The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Prospects in adversity

IT never rains but pours, as they say. This past week, one cannot but weep for Mother Nigeria. Snooper does not normally engage in silly sentiments but the sight of a potentially great nation being battered and buffeted from all sides by increasingly violent storms cannot but evoke pity and passion. It is like watching the ruined hulk of a once magnificent heavyweight boxer being tossed and trussed around the ring like an expired paperweight.

No one can be sure which one of the savage blows will prove fatal. But there can be no doubt that something is about to give. Even for a lion-hearted nation that has seen off many adversities the combination of spiritual, political, economic and military disasters might prove a bridge too far. When you combine needless political turmoil, a rampart and remorseless religious uprising, the spiritual disorientation of a whole society with looming economic collapse, you have a perfect storm unfurling.

In nautical terms, a perfect storm occurs when a rare confluence of events leads to a dramatic worsening of a situation. In political terms, a perfect storm occurs when a rare convergence of different situations leads to a drastic worsening of circumstances. In the same week that Jonathan shot himself in the foot by ordering an invasion of the National Assembly, the Boko Haram insurgents almost added a state capital to their prized possessions.

As if these national tribulations were not enough, a major economic crisis signposted by dwindling petroleum revenues led to a summary devaluation of the naira. Nigerian officials have tried to put a bold face to this looming economic meltdown by insisting that our reserves should see us through. Like economic Rip van Winkles, they seem incapable of grasping the magnitude of the unfolding drama.

Dwindling revenues would lead to a drastic scaling down of capital projects; a worsening balance of state obligations and further loss of human capital. The bloated and bogus thirty-six state structure will become so severely cash-strapped in a matter of months that paying salaries will become a major miracle. All the indices point to an economic implosion. The next few months will be tense and fraught indeed.

One major crisis is often enough for any nation. But for a nation to be simultaneously confronted by severe crises in the most critical segments of human governance is beyond the normal order of things. On the face of it, it may look as if Nigeria is a victim of a monstrous national and international conspiracy to bring it to heel. The behavior of some of our neighbours appears very suspicious. Our old western patrons and partners appear to have given up completely on the nation as a viable project.

Yet on closer scrutiny and deeper observation, we are actually the architects of our own misfortunes. In order to ensure the sustenance of civilisation and the survival of the human species, nature often places a curse on its bounties. We must not be content with consuming them as we find them. We must add value to them through labour and ceaseless imagination. Without this fundamental law of nature, there would have been no civilisation and humankind would have remained stranded at the hunter-gatherer stage of existence. The wielded scythe speaks its own poetry and every human society that has excelled is a product of industry and poetic imagination.

As a result of an unproductive political elite stuck at the feral level of human existence with its impulse for immediate game-sharing so reminiscent of primitive hunting packs, we have allowed oil to become a curse on the nation. In almost 60 years of oil prospecting in the nation, we have not added any value to the black gold, beyond pocketing its proceeds and indulging in outlandish consumption of foreign goods.

This monocultural nature of our economy has completely distorted our growth and development and now threatens to swamp everything in an oily sludge. Beyond empowering only a few and leaving the rest to wallow in poverty and biblical misery, those who claim to be the rightful owners of the oil wells have not done much better than those they traditionally dismiss as parasites and leeches. Irrespective of ethnic extraction, the Nigerian political elite is cut from the same societal loins.

Many other societies have learnt their lessons the hard way. In the sixteenth century, gold from the Potosi mines of South America brought ruinous inflation to metropolitan Spain. The country went on a long spiral of economic and political dysfunction in which it was humiliated in turn by Holland, its former colony, England and then America which stripped it of its last illusions as a global power. It has taken four centuries, several political upheavals and a momentous civil war for the land of matadors to recover its bearing.

But we live in a different global order. As Nigeria begins to foam in blood from all fronts, it should also be clear that the international community out of enlightened self interest will not allow its misery to be prolonged or protracted. If the Boko Haram insurgency represents the rogue Islamic initiative, the unfolding oil war between America and the Saudi kingdom may yet turn out to be some final solution. Between them, Jonathan’s frantic assaults on national institutions serve as the local catalyst.

With such a distinguished list of potential terminators on the queue, Nigeria will be hard pressed to survive on a day to day basis. If we are lucky, it may all end in the remarkable recombination and reconstitution of the Nigerian nation. If not a conglomeration of warlord enclaves beckons. But the point to note is that there is opportunity in crisis and possibilities in utter adversity.

Given the events of the past few weeks, a consensus is beginning to emerge that the nation has reached a historic watershed and it cannot continue along this ruinous path. Hitherto, it has been a dialogue of the deaf between two seemingly immovable ethnic ramparts without any possibility of a pan-Nigerian resolution or a peaceful post-Nigerian dispersal of the tribes. There are those who believe that no matter the incompetence and skittish nature of the Jonathan administration, it must continue to rule for the foreseeable future because there are other sections that have also serially misruled the nation and for much longer too. The patent does not belong to the husband of Patience. Neither does the Nigerian patient.

On the other hand, there are those who passionately hold the view that if Jonathan is not out of Aso Rock and the presidential mansion before or after the next elections , then we can as well forget about Nigeria as a corporeal entity. For this band, Nigeria might as well disappear since any further extension of Jonathan’s tenure will spell doom and eventful ruination politically and economically for the old North, its teeming masses and the rump of its feudal aristocracy. It was as if Nigeria was sleepwalking to a self-fulfilling prophecy. No country has been known to survive an election fuelled by such polarisations.

The granite disavowals are gradually yielding to pragmatic realities. The search for the Nigerian saviour or a group of people who will redeem the nation from its current morass has resumed in earnest. The parties are not perfect, and going forward the elections will not be perfect. But in order to genuinely commence the structural re-engineering that Nigeria so badly needs at this momentous stage of its existence, we need a democratic mechanism for change or continuity as the case may be which will be acceptable to majority of Nigerians.

In the past two weeks, one has come across a few people from the South South and Ijaw nation willing to question Jonathan’s eligibility for another term based purely on performance in office. This is just as it should be. In the dialectic of human development, all that is solid often melts into thin air. By the same token, the gradual dilution and domestication of the old CPC by the ACN and UPGA crowds means that this time around the contest cannot be framed as a death duel between the messiah and the militant. Many things have happened since 2011.

Of course in a multi-national post-colonial polity, elections are never the ideal panacea for the resolution of national conflicts. As this column has repeatedly argued, elections may actually exacerbate the national question. But having sabotaged the outcome of its own conference ab initio, free and fair elections remain the best referendum for the Jonathan era and the way forward in the short median. In any case, with the current foul mood in the National Assembly and the whispers of impeachment, it is no longer possible to push through any constitutional panel-beating through that august body.

So let the contending parties come out with their manifestoes, stating clearly how to end the Boko Haram menace and how to go about the depetrolisation of the Nigerian economy. Let us have a real presidential debate. Going forward, the Buhari group may find their political consorting with the dominant political tendency in the South West at once profoundly liberating and modulating.

Conversely as they break out of their regional cocoons, the ACN folks may also find it profoundly liberating and modulating to discover that the whole notion of an ideologically and hence politically monolith west is a self-sustaining myth requiring constant propitiation. Out of the ugly clouds of destruction and disintegration, there may yet be some silver lining in the horizon.

