their candidate’s character, choosing instead to focus on whatever achievements they think he has made, and to denounce his opponent, Gen Buhari, for his weaknesses and inconsistencies as a person and leader. Conversely, the APC has tried valiantly to focus on their candidate’s character, which they roughly define in terms of his honesty and integrity, electing to de-emphasise his records as military head of state in the mid 1980s. In their push and pull, and cut and thrust, both parties give only a pathetic hint of the significant role character — a virtue and value they have no proper understanding of — should play in the election and in the task of rebuilding Nigeria.

One of the reasons the world is plagued by poor leadership in both politics and business is that there is not much emphasis placed on character anymore. According to former French leader, Charles de Gaulle, “A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.”He adds: “Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.” But character loses its meaning or is weakened if it is not sustained and ennobled by sound judgement, and intuitive understanding of times, issues and policies. Character means so much more than the dictionary understanding of embodying a person’s personality. It is deeper, metaphysically nuanced and is projected at a level that transcends simple and exact definitions and terminologies.

By focusing on projects a president has executed or not executed, the Nigerian voter makes the incalculable mistake of using the wrong yardsticks to assess their leader. Leadership is more than projects executed. They are not interchangeable; though projects sometimes open a window into the character of a leader. Indeed, Dr Jonathan is the perfect example of the weakness of democracy in producing leaders with character. What projects has he executed, and what are their visionary rubric? How have his policies and ideas projected his understanding of democracy or any other concept of governance original to him? Has Dr Jonathan not dedicated himself to avoiding crisis, or responding amateurishly and cowardly to them when he can’t avoid them? How did he respond to the fuel price crisis, especially when it emerged it was complicated by gargantuan thievery by oil cabals? How has he responded to the insurgency in the Northeast, a troubled region that discomfited his delicate spirit?

It is in fact possible for a leader to execute great developmental projects without anything properly describable as character. Should that happen, the electorate would at least be consoled by the good life, in place of the greater aesthetics of life, the great and lofty abstracts that sometimes burden a leader, compelling him to design structures and frame ideas for the day after tomorrow. But if there is no coherence in the plans for the material enjoyment of today, how can there be, like the sun that produces its own energy, a brilliant, self-actualising and self-perpetuating vision for tomorrow? This was the tragedy Nigeria encountered in 1999 under former President Olusegun Obasanjo. And this is tragically the fate now being endured in greater distress and humiliation under Dr Jonathan. But this was also a tragedy that predated the Fourth Republic, a tragedy clearly the nemesis of many businesses, societies, and in this case, Nigeria.

Gen Buhari wears the outer shell of character, and is at least a better person and leader than Dr Jonathan. But his detractors are not wrong to argue that his judgement both as head of state and when he presided over the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) was less than unimpeachable. His character may not be ennobled by the wisdom and intuitive intelligence that only a deep person can exude, but he will at least not shy away from crisis, wilt before it, or indulge in the expediencies souls enfeebled by years of irresolute living and leadership are accustomed to. The choice before Nigeria next month is very clear: to put a man in office that best approximates the archetypal leader with character, not a man who cites antediluvian projects like narrow gauge railway as trophy. The wrong choice will probably doom the country, and further consign it to the dungheap, thereby reinforcing its sordid reputation as a byword among nations.

January 18, 2015
That farcical pact between Jonathan and Buhari

Hearing President Goodluck Jonathan declaim upon the higher virtues of electoral rectitude at the Abuja workshop where he and APC candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, signed a covenant to keep the peace during and after next month’s presidential election, one would easily ascribe to him the greatest political altruism. But President Jonathan, experience has shown repeatedly, is only capable of affected political display, the most egregious ever by a Nigerian president or head of state. It used to be thought such affectations were deliberately conjured to impress. After a careful study and understanding of Dr Jonathan’s idiosyncrasies, it became obvious his affectations are products of a part of him neither he nor anyone close to him had control over. He speaks one thing with conviction, and the next moment he is doing the perfect opposite with equal, effortless and innocent ease.