December 7, 2014
Vending Yoruba unity at Ife

The real issue is how to ensure the survival of age-old Yoruba civilisation, without sacrificing the core Yoruba value of tolerance of difference and plurality of perspectives.

Oduduwa Hall at Obafemi Awolowo University was a few days ago the site for vending the latest political product in town: Yoruba Unity. The hallowed hall of ideas right from the days of Hezekiah Oluwasanmi almost became a source of contestation between merchants of Yoruba unity and students sent by their parents to acquire the knowledge with which they hope to transform Nigeria. Today’s piece is not about the juicy details of the confrontation between students and sellers/buyers of Yoruba unity, as the writer was too far from Ife physically to witness any detail at the unity market. The column today is interested in looking at distractions foisted on the Yoruba and by extension the Nigerian political landscape at the expense of the real issues that matter to the life of citizens-Yoruba or non-Yoruba.

Nigeria’s existence has been driven from the beginning by unity as a concept, later as a project, and finally as a product, acquired or given to wholesalers to market at the ancestral home of one of Africa’s most sophisticated nationalities. At the beginning of Nigeria, Frederick Lugard brought diverse peoples from the East, North, and West together to co-exist in a country without a common history. It has been argued by political and economic historians that Lugard, on behalf of the British government of his time, did not create Nigeria for the benefit of Nigerians. He was believed to have brought the southern woman of means and the northern prince together for the purpose of easing the coloniser’s burden of financing the administration of Britain’s new market in sub-Sahara Africa. While the peoples of Nigeria were trying to make sense of their new political territory by negotiating their cultural differences, the colonisers were doing their own thing, expanding their trade in their new market.

Independence brought a new reality. The three regions had a noticeably federal constitution that allowed each region to develop at its own pace. Soon after independence, the central government dominated by the northern region brought the issue of unity to the fore by strategising for a one-party system of government. Leaders of the central government from the two parties in alliance infiltrated the political party in power in Western region. The Action Group was broken into two: Awolowo’s AG and Akintola’s NNDP.

The open text of the crisis fomented by the rupture focused on search for national unity (referred to in today’s political parlance as main-streaming) as the source of contention between the Awolowo group and the Akintola group. That was the first time that the concept, Yoruba Unity, became the driver of political ideology among the traditionally federal Yoruba states, hitherto integrated by Action Group with the ideology of welfare politics.

The frantic search for Yoruba unity ended with the first republic. Military dictators shifted the struggle back to search for national unity. Ironsi on his part created a unitary Nigeria to be driven from and by the centre. Another coup came to change temporarily Ironasi’s policies back to the federalism in place in 1963. Soon after, the game changed again, especially with the advent of the civil war. Unity became a national project again. New states were created year in year out. Citizens in the balkanised states were pampered with funds from petroleum exploitation, and just about every group forgot about itself and looked forward to funds from the central government to oil the machines of government and the throats of government leaders.

The second republic brought back the importance of ideology as a basis of political rivalry within the Yoruba region, with nobody worrying about Yoruba unity. Awolowo, the leader of UPN looked for people comfortable with the ideology of his party all over Nigeria while leaders of the NPN also did the same. The Yoruba region had some of its respectable sons and daughters in both parties, but most of the citizens identified with the UPN. There was no civil war in Yoruba land between the Awolowo group: Bola Ige, Lateef Jakande, Bisi Onabanjo, Adekunle Ajasin, and Yoruba NPN leaders: Akinloye, Abiola, and others in the NPN. No individual or group proclaimed itself as the custodian of Yoruba unity. In the third republic, Abiola and Ige found themselves in the same a little-to-the-left political party, an indication that if there was ever any division within the Yoruba, it was not cultural but ideological. The fourth republic again brought individuals from the Yoruba region, hitherto in opposing political parties in earlier republics, together into the same party. Old-time politicians like Abraham Adesanya, Bola Ige, Bisi Akande, and new-breed politicians like Segun Osoba, Bola Tinubu, and Niyi Adebayo found themselves in the same party with a programme to bring the politics of welfare back, and the rest is history.

During the time that Save Nigeria Group was struggling to ensure that some cabal around Umaru Yar’Adua was not allowed to violate the constitutional provision that the Vice President, regardless of his or her geographic ethnic origin, should become president in the event of the person elected as president dying in office, unity in Yoruba land was not an issue. It was assumed by everybody that what was needed was for the Yoruba to have the opportunity to exercise their fundamental human rights of association. Even at the time of the 2011 presidential election, no serious politician raised the issue of unity. It was only in the last two years that the search for Yoruba unity became a religion and product at the same time, as it did in 1964-65. It was the search for Yoruba unity that was on sale in Ife a few days ago.

Lovers of Yoruba culture and values should thank their deity that the marketing of Yoruba unity on the campus of ObafemiAwolowo University did not lead to serious destruction of life and property. I was told that a few Yoruba obas had to remove their crowns, beads, and robes in order to hide their identities movement to examination halls. Without really believing that our obas would be that cowardly, I do not feel any empathy for any oba who needed to suspend on his own volition his own divine kingship, on account of poor planning by a group preoccupied with Yoruba unity, with or without purpose.

Before we end this historical piece, just a few questions for vendors of Yoruba unity. Why should Yoruba unity be a matter of concern to non-Yoruba people? President Jonathan is an Ijaw man hosted at Ife by miners of Yoruba Unity. How is an Ijaw man likely to be of use to the mining of Yoruba unity? The humble man was put under pressure to explain that he has been unhappy for the past four years because he had not been able to make a Yoruba woman the Speaker of the House of Representatives. How would getting a Yoruba woman to be speaker enhance Yoruba unity, having just experienced years in which two Yoruba people–male and female–served as speakers and even a Yoruba man, Olusegun Obasanjo, served as president for eight years? Is this search for Yoruba unity for the purpose of fighting other nationalities in the country or to fight Yoruba who do not appear sufficiently united to cause of the self-appointed miners and marketers of Yoruba unity?

The problem facing the Yoruba people of Nigeria today is much larger than a search for what is not missing. The real issue is how to ensure the survival of age-old Yoruba civilisation, without sacrificing the core Yoruba value of tolerance of difference and plurality of perspectives. If the Yoruba must find unity among themselves, it should not be at the expense of threat to life and limb of the country’s president, born and bred in another proud Nigerian nationality group that also has good reasons to be distinct from the Yoruba in many ways. It is rather late in the day for any individual or group to call a dog a monkey for Yoruba people. The political conflict in Nigeria at present is ideological: PDP versus APC. No Yoruba man or woman should need to use the search for Yoruba unity to occlude his affiliation with any of the two ideological poles. It will be vintage Yoruba to be active in both parties and be seen to be doing so by the generality of Yoruba people.

December 7, 2014
Ife Summit: The smart alecks are back

Why now would President Jonathan treat the Southwest differently when he would never ever come back seeking our votes?