The pact between him and Gen Buhari, which was supposedly midwifed by former United Nations Secretary-Genral, Kofi Annan, and former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Emeka Anyaoku, is no exception. To be fair to Dr Jonathan, he has never spoken glowingly of democracy, or offered us any original thought on the subject, whether practical from experience or philosophical from a visionary standpoint. So, he could not be expected to declaim on the topic, whether he faked it or meant it. But on a variety of other topics, such as electoral fidelity, employment, economic development, and social transformation, the president has lent the full gamut of his complex personality.

Gen Buhari is not in office, nor does he have his hands on the levers of law enforcement and security. So it is difficult to gauge his sincerity regarding the pact. But does anyone trust Dr Jonathan’s enthusiastic view of the Abuja covenant? Newspapers emblazoned a photograph of the president and the general embracing each other after signing the pact, both beaming wide grins, the more surprising because the inscrutable Gen Buhari seldom openly smiled. Beyond the smiles and the photographs, there is little else to the pact, at least as far as Dr Jonathan is concerned. To him, a pact is not any more important than the paper it is signed on. For the pact to have meaning, all institutions of state, not just the electoral body, must be impartial and professional. Dr Jonathan has never demanded impartiality or professionalism of the police, Department of State Service, army, judiciary, his cabinet, or even the bureaucracy. His idea of impartiality is their unalloyed commitment to his person and government.

Could the president therefore feign ignorance of the crass unprofessionalism of former Rivers State police commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu, whose despicable interpretation of his powers and the constitution, not to say his obnoxious insubordination, went unchallenged, mediated or moderated by the president? What of the gangster assault executed by the police on the House of Representatives, and especially against the person of the Speaker? What of the withdrawal of the Speaker’s police security, a decision that both affronted the constitution and manifested political intolerance and lack of respect for democracy? How then can a president under whose nose such deplorable assaults on the constitution were planned and executed claim to desire a violence-free poll and the institution of an impartial, sane and developed polity?

Judging from the president’s enthusiasm, or the body language he cavils at when others read it in him, his idea of violence-free poll does not refer to him, for after all, he had repeatedly warned that no political ambition was worth the life of anyone, regardless of the fact that he often spoke violence. The pact makes sense to the president only as a tool to control Gen Buhari’s die-hards, many of whom he believes require little prompting to take extraordinary and extra-constitutional measures to conjure their utopia. But let the president offer real leadership, the kind that is truly inspiring and altruistic, one that even the blind and the deaf can attest to, and see whether there would be a whimper if an election was lost.

January 18, 2015
The concept of permanent liberation

Just as eternal vigilance is the price to pay for continuous liberty, the concept of permanent liberation advances the thesis that permanent liberation battles is the price to pay for living in a post-colonial country. One struggle for liberation and freedom commences as soon another terminates. It is a state of permanent warfare as battles succeed battles in a roiling cauldron of continuous strife and contention. No man is tailor-made for permanent warfare. Even the greatest of warriors often falter or lose their nerves. In a state of permanent warfare, you need permanent moral clarity and consistent focus in order not to join the wrong battle formation.

It has been said that people fight for a cause only to find that what they have fought for is not what has supplanted the old order. It is then often left to others to fight on. But when the same struggle for liberation and freedom resumes in a new guise with the old demon wearing a new face, some old warriors, out of sheer historical exhaustion and loss of the acuity of vision, are wrong-footed into joining the wrong battle formation against the immanent will of their own people. This is just as some regnant forces of the discredited old order suddenly found themselves as part of the ascendant winning coalition.

The people treat the former oppressors turned new liberators with wary regard. Thanks but no thanks. The rogue liberators would soon be back to their old ways when the cannons boom once again, and very soon too. As for the old liberators turned new oppressors, they are treated with instant excommunication and prompt expulsion from the Order of Political Saints. It is a cruel, harsh and unforgiving world. There are no come back kids here. The political galleria is full of walking corpses and numerous casualties; former heroes who have been expelled from the Procession of Holy Patriots.

This is probably an old society’s way of transposing its old values to a new society. But it is just as well. It may well be because nothing lasts in the tropics. Things grow so fast and die so fast. And when they die, they decompose so fast, that you begin to wonder if they ever lived. That is the nature of the tropics. Nothing is permanent, not human institutions, or artifices for reining in the wilder impulses of humankind. In the sultry heat, even the nation-state itself is permanently on the boil.

Revolutions revolve. One liberation struggle is quickly succeeded by another. Just when you think you have got rid of a band of oppressors, new oppressors emerge in the sizzling cauldron. And in the combustible contradictions, old oppressors transform into iconic arrowheads of the new struggle.

By the same token, some icons of the old struggle caught in the maddening tempo of events, the shifting and swirling political gyrations, suddenly become villains of the new struggle. It takes more than moral clarity, political sophistication and analytical prowess to be on the right side of history in the permanent shuffling and shuttling. It takes divine luck.

Yet it does not take a diviner to conclude that the forthcoming elections are a watershed for post-independence Nigeria. What was seen a few months ago as a routine contest between a superbly well-entrenched even if under-achieving and under-performing government and a disorganized and desultory opposition has now shaped into an epic power struggle the like of which has never been seen on these shores. There is a mysterious will to this election, a metaphysical potency to its gathering hurly-burly which cannot be lightly ignored. Needless to add that it will determine the fate and destiny of Nigeria.

Despite the numerous battles, the wars of liberation in modern Nigeria can be grouped under three broad rubrics, namely: The war of national liberation against colonial oppression; second, the war against internal colonization and military occupation of Nigeria; lastly the war against the combined forces of ascendant ethnic and neo-military power formations bent on keeping Nigeria in political slavery and economic servitude which is currently joined.

With retrospective clarity, it can now be seen that the battle of the Victorian Lagos Press against the various colonial administrations, particularly the journalistic slugfest between these illustrious Nigerian patriots and the Lugard family, the Aba Women Uprising, the various ethnic revolts, political trials and numerous workers’ strikes were all part of an uncoordinated war of national liberation.

Similarly, the ethnic rebellion against internal colonization in the old Western region which culminated in the First Coup, the Tivi uprising in the Middle Belt, the Civil War, the Zango Kataf riots, the Ogoni Rebellion, the Orkar military mutiny and the protracted and bitter struggle for the de-annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election were all part of a costly war against internal colonization and military despotism in Nigeria. Of all of them, it was only the June 12 contention which had a pan-Nigerian template that spawned an international wing.

It is also worthy of note that in the history of Nigeria, this is the first election that is going to be entirely issue-driven, even where dominant ethnic and religious preferences cannot be discounted or ignored. While virtually all the other elections have been more or else ethnic referendum fought under some ideological or political occlusions, the veil seems to have come off this time. This is ironically because it is also the first time in Nigeria that elections are being entirely driven by the will of the people. The role of the political elite in the deployment of ethnicity and religion as instruments of political negotiations can no longer swept under the carpet.

The coming elections will be fought on three main planks, namely (1) the validation of the sovereign electoral will of the Nigerian people. It is on this that all the other planks rest (2) The issue of corruption and its multiplier effect on the national climate (3) The stunting of certain vital national institutions, namely the military as seen in the Boko Haram fiasco, the judiciary as manifested in sheer corruption and unwarranted government interference and the failure of the political class to modernize Nigeria.

The election is not about ideological proclivity or political refinement, pressing as those may be to the political sophisticates. The election is mainly about the first principle of nationhood which is the inalienable sovereignty of the electorate and whether the people have the right to choose or change their government if and as when they deem appropriate.

It has been possible to mess up Nigeria this far because the rulers believe that the electorate have no say in elections. The fundamental and overwhelming revolutionary imperative of our time is to return power and sovereign will to the Nigerian people. All other things can then follow. Being mass-driven, this is an election of limited political vision but unlimited strategic clarity.

It is that unlimited strategic clarity which informs the alliance between the dominant political tendency in the South West and the core north which has produced the APC in the face of present odds and past prejudices. Political impurities often have their strategic value. In the June 12 presidential election and the struggle to terminate military despotism in Nigeria, Abiola, a friend and creation of the military, brought rightwing resources to bear on an essentially rightwing venture.

In the current conjuncture, the APC with its slew of recuperating feudalists, former authoritarian strongmen and republican royalists has brought immense rightwing resources of fabulous wealth, visibility and connection to bear on what is particularly a leftwing project: the authentication of the Nigerian electorate. What bullet could not achieve, the ballot may yet achieve. Help always comes for Nigeria from the most unlikely of sources.