As it is now well known, PDP both as party and government, is like a con artist. More intriguing, though, is the fact that its Southwest leaders are by far worse. After six years of the president being in the saddle, appointing them to nothing higher than miserable preferments like board chairmanship of polytechnics in as far away as Damaturu while allotting to tiny Bayelsa powerful agencies like NIMASSA, he has suddenly woken up to how his government has thus far treated the Yoruba like Christmas chicken. But truth be told, we can hardly blame him because, after many years of interaction with his Southwest party men, he must have come to know that they think only of self. But if President Jonathan claims he still pities the Yoruba for the loss of the House Speakership, we should ask what in his opinion constitutes the gains of the Southwest from the tenures of Patricia Etteh and Dimeji Bankole? Or what one single thing can the Yoruba point to as benefits of those better forgotten days other than the fact that both ex-speakers significantly helped themselves? Therefore, if PDP politicians could not, I expect our respected Obas, who were present in numbers at the Ife summit, to easily see the vacuity of the president’s jeremiad. Or how, in four whole years, has this very sympathetic president attempted to assuage that loss or mitigate its supposed effects? How many Yoruba has he appointed to key positions outside of constitutional prescriptions? Which of our many highly educated Yoruba compatriots has he appointed to the headship of key agencies or departments? How convenient for him now, two months to his next election, to come sympathise with us even though the Mulika -not Southwest – loss, was at the very beginning of this administration? The president, I think, should be told that we know crocodile tears when we see one. The Yoruba nation has come a long way, with a history dating back thousands of years even if some nouveau rich misrepresent us as a hungry people.

And, it is not as if we had ever benefitted in any significant way from a PDP government. During the Obasanjo era, the Agbajo Yoruba Agbaiye, a budding Pan-Yoruba cultural organisation under the sterling leadership of Lt. General Alani Akinrinade, was so peeved and scandalised, it had to set up a rapid response team to react to the total neglect of the Southwest when, after every Federal Executive Council meeting, huge water/irrigation projects were being announced as approved for the north and some other parts of the country when Muktar Shagari was minister of Water Resources but with hardly any ever going to the Southwest. The team had as members, Prof Jide Osuntokun, Dr Dele Shobowale, Mrs Tola Adenle and yours truly.

The situation actually got worse as the entire Southwest road infrastructure collapsed as exemplified by the Ibadan -Benin Road which broke in two at Igbara-Oke. So if we were treated that nonchalantly under a president we called our own, what right do we have now to expect any better under the current administration which, in any case, the South – South has succeeded in annexing? This 11th hour presidential romance should naturally collapse, even before it gets under way.

These are some of the reasons Yoruba should easily see through this joke. Candidate Jonathan was hugely voted for in the West in 2011 – thanks largely to that penitent kneeling by the candidate, in front of a highly regarded Man of God who happens to be of Yoruba extraction – but to what good? Besides two of our young, gifted professionals sitting in pretty offices in the presidency throwing darts and barbs at just about anybody- the last being the Nobel Laureate – what in truth can we point to as dividends accruing from that massive Yoruba vote? Not even any of those oil pipeline security contracts which were generously awarded to the president’s kinsmen, and yet subsisting, even as oil thefts peak. Why now would President Jonathan treat the Southwest differently when he would never ever come back seeking our votes?

The Ife summit is nothing but a trap, dredged up by the Southwest crowd of the PDP and executed by the president who used the respect for his office to coral our royalties into attendance. Luckily, our people have shown conclusively in Osun on 9 August, 2014, that never again shall the Yoruba be rail-roaded against their best interests or be sold on the cheap. Of course, we would be nothing better than fools if we fail to correctly interpret the complete military lock-down the world saw in both Ekiti and Osun during the governorship elections. If we were not clear-eyed enough to see where President Jonathan was going when he appointed our compatriots as junior ministers of Defence and Police Affairs, we can now appreciate that we were being set up for self immolation. And how mightily they succeeded in my dear Ekiti! But it is the same Yoruba who say you can only defile a woman once using deceit. We now know the president like the back of our palms.

For instance, whereas our infrastructure collapsed under Obasanjo and his PDP Southwest governors, even the blind would now see what development is afoot in each of the states of the Southwest being governed by the APC. Whereas, not once did the PDP governors of that era mention anything about regional economic cooperation, it is now the driving force of economic development in the Southwest with the Ibadan-based DAWN COMMISSION under the lead of Dipo Famakinwa, a brilliant management consultant. Of course, should the PDP make any further in-road in the Southwest, the Commission will certainly be one of its very first casualties because it is beyond their ken to know its essence or relevance.

And talking about PDP making no further inroad in the Southwest, we need to be reminded that we are dealing with an opponent for whom nothing is off limits as we saw in Ekiti on 21 June, 2014 when a seemingly extra-ordinarily peaceful election -no ballot box snatching, no illegal thumb printing etc -was albeit, scientifically rigged. If we, Ekiti, could plead guilty to a failure of intelligence on that occasion, Nigerians no longer have that luxury. Our point of departure, as a people who want our votes to count, should therefore be vigilance. We must all be very vigilant. The APC, as the main opposing political party, however, has a much bigger responsibility on its hands. It must, as urgently as it can, get the courts to compel INEC to use ONLY the constitutionally prescribed INDELLIBLE ink as opposed to the VANISHING ink which it deployed to help in the scientific rigging we saw in Ekiti, at all the elections.

A single event will illustrate this. Where she voted, a highly regarded spouse of an equally respected retired banker, thumb printed her allotted ballot paper thrice but without the slightest mark showing. More annoyed than disappointed, she called on one of the NYSC members present who after listening to her complaint poured water on the ink pad. With this, she was able to get an almost unrecognisable mark left in front of her preferred party. But that is all the rogue scientists, purveyors of this immoral technology, need as that infinitesimal mark would subsequently migrate to impregnate a pre-programmed spot which is, of course, the PDP’s. At the end of voting, that little ink now presents in very bold relief -in one colour, though blue and black inks were used by INEC – and all in one size. That is the mystery Professor Soyinka referred to in the Ekiti election but thanks to what happened in 2013 at the Zimbabwean presidential election, which has been handsomely reported on the internet, the world has come to unlock that mystery. Of course, PDP will most probably come with other variants of that.

APC should now appreciate what a herculean task it has on its hands because courts which can rule that there is no division in the PDP even when the entire world saw members of the New PDP walk out of its Abuja convention, can conveniently rule that INEC is not obliged to follow in toto, the provisions of the electoral law as long as that will accord with the wishes of the PDP.

In concluding this piece, let me humbly say that if we are truly our fathers’ children, a thousand Ife Summits by President Jonathan should not succeed in deceiving the Yoruba again.

December 7, 2014
“I can’t breathe; we can’t breathe”: enduring legacies and new, unprecedented responses to racism of impunity in the United States

Inthe video clip of the incident which, as the saying goes, has gone viral on the internet and has been seen all over the world, five white police officers of the New York Police Department (NYPD) are surrounding a black man who is on the ground and is saying repeatedly, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe!” The black man is saying these words – which will be the very last words in his life – because one of the five white police officers has him in what is called a chokehold. This, in ordinary language, means a tightened grip around the neck that completely shuts down the airways to the lungs. In my own careful watching of this video clip several times, I was able to establish that the black man, whose name was Eric Garner, says “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe” about eight times.

This video clip of course refers to the tragic and fateful incident that has given rise to the most potent and resonant slogan of the current country-wide protests and demonstrations in the United States against the recurrent slaying of unarmed black men and boys by white police officers. The slogan – which I have chosen to include in the title of this essay – is: “I can’t breathe; we can’t breathe!” In a country which prides itself as the most important bastion of democracy and the rule of law in the world, a country which wants to be perceived by all the other regions and nations of the planet as the world’s most tolerant and accommodating nation when it comes to respect for racial, religious and cultural diversity, it is logical that demonstrators and protestors from all racial groups in the country quickly realized that Eric Garner, in his fateful last words, was speaking for everybody who is not a racist, not a bigot, not a moral and spiritual cretin. Thus, out of what might well have been the anonymity and senselessness of his death, Eric Garner has emerged in his dying words as the ersatz prophet of an America and a world that are moving, if ever so slightly and imperceptibly, to a world in which racist killers in police uniforms and with institutional authority can no longer set the benchmark for what unites or divides us as members of one single human race or community.