As we have said, the concept of permanent liberation requires permanent struggle. To be sure, the emerging two-party structure in Nigeria is adversely weighed down by its freight of political misfits, frauds and nonentities. In all probability, and if the law of permanent liberation subsists, the battle for the ideological refinement and political redefining of the parties will commence as soon as the current battle for popular supremacy terminates. In that forthcoming shakedown, the current victors will get their own comeuppance if they fail to read the tea leaves or could not find the moral clarity and altruistic strength of character to handle unaccustomed change.

Such inability to deal with sudden, unexpected changes coming from unexpected quarters has been the great tragedy of the surviving barons of the old Yoruba political establishment who are bent on a mission of final self-immolation. Even for the stoutest and most valiant of men, it is not easy to be in a permanent theatre of war and roiling contention and still maintain one’s alertness and strategic foresight. But they should learn from history.

A quick glance at the turbulent pageantry of Yoruba history and modern mythology might suffice. Nobody ever remembers the earlier sterling contributions of Aare Afonja to Oyo Empire, or the fact that the self-willed generalissimo and prince thought he was actually attempting to lay the foundation of a formidable new empire out of the wreckage of the old in contempt and defiance of a succession of effete and clueless Alaafins.

There were many Lagosian grandees of Yoruba extraction who got swept out of historical contention simply because they could not understand or align themselves with the strange new doctrine of Yoruba self-determination as advocated by a man they despised as an upstart from the Ijebu interior, just as there were many authentic heroes of the Action Group struggle of the fifties that fell by the wayside simply because they could not read the Awo-SLA feud of the early sixties correctly.

In 1993, a few avatars of the Action Group/ UPN struggle against internal colonialism in the First and Second Republics who allowed legitimate grudges and grievances against Abiola on account of his past perfidies to condition their attitude to the annulment suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of history from which they have never recovered. In 2015, those who are allowing ancient grudges and ancestral animosities to becloud their political judgement may also find themselves trapped in the abyss of historical infamy from which there may be no escape or recovery.

The graveyard is filled with the bones of indispensable men indeed. The Yoruba pitch for an alliance to win power at the centre is not incompatible with defending core Yoruba interests while advancing national interests. Attack is often the best form of defence, more so in a colonial cage of chaotic contraries. The old strategy of waiting for the enemy to come for you in your own territory was the product of a siege mentality, a Laager mindset or what the Americans call the habit of circling the wagons.

Only those who have failed or refused to come to terms with the emergent realities of the post-colonial polity can still be sold on this ancient strategy. In the long run the Yoruba nation and Nigeria at large may yet have to thank those political wizards responsible for this remarkable rupture of customary political praxis and its radical epiphany of fresh possibilities

January 18, 2015
The funeral of an elephant

The sight of the PDP unraveling , coming apart at the seams with spectacular aplomb, must fill one with pity and terror. How did the largest party in Africa come to this sorry pass? Yet it is a well-known historical fact that hubris affects not only human beings but human institutions and political contraptions as well. This, surely, cannot be the same party destined to rule for the next sixty years, according to one of its summarily defenestrated chieftains. Conceived as a broad-based pan-Nigerian caucus to free the nation from military bondage, the PDP has become a fascist terror machine from which the entire nation is seeking liberation.

Those who refuse to learn their history are condemned to repeat the lesson. We have been through this route before. In the Second Republic, the late Umaru Dikko, confusing the monstrous amalgam of placemen and party hacks that his party was to Hitler’s NAZI, boasted that the NPN would rule for a whole millennium, in short an African Third Reich. But shortly thereafter, a gunslide replaced the NPN’s dubious landslide, to put things in General Theophilus Danjuma’s memorable phraseology.

To be sure, these two gentlemen were no idle prattlers. They had the fact to back up their controversial claims -or so it seemed. When Vincent Ogbuluafor was making his canonical declaration from the throne, the PDP stood supreme with the opposition in total disarray and reeling from the hammer blow of the rampart and rampaging party. At the time Umaru Dikko was boasting about the bearish strength and virtual invincibility of his party, Chief Awolowo’s UPN had just been handed one of the worst and most humbling electoral whipping of the century.

January 18, 2015
APC and the Chibok factor

It is hard to imagine whether in any polity a president can win re-election fairly and transparently with a baggage like the Chibok abductions, no, not even in Africa. By the time the presidential election is held in February, the 219 Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in Borno State will be about 10 months in captivity. It is a major political issue, perhaps more significant than even the collapsing economy. Why the All Progressives Congress does not use it as a major campaign issue may be due to their reluctance to, as they say, politicise security matters. But the crime cannot be wished away, and it is not politicisation to remind the country that the Jonathan government is incompetent in handling it.

The APC must remind the country that no president or government should be rewarded for mishandling a tragedy of that magnitude. The girls are our daughters, and their parents have remained disconsolate. Indeed, far beyond the mere tragic act of Boko Haram seizing the girls and damaging them, is the unforgivable fact that the president neither visited the crime scene nor empathised with the parents, the state and the Nigerian people. He has no reason to ask for their votes; and those of us whose votes he asks for should deny him. It is nothing personal. It has nothing to do with him as an Ijaw man, a Niger Delta man, a Christian, or a learned zoologist. The image and dignity of Nigeria are at stake, and the APC must utilise the abductions to the hilt.

January 18, 2015
Not violence, just free and fair elections 1

The consequence of rigged elections in the course of the country’s history is that most of the governments in the country have been considered for decades by many citizens to lack legitimacy.

After the hyperbolic reaction to the emergence of Buhari and Jonathan as the two leading presidential candidates, marked by pre-campaign high fever and infectious fear mongering at the instance of both priests and politicians, technocrats and academics, the events and pronouncements of the last few days confirmed that emphasis has shifted to making the only right demand at this moment in the country’s political history: free, fair, and credible elections. Just as it has been in mature democracies across the globe, elections are not supposed to be automatic causes of heart attack or convulsion to citizens, but merely an opportunity for national political renewal and for reinforcement of citizens’ belief in the claim that citizens are the real owners of modern nation’s sovereignty.

Just a few days after strident calls for postponement of election and installation of Interim governments, the nation was made to witness expressions of commitment to violence-free polls by major stakeholders in the electoral process. Rather than join the forces calling for the end of history in Nigeria, President Jonathan, General Buhari, and other presidential candidates pledged that as candidates they eschew violence and would discourage their supporters from getting violent before, during, and after the elections. In other words, those who may gain or lose from electoral violence have opted for peace and unity of purpose: credible elections. It is not clear whether the agreement among presidential candidates includes avoiding the kind of intimidation of voters by state security that characterised recent gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun.

On his own part, President Jonathan openly acted statesmanlike by calling on INEC to ensure that no Nigerian is disenfranchised as a result of inefficient and ineffective release of permanent voter cards to citizens. Correspondingly, the INEC chairman also publicly ordered that the current process of releasing PVCs be changed, to ensure that all citizens, duly registered to vote, are given unfettered opportunity to collect their voter cards, without which they cannot exercise their rights as citizens on February 14 and 28. In addition, the INEC boss released important information regarding the plans to conduct free, fair, and credible elections. He put the total number of registered voters (not the number of voting age population) at 68.8 million. He announced that his commission will use card readers to verify the identity of voters presenting PVCs on election days, adding that 130,000 card readers had already arrived while his commission is waiting for others scheduled to arrive before the presidential election. The troubling part of the information given by the INEC chair is that 30 million PVCs are still to be collected. But the quick assurance by the commission’s leader that distribution of PVCs will henceforth be decentralised must be uplifting for those yet to collect their voter cards and other believers in the view that Nigeria’s destiny as a nation-state depends on its ability and capacity to make democracy work in the country, principally through free and fair elections.

Even at the risk of re-stating the obvious, it is necessary to remind INEC of a few steps that have to be taken, if the decentralisation of distribution of PVCs is to have a salutary outcome. The agency needs to repeat to citizens through mass education and publicity the total number of days available for collection of the cards. Print and electronic media need to be engaged to do this job ad nauseam, as this may be the only way to take advantage of repetition as a public communication tactic. It is re-assuring that INEC boss has told citizens that the presidency has done its own part by making all funds needed for credible elections available.