But this is perhaps moving too quickly. We need to dwell a little longer on Garner’s fateful encounter with the policemen who took his life. And we need to look also at other incidents of the slaying of unarmed black men by racist killers in police uniforms. I have stated that I counted eight times when Garner uttered the words, “I can’t breathe”. Others who have come forward to give a public account of their viewing of the video clip of the encounter have said that they counted Garner’s utterance of “I can’t breathe” up to eleven times. To me, the actual number does not really matter. What matters is that once or twice should have been enough for the white police officer – whose name is Daniel Pantaleo – to relax his chokehold on Garner’s neck, especially since the use of the chokehold to arrest people by any of its officers has been banned by the NYPD for more than a decade now.

Parenthetically, it should be noted that the “crime” for which the violent, murderous arrest of Garner’s life was perpetrated was the illegal selling of cigarettes in singles and not in packets. In most parts of the world, this “crime” is known as street vending and it involves hundreds of millions of poor people. More astonishing, more poignant is the fact that none of the four other white police officers asked Pantaleo to stop when Garner was saying “I can’t breathe”. Indeed, the worst, the most nightmarish thing that one sees in the ghoulish video clip of the event is the attitude of all the white officers after they realize that the black man, Garner, is no longer speaking and no longer responsive to anything around him: they do absolutely nothing to resuscitate Garner. Indeed in the video clip, the last thing that we see of Pantaleo, the man who choked the breath of life out of Garner, is this killer chatting casually with one of the other officers and waving merrily to the camera of the cell phone that was recording this terrible event.

This past week, a so-called “grand jury” in New York found nothing wrong, nothing criminally homicidal in the slaying of Garner by Pantaleo and decided that he should not be prosecuted. Indeed, as I am writing this essay on Friday, December 5, 2014, there are huge protests and demonstrations taking place in many cities across the length and breadth of the United States involving black and white protestors and demonstrators against this particularly heinous decision of the New York grand jury. This statement has to be corrected: the protests and demonstrations are not only about the New York incident; they are about similar incidents in two other places in the country within the space of the last two weeks.

To get a sharp sense of the present and ongoing crisis in the United States engendered by this phenomenon of the slaying of unarmed black men by white police officers, it is useful to give a few details of these other recent cases against the historic background of yet other similar cases that go back several decades before this most recent case of Eric Garner in New York City. By far the most hotly disputed but most widely reported of these cases is the slaying of Michael Brown, a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri in July by one Darren Wilson, a white patrolman in the small town’s local police force. Brown was actually fleeing from Wilson when he was shot and killed. Then there was the far more incredible case of 12-year old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio a week and half ago. He was playing in a public park with a toy gun and upon a radioed report to the police from someone at the park that he was waving and pointing his gun at people in the park, young Tamir was shot dead within two seconds of the arrival of two white police officers at the park, no questions asked of him.

And of course, there are the innumerable other cases stretching back to three to four decades ago: Michael Stewart, strangled by eleven white police officers in New York in 1983; a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Russell who, for a minor traffic infraction, was chased in their lone car by 62 police cars in Cleveland, Ohio; when they were eventually stopped by the more then five dozen police cars, the couple had more than 137 shots pumped into their bodies by 13 police officers, one of who stood on the roof of the Russell’s car and shot his barrage of shots through the windscreen of the car. Indeed, in a report on the Oakland, California Police Department released by the Federal Department of Justice, it was stated that of 45 shootings of unarmed people between 2004 and 2008, 37 of the shootings were of black men, none of white men and the remaining 8 were of non-white Latino or other people of color.

What does this profile tell us? How can one justify my claim that there is, or ought to be, a plausible line between Garner’s last words – “I can’t breathe” – to the other half of the slogan of the coalition of protestors and demonstrators who are saying “We can’t breathe”? For unfortunately, concerning the phenomenon of the regularity and the outrage with which white police officers in America kill unarmed black man, about the only thing that one can presume that most people in America and the rest of the world know is the fact that white police officers do not kill unarmed white men with the same regularity, the same impunity and outrage with which they kill black men. In other words, most people in America and the rest of the world know only too well that the fact that racist cops kill or maim black men and get away with these crimes indicates that black lives do not matter to these cops and their supporters among white people. But not too many people know that while the main flank of the opposition to the persistence of this very old racist violence against black people is led by black people, there are hundreds of thousands of white people, most of them young, who are also resolutely opposed to this residual old-style racist violence in the law enforcement agencies and central judicial systems of the United States of America. Permit me to clarify what I am getting at in making this observation, this assertion.

For the greater part of its half a millennium history as first a colony and then an independent, slave-owning republic, racist violence against black people was both the letter and the norm of the law of the land in the United States. This was obvious during the centuries of the legal enslavement of black people, for it is in the very nature of chattel slavery that the owner had rights not only to the person of the slave but to his or her life as well. In the long post-emancipation period of legal and unequal segregation that is the immediate background to modern race relations in the United States, the threat, the practice and the impunity of murderous violence against black people was the main means of enforcing segregation. Segregation was dehumanizing, it was impoverishing, it was all-pervasive and only the threat and the practice of murderous violence, legal and illegal, could secure and consolidate its legitimacy. This is why, apart from social, economic and educational desegregation itself, one of the most significant victories against racial segregation in America was making murderous, racist violence against black people no longer legal, no longer unashamed, no longer capable of being done with impunity.

To most decent, thinking, non-racist people of all racial groups in the United States, the recent spate of incidents in which white police officers go scot-free after slaying unarmed black men or boys has thrown up a profound crisis of conscience and confidence. To be a member of this group of decent, non-racist people, you have to believe with all your heart and soul that while the old, blatant, unashamed and violent racism of the past has not yet gone out of existence, it remains only as a vestigial element among lunatic fringe groups of the most conservative race supremacists in the U.S. and Western Europe like the KKK, the Aryan Brotherhood and the National Front. The crisis comes when this old racism that was and is never afraid or embarrassed to show its face, this racism that is murderously violent is revealed to have a solid and almost impregnable habitation in central institutions of the state like the law enforcement agencies, the judiciary and some outspoken outlets in American mainstream media of information like The Daily Post of New York City and the Fox News Network. But we must recognize this racism as an old, old racism that is on its last legs. It draws its strength and resilience from newer and more subtle forms of racism. And from its opponents who play into its hands by not recognizing that the fight against this old, hoary racism will be won only on the condition that we know and accept that when one black man or boy “can’t breathe” men and women of all races and social groups “can’t breathe” either.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

December 7, 2014
Yoruba leaders’ presumptuous OAU meeting and endorsement

It is not certain why the Yoruba politicians and conservative opinion moulders who convened a Yoruba conference at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife two Fridays ago described their gathering as Yoruba Unity Conference. Nor is it clear why they needed to bring the conference down to a university in the Southwest simply to endorse President Goodluck Jonathan. However, in line with their customary indifference to the genuine feelings and agitations of the Yoruba, and their natural presumption of what the Yoruba want, they do not really owe us an explanation. For even if they offer us one, it is unlikely to be satisfactory. Indeed, the conference speaks very eloquently to the political decay afflicting the country, a decay that has not spared the Southwest.

The conferees, all of them PDP members or sympathisers, acknowledged that the meeting was convened by the Committee on Yoruba Progress, an organisation based suspiciously in Abuja and reportedly inspired by the eminent sybarite, Bode George, a former military governor of Ondo State, chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP,) and now vicious hater of the political opposition. Fittingly, the communiqué issued at the end of the conference addressed him as chairman of the conference. In his address, he rhapsodises the Yoruba, quite unmindful of just how painfully derelict he himself is of the values he so copiously attributes to the people he claims to represent. If nothing else, it was clear the purpose of the conference was not any altruistic reiteration of Yoruba unity or advancement of their manifest destiny, as they incoherently and inexpertly suggested in their communiqué. Their aim was to position themselves openly, unashamedly and obscenely as PDP politicians to curry the guileful Dr Jonathan’s favour of.

Chief George was not unsurprisingly supported by other Southwest politicians purporting to be the leaders of the Yoruba. They include the garrulous Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, a man whose mind is so fevered that it is continuously agitated either by external and internal stimuli; Iyiola Omisore, the troubled and troubling candidate of the PDP in the Osun governorship race; Senator Femi Okunrounmu, the most ardent legitimiser of the recent barren national conference; and Ebenezer Babatope, the former progressive whose conscience has mummified over time into extreme conservatism and reaction. Others were Hon Mulikat Adeola-Akande, Majority Leader of the House of Representatives and servile legislative opportunist, and a host of traditional rulers mouthing dubieties, small-time politicians eager to sell principles they never had, and vengeful elder statesmen roaming and hoofing the Southwest.

In their haste to organise a conference, they forgot that OAU would be writing their semester examinations, for which the conference would be a major disruption. Naturally, a controversy has broken out about how the peeved students reacted to Dr Jonathan’s disruptive presence. Some students clearly demonstrated against the needless visit; but others, including some leaders of the students’ union, welcomed the president and even gleefully posed for photographs with him.

It is unusual for OAU students’ union leaders to be so inured to progressivism as to feel honoured to take photographs with a president who has done his worst to destroy the constitution, undermine the rule of law, prove so impotent in the face of insurgency in the Northeast, fatally ignore the fate of the 219 abducted Chibok schoolgirls, and enunciate and implement series of divisively ethnic and sectarian policies. Did such odiousness escape the OAU student leaders? Second, the students justified their hobnobbing with the president on the excuse that they needed to place their protest against hike in school fees before him. If the president agrees to reduce the fees, could the students correspondingly get him to increase the subvention to their school?

The rot everywhere has obviously spread beyond the political class, a subset of which is the fractious, vindictive and retrogressive Yoruba political elite that convened in Ife simply to endorse Dr Jonathan and massage his ego. Even students now show a disturbing lack of sensitivity to the salient issues of their time and other grave issues with far-reaching implications for the future. Nigeria is in far worse trouble than its people imagine. And the Yoruba, alas, are in the deep end of the trouble. Those who gather at OAU two Fridays ago to endorse Dr Jonathan claim to be more Awoist than anybody else. But would Chief Awolowo in his mildest progressivism ever think of endorsing Dr Jonathan, especially after Chibok, invasion of National Assembly and harassment of the opposition? Would Chief Awolowo ever countenance a shift in election date as Ayo Adebanjo, an Afenifere chieftain has insensitively done?

December 7, 2014
Baba Lekki takes on the Doyen of Dystopia

IT has not been a particularly good week for presidential Rottweilers, particularly the master of the mastiffs or doyen of dachshunds, the great roly-poly prince from Remo principality, the once and probably future medic himself. The week opened with a coruscating inquiry into the nature and culture of sycophancy by the noted syndicated journalist with the mellifluous sounding name Sonala.

The Ishan-born America-based poet and polemicist laid the cane deep in the back of the doyen with the merciless and painstaking thoroughness of an ancient headmaster wielding his favourite koboko. It was a harsh and unsparing exercise. Not even the fact that both were alumni and contemporaries of what was known in folk parlance as UI, Ibadan could evince pity and sympathy from the great columnist and master of lapidary prose. As the lancing and lacerating bilala seared through the mass of flesh, one could almost hear the Ijebu prince pleading for mercy in native Remo dialect. “ Areeee. We ma po nia!”

It was not very long ago that Snooper encountered a dandified and princely looking doyen decked in ancient damask at the wedding of the son of Prince Olusunmade Akin-Olugbade and the daughter of Dr Seyi Roberts. It was a class act. As the musician sang his praise to the high heavens, the great attack mastiff capered and cantered and with backward integration when necessary. You could not but admire even if you are his political adversary.

But those appear to be happier times. Even a master mastiff sometimes buckles under the great strain of being leashed and unleashed at short notice. This is not to talk of being constantly sharked and snaggled at by other rottweilers particularly when food is served. Tsunami Sonala had hardly subsided when the one and only Nobel laureate with his leonine mane bracing and bristling took the Jonathan administration to the cleaners in a historic philippic dripping with venom and vitriol. The doyen could only offer a tame and tepid response.

Not satisfied with recent political developments, Okon went in search of Baba Lekki, the ancient sage who was now living in a cave not very far from Iba on the road to LASU. Okon met the old contrarian helping himself to a huge meal of roasted antelope which he washed down with fresh and foaming palm wine.

“Ha baba, na bushmeat you dey whack like dat. No be ebola go kill you so?” the impish and impudent boy opened.

“Ha kukuruku boy, you are a fool. Ebola no dey kill ebora. I dey kampe”, the old man snorted as he wolfed down a huge chunk of the prized venison.

“Baba, na only you and dem other baba remain for dis dem bushmeat business”, Okon began but Baba Lekki cut him off.

“Him be ebora Owu, me I be ebora Iba, so get that into your kukuruku blockhead”, Baba snapped.

“Okay, dem kulikuli Yoruba doctor for dem Aso Rock say na Jonny boy be dem greatest president for Obodo” Okon noted.

“Who be dat?” Baba Lekki asked in mock alarm.

“Ha dat one who dey bite everybody like dem digbolugi dog”, Okon sneered.

Baba Lekki burst into prolonged laughter punctuated by hiccups. “Dat one na økuugbe”. Without understanding what that meant, Okon guessed it was a heavy slammer and it was his turn to roll on the floor with mirth.

“You see dat yeye boy, him dey call Soyinka Ogongo. When ogongo come strike am him mama go cry for am” Baba Lekki resumed.

“Baba, wetin be ogomugomu?“, Okon asked the old man.

“Yeye kukuruku boy, ogongo is ostrich in Yoruba.”

“Ha, ha baba na dat remind me of dem Yoruba governor dem they call jailbird. Him jail bird sotey Obasanjo come jail am too. But last week katakata burst and come free dem prisoners for him obodo.” Okon chanted excitedly.

“Dem governor he dey for inside jail or outside?” Baba demanded with a scholarly frown.

“Baba why now, why you come ask?” Okon crowed.

“Because if him dey inside jail he mean say na him people come liberate am, and if him dey outside he mean say na him come liberate him people. Na elewon dey free elewon”. On that note, the great magi dismissed Okon.