Now that funding (cash, to use the word employed by Professor Jega) for the electoral process from now till announcement of results is no longer a constraint, the onus of conducting free, fair, and credible elections rests principally on INEC. The latest announcement that distribution will resume in all wards as from Friday, January 16 for one week is good news. But one week may not be adequate to distribute 30 million, if the commission has been able to distribute just 38 million since the exercise started weeks ago. It is more cost-effective to invest in ensuring that registered voters are able to collect their PVCs. The wards, except those that have given out all cards in their charge should be open till the end of January. Citizens that have jobs may not be able to get to the wards on week days, since transportation in the country’s urban areas is habitually chaotic and ineffective. Realistically, most working citizens have just Saturdays to spare for this exercise. This is the reason most democracies mail voter cards to registered voters’ homes. INEC needs to take into consideration constraints of working citizens, particularly those in the urban areas.

As we observed in this column a few weeks ago, it will be important for INEC to tell citizens by the end of January how many cards are yet to be collected and how INEC plans to disable such cards for this year’s elections. Uncollected cards should be invalidated and the numbers of invalidated cards should be published in national dailies after the deadline for collection and well ahead of the first election, for citizens to be assured that such cards would not be a source of tension during polling. Citizens also need to be informed about the delivery of the remaining card readers, as voters need to be assured that every voter will be subjected to the same procedure and that card readers will not be used selectively.

Given the state of infrastructure and facilities in our country, the average voter recognises the challenges facing INEC staff. Conducting election for a voting population of almost 70 million in a country without constant electricity, good roads, proper mass transit within towns, and low level of productivity or efficiency of the average worker must be a major challenge. But four years should be long enough for INEC to overcome challenges thrown up by these factors. Efficiency is of utmost importance in this national task of conducting an election that is free and fair and is seen to be so.

Conducting a successful poll in 2015 is not only a good way to discourage violent citizens from putting Nigeria’s peace, stability, and unity at risk. Citizens know through reading or primary experience about the failure over decades of the country’s leaders to conduct free and fair elections or to sustain such elections when they happened as was the case in 1993. The consequence of rigged elections in the course of the country’s history is that most of the governments in the country have been considered for decades by many citizens to lack legitimacy. The feeling that most governments in the country have been illegitimate either because they were imposed via coup d’etat or through rigged elections has had knock-on effect on the culture of corruption and impunity in the country over the years.

From the excitement that has been shown so far about the 2015 elections, it seems that citizens are already yearning for an end to government by rulers perceived to have been put in power by rigged or manipulated elections. The task for INEC is complex but doable. INEC officials must know that citizens believe that INEC is the only agency that is charged with the task of keeping the country stable, united, and democratic at this point in the nation’s history. The advantages are legion for the country and even for those seeking elective offices.

To be continued

January 18, 2015
Hail Corruption!

This perverseness in all of us tends to make each one think only of himself and consign all other people to hell, all other members of his group to damnation, all other clients to Hades, and all other citizens to Halifax!

I looked up my Microsoft Encarta for the definition of corruption. It described it as the ‘dishonest exploitation of power for personal gain.’ I liked the definition so much I did not bother to look for any other. I did not bother to consult our dear president’s dictionary which describes what corruption is not: stealing. I was too afraid of what it would tell me corruption is.

We are all familiar with the national refrain: the government is too corrupt. I agree. Nearly, if not all, the governments we have been saddled with in Nigeria appear to have had only one item on their agenda: to be more corrupt than their predecessors; and to leave the country more depleted and disconsolate than they meet it. I must say they have all succeeded. The effect is that Nigerians have learnt to be corrupt in all their various places of watch. We have all imbibed the culture of corruption as a people and we are not liking it.

The definition I stayed with – in case your English is worse than mine, dear reader, which I doubt – simply means that when we overtly or covertly use our position to gain something, no matter how trite, we have engaged in corruption. So, advertently or inadvertently, the only one not guilty of corruption is standing still. That definition rolls practically everybody into the carpet of guilt, beginning with me.