December 7, 2014
Nigeria on the brink of anarchy!

‘Of all things that a prince must guard against, the most important are being despicable and hated, and liberality will lead you to one or the other of these conditions’

I start this week with some lines from Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513). ‘A Prince’ (i.e. a ruler), he writes, … must not object to be called miserly. In the course of time, he will be thought more liberal, when it is seen that by his parsimony, his revenue is sufficient, that he can defend himself against those who make war on him and undertake enterprises without burdening his people, so that he is really liberal to all those from whom he does not take, who are infinite in number, and niggardly to all to whom he does not give, who are few. … if he wishes to be able to defend himself, to avoid becoming poor and contemptible, and not be forced to become rapacious; this niggardliness is one of those vices which enable him to reign …

This simply means that a ruler must be seen not to yield too easily to his friends’ requests at the expense of the state. He will risk being called miserly with state funds and resources by his friends but that would be better than allowing state funds and resources to be at the whims of those friends and associates. The larger majority, saved from being overburdened by excessive taxation when the ruler does need money, would rise and call that ruler liberal, maybe even blessed. Machiavelli’s treatise on ruling has often been called ‘cold-blooded’, ‘cunning’ or ‘cynical’, but one can hardly doubt its reasonableness when pitted against the present Nigerian situation, where a very expensive governance style is threatening to plunge the country down the lane of insolvency. The reasons are not far-fetched: either because the state has managed to rope itself into insolvency by overpaying its legislature and friends or the president has not been too wise in his choice of beneficiaries for state largess such as fuel subsidy payment, even to those who do not import anything remotely resembling fuel.

By its own admittance, the federal government stated that the fuel subsidy was no higher than two hundred (200) or so billion naira before the elections. A few months after the election, however, the bill jumped into the trillion brackets. This means the president picked up some wrong friends along the way. It has also been rumoured forever that electricity tariff would be hiked up too. Spoken in any of Nigeria’s 450 languages, all these translate to only one thing to the people: the president has lost the sense of fellow-feeling they voted for and the people feel very hurt and betrayed for several reasons.

To start with, people of different religions, tribes and political persuasions had turned out in large numbers to vote for the president. In the people’s dictionary, voting for someone is as good as offering that someone a finger to feed him/her. And no one, absolutely no one, bites the finger that feeds, err, votes for him. Removing the subsidy on fuel, something the country has enjoyed for a long time, is tantamount to biting the people’s finger.

Furthermore, the government’s argument that the subsidy payouts are benefitting only a small group of people, a ‘cabal’ constituted of some well-placed friends of the government (who are too lazy to work like you and I) does not cut it for the people. This cabal of friends also appears to be well beyond the punitive arms of the president as the government has been heard to declare that it cannot deal with them as economic saboteurs as the law demands because its hands are tied, the government’s, not the law’s.

I think that’s why the people are really angry as it stands for everything that has been wrong with this country from the beginning. Successive governments’ inability to deal with its friends has been the root of Nigeria’s corruption from the years of import license scandal to policy changes and now to fuel importation. In any case, what government ever admits that it cannot make a citizen of its own bend to the law? Tis a strong one indeed who prays, ‘God save me from my friends; my enemies I can handle.’

Then, the government announced unashamedly that it was placing a great deal of faith and hope on the charity it intended to dole out as ‘palliative measures’ for removing the much-loved subsidy. This consisted of the amount of money that it would distribute to the federal, state and local governments who ‘would’ use the money for the ‘good’ of the people.

Unfortunately, each time the government extended some carrots at the end of a long stick to the people to nibble at as palliatives for a bitter economic policy, the people would start to laugh out loud. They laugh not just because they are used to the trick but more because providing a few carrots in each state to cushion the effects of an unpopular policy is indeed laughable. It also says a lot about the intelligence of the thinkers-up of such palliatives. They also laugh because of pain.

The people know that we live in a country riddled with corruption (we will soon have ‘Corruption Street’), where governors, assemblymen and sundry political party individuals have pilfered large sums from the government’s own treasury into their own private pockets. I heard that a politician bought a house costing hundreds of millions of Naira for his girlfriend. How then are the people to believe that any accrual from an economic policy will not go further to fill some rapacious party fellow’s pockets (the monthly allocations have already lined them)? This is just a sign of the corruption which is really at the bane of this problem.

Now, owing to the economic profligacy of the country, there are not enough buffers to withstand the new economic downturn brought on by the sliding price of oil in the international market. Everywhere you turn these days, people are groaning that ‘there is no money in town’ or ‘the nation’s pockets are dry’. Yet, everyone agrees that the rapacious appetites of the voracious group called politicians continue unabated.

What the people are asking for is simple enough. The people want to be provided more serious infrastructure such as train services, affordable housing, industries, a constant flow of electricity, well equipped hospitals, and other good signs of statehood for which people pay tax. Are all these too much to ask, I ask you?

More importantly, the people want a government that can save the weak from the strong, keep the strong from destroying himself and the state, and stop pushing the people’s button. For, when the people’s button is pushed, they will react again and again and again. Their reaction, however, is not what takes the country to the precipice. No sir; it is when the country is handed over to cronies and friends and party members that the country will be pulled into certain anarchy. It is government liberality to a few that has led to the corruption that has taken us to where we are now; it is this government liberality that the people are fighting. “That government is best which governs the least”, says an adage. I end as I started, with Machiavelli’s The Prince:

There is nothing which destroys itself so much as liberality, for by using it you lose the power of using it, and become either poor and despicable, or, to escape poverty, rapacious and hated. And, of all things that a prince must guard against, the most important are being despicable and hated, and liberality will lead you to one or the other of these conditions.

• This article was first published sometime in 2011 but has been modified because its continued relevance today cannot be held in doubt.

December 7, 2014
The governors we want

Although last Thursday’s gubernatorial primaries of the All Progressive Congress ( APC) was supposed to be an internal affair of the party, it is understandable why many Nigerians stayed awake all night to know the outcome of the exercise in many states.

Both party and many non- party members were interested in knowing who will get the tickets in their states to slug it out with those who will eventually be chosen as the Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP) candidates.

Their interest is informed by the high expectations of the general public who want the right candidates to be chosen to give them good options to chose from during the gubernatorial election in 2015.

While what citizens want are capable candidate who will be able to provide the right kind of leadership the states need, party leaders and members have other considerations which sometimes doesn’t ensure that the right candidates get elected.

Ethnic, religious, zoning arrangements, vested interests of leaders and other factors usually come to play in deciding who gets party ticket. What we sometimes get is not necessary the best candidates to choose from, but those forced on us by the parties for reasons best known to them.

While the parties have the right to elected their candidates, they need to appreciate that only the best should be good enough for the voters to choose from.

The situation where good candidates who have what it takes to govern the states don’t get elected for other reasons than merit is not in the overall interest of the states and the country.

States, like other levels of government, should be governed by governors who have clear vision to transform them, the experience and acumen for the very important task.

What we have witnessed in many states since 1999 indicates that many of the elected governors have not lived up to expectations. Many states have not recorded significant progress except propaganda of questionable claims of achievements by the governors,

The resources of many states have been mismanaged and looted by some governors and their aides under various guises. Instead of recording sustainable massive developments in various sectors based on their monthly federal allocations and internally generated revenue, not much has been achieved.

If this is not the case, how can some state governors justify the state of dilapidation of infrastructure in their states? Why are so many states roads, where they exist, in bad shape? Why are many state government schools and hospitals operating below standard.

What is the justification for some states owing civil servants for months when some state governors, their wives and aides live large?

It is common for some state governors to accuse the federal government of not meeting their obligations to them, but what have state governments done with the resources they have?.

The priorities of some governors are clearly wrong as some of their top projects are not in the overall interest of their citizens, while some projects are so poorly executed that they do not not last long to serve the purpose they are meant for.

The next governorship election in 2015 provides yet another opportunity for the parties to present candidates who can do better than what we have been witnessing in many states. It is also up to the voters to make the best choice irrespective of party platforms or other mundane considerations.

More than ever before, we need governors who have a clear sense of purpose. We need governors who have blueprints for turning the states around for better.

We need governors who have the ability and the will to leave the states better than they met them.

December 7, 2014
Sad to see Tambuwal abandon presidential race

On November 2, I suggested in this place that should Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, enter the presidential race, I would be prepared to lend him my unqualified support. when I made the offer, I didn’t think his defection from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), nor his principled opposition to both the undemocratic practices of his former party and President Goodluck Jonathan’s uninspiring leadership, nor yet the huge cost to his comfort and esteem in the PDP were all for the purpose of winning the governorship race of his home state, Sokoto. If his exertions were simply to get him the governorship, I felt a little bewildered, it would be like killing a fly with a sledgehammer. At a point, he reassuringly did seem like he actually wanted to run for president. Indeed, when some lawmakers in the House of Representatives bought the expression of interest and nomination forms for him, I exhaled in relief; for even before November 2, I had twice admonished him to run, and asked the APC to lend him a strong helping hand.

Sadly, Hon Tambuwal has now abandoned the presidential race in favour of the governorship race of his state. Two reasons probably explain his manoeuvres. One is that he had no guarantee he could get the presidential ticket, let alone win in February, in a race where he would have to first crush both the redoubtable Muhammadu Buhari, a retired general and former head of state, and former vice president Abubakar Atiku, a consummate party denizen and schemer, before finally locking horns with the desperate and increasingly autocratic Dr Jonathan. Two is the fear by many APC faithful that his entry into the race could create a lot of disaffection and turmoil that would fracture the party and weaken it before decision day in February. Considering how sensitive the Buhari campaign and image have become in this race, and the huge reputation and expectation of Alhaji Atiku that are on the line in the same race, it is probably true that disaffection could arise. If they lost, the party could not guarantee they would help a Tambuwal campaign.

A third reason is advanced by analysts, some of whom are probably motivated by inexplicably venomous dislike for the opposition APC. They suggest that Hon Tambuwal was brought into the presidential race by some APC leaders in order to either checkmate Gen Buhari or cajole him into granting indeterminate concessions and future reprieves, since he is believed to be too rigid for party leaders’ comfort and seemed already constrained by a close and hawkish cabal. In all their explanations, there was no hint or mention of the sensible argument that APC leaders could in fact be propelled by the more altruistic reasons of putting forward the best, most modern, youthful and truly liberal candidate who, apart from being intellectually adequate and socially and politically flexible, would also be a firm president and consensus builder.

I am persuaded that party leaders and analysts like myself were motivated by clearly noble and deeply philosophical reasons in our support for Hon Tambuwal. I do not think any party leader who briefly courted the idea of presenting him for the top race should feel remorseful, as if either Gen Buhari or Alhaji Atiku had been betrayed. Either of these two gentlemen may appear to display grit and readiness for the final jousting with Dr Jonathan, but there are enough reasons to convince everyone of Hon Tambuwal’s bona fides and suitability for the top office. The plain fact, perhaps somewhat sweeping and depressing to supporters of the two ageing politicians, is that Hon Tambuwal, by disposition and intellect, and by speech and human relations, towers above Gen Buhari and Alhaji Atiku. These conclusions are not without sound reasons.

A consideration of the circumstances of Hon Tambuwal’s emergence as Speaker in 2011 does not reveal someone whose politics and ideas are woven around repaying those who made his elevation possible. His politics and ideas are genuine. Nor does his emergence reek of the idiosyncratic opportunism that lathers and hobbles Nigerian politics. In fact, he has remained uncommonly true and faithful to the goals and objectives that prompted his emergence. He and his sponsors and supporters needed to mould a House of Representatives free of the manipulation and meddlesomeness of the executive branch, and free of the crass mechanicality that compels the ruling party to zone the chamber’s leadership to the point of ridicule. The lower house also needed to be weaned off the servility that tended to subordinate its thoughts and actions unthinkingly to both the party in power and the men in office. Hon Tambuwal’s innate independence therefore combined seamlessly with the defiant posture of APC leaders, leading them to summon the boldness needed to chart an enviable identity for the House of Representatives. Not only has Hon Tambuwal succeeded in maintaining and asserting the lower chamber’s independence, and has steered it towards enacting laws and passing great resolutions worthy of any democracy, he has administered its affairs so evenhandedly that even his enemies grudgingly admire him.

Closely leashed to his style of administration and lawmaking is the indisputable fact that the Speaker has managed elegantly to adhere to principles and values that define classical democracy. It was not enough for him to protect the lower chamber from unhealthy influences and manipulations; in his view, legislative independence must be harnessed for the promotion of great values, whether practical as in defeating bad laws, or philosophical as in promoting both the doctrine of separation of powers and checkmating the executive’s constant flirtation with dictatorship. He resisted and resented the fawning practice of any member of the lower chamber representing members of the executive branch in ceremonies, as senators and their leaders are wont to do. Under Hon Tambuwal, the lower chamber quickly perceived Dr Jonathan’s dictatorial tendency, and sensibly built legislative and ideational ramparts against it. Until recent events blew up their delusions, many analysts, including the most rabid, never believed that Dr Jonathan exuded only a superficial form of democracy.

Importantly too, Hon Tambuwal has behaved more statesmanlike than any of his competitors for the top prize inside or outside the APC. Dr Jonathan never gave a good speech, does not in fact appear capable of writing one, and in view of his persistent poor judgement, is incapable of coming across as a president or statesman. When Gen Buhari, Alhaji Atiku and Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State gave their declaration speeches a few weeks back, they were tedious, ponderous, lacking in the stirring philosophy that enriches politics and even ennobles society, and portentously detached from Nigeria’s complex history and cultures. But Hon Tambuwal gives speeches that resonate, whether he writes them himself or not; in any case they sound as he speaks. When in March he addressed lawmakers on the massacre of students of Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, Yobe State, it was celebrated by many as the speech the president should have given. (See Box). Had he been president, he would have visited the town and condoled with distraught parents. But in his response to the massacre, Dr Jonathan gave a bland and terse statement, and ignored the value of a condolence visit.

Hon Tambuwal’s exit from the race is regrettable. I do not know whether if he had stayed in the race he would have won, but I think we would have made a great president of him, and he a great nation of us. Now, he has turned his gaze on Sokoto. I suspect that going by his national stature and accomplishment, not to say his character and integrity, he will probably win the governorship race. But I must wonder whether Sokoto, notwithstanding the powerful history of its caliphate forebears, can contain a man of his standing and eminence in this 21st Century. I do not insult Sokoto. As former French president Charles de Gaulle once argued, greatness is not just an abstraction; it is contingent, among other things, upon the importance of the territory a ruler is presiding over, the size of its economy, and the continental or international context in which the ruler is operating. Hon Tambuwal will be frustrated by the smallness of Sokoto, its location in the remote north-west of the country, the size of its economy and the near placidity of its politics. He will have his constant gaze focused on Abuja, and he will yearn for the national tapestry a consummate political artist and social philosopher and engineer like him love to write great history on.