I think one of the hardest things to manage is power: over food, money, children, properties, students, clients, proselytes, adherents, citizens, etc. Let’s take the first example. It is my belief that the area generally demarcated as the cooking stove offers a super-great temptation to be corrupt. Anyone who has ever found himself or herself in charge of the cooking will testify that you need superhuman strength to resist tasting everything in the pot to death when various kinds of aroma waft up your nostrils. I think the worst of the lot is the barbecue.

When the grill is hot and the meat begins to sizzle, your tongue pushes itself against the palate, forcing the throat to constrict as it bobs up and down in involuntary saliva swallows, and paroxysms of desire prompt you to reach out and cut a piece to taste. Suddenly, like one in a dream, you reach out for a small piece, then another small piece after another, until you find that you have tasted an entire steak. Of course it goes on until someone with foresight knows that an entire joint would be liable to disappear if the utensils are not rescued from you. To be honest, I have always believed that what I eat at the table is not enough to account for my weight gain; I still believe that the corruption at the stove has a lot to do with it! Ladies and gentlemen, what I have just described is a metaphor for the misuse of all the national treasures kept in our care: food, money, children, properties, students, clients, proselytes, adherents, citizens, etc.

Now, I have a very bad habit: I hate counting money, not even at the bank counter. Naturally, I have been victim to many a deliberate underpayment. I believe that counting money reminds me too much of how short it is in supply in my purse; so I just spend what little I have until I run out of. The other day, someone wanted to send some money through me to someone else and was surprised that I did not bother to verify the sum. Well, I explained, if it falls short, the fellow should know that the shortage would not have come from me.

I explained to him that one of the greatest instances of corruption, is to ‘quickly borrow’ someone else’s money in your keeping to meet an urgent need until you can go to the bank to replace it! My sender was dumbfounded. I do believe at that moment he thought I was an angel, until I hastened to explain that I only knew that after the children had grown. When the children were young, I cannot now recollect how many times the monetary gifts they had received from visitors were ‘quickly borrowed’ for ‘something urgent’. Yes, you guessed it; I had the power over their money: it was in my keeping.

Someone else now has power over my money because it is keeping it: the bank. Have you noticed that banks not only charge you COT but also all kinds of things including the VAT on the COT? I understand why I am charged some money on my transactions, but who on earth is supposed to pay the VAT tax on what they have charged me? Is it me or the bank gaining from the charges they have deducted from my own account? What kind of corruption of logic is this, I ask?

Then, take the case of private transporters, i.e., drivers given charge of vehicles. It is well known that very few of them can resist the temptation to pick up paying passengers with your vehicle on their way to and fro or either of your errands. You would never be the wiser but for some tell-tale signs of forgotten or dropped items in some corner or the other of your car. You think it is the lure of the fare or companionship that makes them do it? No, it is the lure of the make-belief; the need to pretend that the car belongs to them at the point of departure; the power to decide.

Have you ever had to deal with estate or house agents? My goodness, I tell you, they are one species of humans. I have never known a group of people to eat more from where they have not sown. They not only charge a great deal higher than the fellows who struggle to build the houses, they evict, discharge and acquit at will. Now, if that is not an example of the exercise of power and abuse of power, I don’t know what is.

Time and space will not permit me to mention the various bodies and associations whose executive members, learned and all, appear to be only interested in using the resources of their associations to solve their own personal problems. What about civil servants and technocrats who are supposed to protect the state: e.g. certify that the road has been built or contract executed satisfactorily but who agree to look the other way at a fee when the job has been done shoddily or not at all? What about GSM companies that charge us the earth and then sell us to private enterprises to inundate us with offers of all kinds of unwanted services? What about parents, teachers, schools, villages who wangle unfair advantages for their wards?…

It is easy to conclude that this country is all ‘messed up’ as we say up yonder because everyone is busy pointing accusing fingers at others, quite forgetting themselves. I don’t believe though that the situation cannot be redeemed; it can. As you can see, it may take more than one man or one party or one group. It requires each and every one of us.

There is a perverseness in all of us which tends to make each one think only of himself and consign all other people to hell, all other members of his group to damnation, all other clients to Hades, and all other citizens to Halifax! In the end, we all suffer and groan and wait for a deliverer. The deliverer is you, you and me! Until we recognise that we have the power to undo this evil in our hands, we might as well continue to drone, ‘Hail Corruption!’ at wake time each morning.

January 18, 2015