More, a thinker like Hon Tambuwal will ponder whether time and events, with their often cruelly wrought labyrinth, will wait for him in four or eight years from now to ferry him to the presidential mansion we think he will ennoble. We recognise his talents; but will his principles endure till the time is right for his coronation and canonisation? As many southern lawmakers in the House showed by sticking with him in his face-off with the Jonathan presidency, and northern lawmakers and political elites indicate by refusing to join the nefarious plot to unseat or destroy him, the forces of the moment have been good to him. It is impossible to tell, however, what the future will look like, even if he moves mountains to remain true to the principles and values that have made him an indomitable fighter and politician.

* Next week: Buhari, APC and 2015

November 30, 2014
Our mutant form of democracy

. Anyone who has just come to Nigeria in the last few months cannot but wonder what kind
of ruling elite the country is saddled with

“Democracies legitimize the existence of opposition parties as well as of organized interest groups….But it is really the power and autonomy of nongovernmental elites, and their recognized legitimacy that distinguishes the elite structures of democratic nations from those of totalitarian states. Pluralism, then, is the belief that democratic values can be preserved in a system where multiple, competing elites determine public policy through bargaining and compromise, voters exercise meaningful choices in elections, and new elites can gain access to power….In democratic society, unlike a totalitarian one, multiple elites exist. A defining characteristic of Western democratic nations is the relative autonomy of various elites-governmental, economic, media, civic, cultural, and so on. In contrast, a defining characteristic of totalitarian societies is the forced imposition of unity on elites….Elites must govern wisely if democracy is to survive. When masses turn to the politics of rage, the disorder is serious but generally short-lived. When elites fail to govern wisely, the devastation can be more formidable and more prolonged…”-Thomas Dye and Harmon Zeigler in The Irony of Democracy.

Quoting extensively from The Irony of Democracy in the piece today is deliberate. It is to remind readers about the nuances of democracy that are being ignored daily in our country by the section of the political elite that needs to have a higher sense of enlightened self-interest and self- preservation within the context of democratic governance. Anyone who has just come to Nigeria in the last few months cannot but wonder what kind of ruling elite the country is saddled with and why would the ruling elite knowingly behave in a manner that undermines its own stability. Those who have been here for some time must also wonder how Nigeria has come to this pass and if the situation has always been this abysmal.

Starting with the last point, the ruling political elite has not always been this insensitive to the role and place of opposition parties in democratic governance. For example, Chief Obafemi Awolowo fervently believed and repeatedly spoke and wrote in favour of the role of opposition in consolidation of democracy. He was the first politician in power in Nigeria to give special privilege to opposition parties. It was during his premiership of Western Region that he created an official accommodation for the leader of opposition even when he himself did not live in government house. Such was his respect for opposition parties.

Of course, Awolowo came from a tradition of constitutional monarchy that also organised governance around pluralism and separation of power. In pre-colonial Yoruba land into which Awolowo was born and bred, the political system thrived on distribution of power among various elite groups: the monarch, executive cabinet, other chiefs, Ogboni (a very independent judicial arm of traditional government), and a traditional media system that included a few court poets and another independent group charged to perform counter-hegemonic functions as the need arose. Even other leaders in the first and second republics from political traditions different from that of the Yoruba, such as Azikiwe, Bello, and Shagari found it difficult to act habitually with force in a way to suggest that they would rather kill all forms of political opposition. As desperate as some of them were about turning Nigeria into a one-party system, they had the capacity to know fear and consequently avoid overt and extreme destruction of the institution of political opposition in a democracy.When efforts to dismantle opposition parties in Western Nigeria occurred at the instance of some of these politicians in the federal ruling group, they did not last and left far-reaching consequences for the entire country.

Since the end of the civil war, the military had degraded the country’s political culture directly and indirectly, to the extent that civilians elected to power at the end of military dictatorship in 1979 and 1999 were not (and still do not appear) to have been able to imbibe the culture of tolerance, negotiation, and compromise that statecraft in a democratic ethos requires. Under military rule, there was no separation of the concept of security of the state from the use of state power to pursue political and personal interests of military presidents and governors. Military dictators saw their rule as that of a one-party state that had no reason to brook any opposition. They thus created decrees to muzzle the press and devised stratagems to suborn, harass, and even liquidate individuals that served as voices of opposition: Soyinka, Awojobi, Solarin, Dele Giwa, Fawehinmi, Beeko, FelaAnikulapo, Falana, for example. Just as some of the political attitudes of the ruling group and its agencies appear in 2014, individuals or groups that had ideas different from those preferred by military dictators were labelled enemies of the country’s security and unity.

What we have had as a multiparty political system since the exit of military rule in 1999 has not been noticeably different from that of military dictatorship, particularly in terms of the perception by rulers and members of the ruling party of opposition parties. Under post-military rulers from Obasanjo to Jonathan (since Umaru Yar’Adua hardly had any time to show his style), the tendency on the part of what other societies would have called ruling elite has been to smash the opposition and turn the political market of ideas into a field of uniformity of ideas for those in charge of the federal government.

Too many embarrassing things have happened in the last two years in the polity. And each of them has been proclaimed by people in the corridor of power as efforts by the federal ruling group to secure the country and promote its unity. The country’s Governors Forum got broken at the instance of the ruling party into two and made ineffectual, thus denying the country of ideas that could have emanated from a group of governors capable of generating ideas for improved governance, on account of their proximity to the needs of citizens. Police that was to enforce law and maintain order became an instrument for the ruling class to harass opposition parties. The Speaker of the House automatically lost his security aides because he moved to another party. He and other federal lawmakers were prevented from entering the legislature by the police. The data office of APC was brazenly vandalised and workers arrested without a warrant by a combination of police and secret police all in the name of national security and unity. Judges were harassed in Ekiti at the instance of the ruling party without proper response by the national police to break down of law and order that this act represented. Even after a judge had ordered the release of workers arrested without warrant at the APC data office, the law enforcement agencies ignored such judicial order. There are many more examples of arbitrary use of power by handlers of the federal polity.

These acts bring up queries about the attitude of the federal ruling party to maintenance of public order. In its elementary form, the personal use of police is evident in the number of policemen attached to politicians or their friends. The allocation of police men to people in or around power makes citizens wonder if security means protection of just individuals in power or protection of citizens of the country. As things seem, the ruling group does not draw a line between security of the country and citizens, and that of the partisan interests of the ruling party and its members.

Leaders in a democracy are expected to have an enlightened self-interest that makes them recognise the need to avoid totalitarian or fascist use of power. The polity and society includes both the ruling party and opposition parties. Efforts at repressing, oppressing, and harassing parties and individuals with ideas different from those of the ruling party regarding how to improve governance are reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer” (one people, one state, one leader). Nigeria’s plurality is non-negotiable. That plurality is best illustrated by a multiparty system that includes a ruling party at a given time and alternative parties waiting in the wing to replace them, if citizens so choose. Any effort, overt or subtle, to silence opposition parties is capable of threatening democracy and unity of the country.

November 30, 2014