In an interesting contribution at the last Lagos people and power Conference organized by the author, Joseph C. Ibekwe’s, Fled International Leadership Institute (FLED) on 29th May, 2018, renowned political economist, Professor Pat. Utomi, spoke on what he described as “the two immortalities”. The first immortality, he said, is that of leaving an enduring legacy of service and adding value to society here on earth. In this respect he referred, for instance, to a certain teacher in a given community who even decades after his death still lives on in the minds of the people because stories of his good life and positive contributions continued to be passed on from generation to generation. It is instructive that Prof. Utomi’s example of leaving an enduring earthly legacy was a humble citizen, a teacher, and not necessarily a person who achieved considerable material wealth.
The second immortality man should seek to achieve, according to Utomi, is to “see God face to face” after death. From Utomi’s submission, I would deduce that achieving immortality on earth through a life of selfless service to humanity and positive contribution to society no matter one’s status in life can only be a function of good as well as responsible citizenship. And having a spiritual perspective on life spurring the individual to pursue the purpose of “seeing God face to face” after death will be an incentive to live with high ethical and moral guiding principles here on earth.
Man is not a solitary animal. His existence makes sense only within the context of the community in which he relates with his fellow human beings. This is why the concept of citizenship cannot be limited simply to the legal right to belong to or be a member of a given territorial jurisdiction. It must also necessarily include the social consciousness of the individual’s responsibility to society and her cultivating the necessary sense of efficacy to be an active participant in the community’s public life.
Thus, part two of the book, “The Quest for Political Leadership and Citizens Democracy focuses on what citizens can do with politics and democracy”. According to the author, “I am concerned about how to harness and recruit every day people and turn them into public-spirited citizens, working for public good”. He points out that “The truth is that people are born as private citizens. They grow, learn to socialize, begin a career, raise a family, and probably lead decent lives as private persons. Private Citizens ordinarily grow up to mind their own business; not particularly interested in public issues, except when it directly affects their personal comfort and welfare…Democracy provides individuals the opportunity to become public citizens”.
The public citizen is not born so. He or she is made and nurtured through a deliberate process of political socialization. Joseph Ibekwe decries what he perceives as the deliberate perpetuation of negative and frightening perceptions of politics by professional politicians who seek to portray politics as dirty, nasty and dangerous in order to discourage ordinary citizens from active political participation. This among other factors breeds a self-inflicted and self-defeating sense of powerlessness on the part of the average citizen.
In the words of Ibekwe, “In a democracy, citizens are as powerful as they think they are, and they are as powerless as they perceive themselves to be. Democracy, by its nature, confers power on citizens to do many things, but as long as citizens do not know how to use the power available to them, they will remain powerless; they will be consistently abused and used by those who understand the power of politics and how to use it”. It is ironical that while we take very seriously the issue of training private citizens to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, architects, accountants, public administrators and sundry other professions, hardly any thought is given to consciously train people to be transformed from insular private citizens to socially aware and responsible public citizens.
Thus, Ibekwe focuses on the need for what he calls educational democracy. As he put it, “The educational democratic process is transformative politics. It is citizen-centred and citizen-driven. This process involves deliberate effort to promote system-wide knowledge of democratic principles. It involves creating opportunities for citizens to participate; encouraging citizens to dialogue, to negotiate, to make compromises, to tolerate contrary views and opinion, and be transformed from private citizens into public-interest citizens”.
This reminds me of the American president whose name I cannot readily recall now who on leaving office said he was returning to the more important office of citizen. Democracy confers on citizens the power to determine through the ballot those who will occupy public office and exercise the power to make decisions on behalf of the polity. Towards this end, citizens are granted the right to freely associate, discuss, negotiate and organize either in political parties or pressure groups to elect public official s as well as lobby to influence public policy.
Yet, as a result of lack of appreciation of the value of citizenship; the enormous power citizens wield through the ballot, we have seen citizens trading their voting power in exchange for money from unscrupulous politicians or exercising the power of the vote unwisely as a result of ethnic, religious and other primordial considerations. The consequent election of incompetent, visionless and venal persons into public office can only worsen the socio-economic factors responsible for the poverty that makes voters vulnerable to financial inducement in the first place. The power of the vote in the hands of the ignorant and uninformed citizen lacking the appropriate political education and social consciousness is nothing but a weapon of mass self-destruction.
This is particularly why Joseph Ibekwe’s book is so critical to the process of citizen education and empowerment in Nigeria particularly for the current administration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) that seeks to fundamentally transform the country’s moral values through its offensive against corruption. An organization like the National Orientation Agency (NOA) should be interested in this kind of book as a training manual for the re-orientation and transformation of politically apathetic private citizens into socially conscious and thus empowered public citizens.
Some of the highly enlightening, practical and liberating chapters in the second part of the book under focus include Democracy and Good Governance, Politics for Women, Politics for the Youth, Politicians and Politricksians, Power to overcome Powerlessness, Becoming a Public Citizen, Understanding Deliberative Democracy, Strategies for Public Engagement, Understanding the Art and Act of Lobbying and What must be done differently.
These chapters are designed to empower citizens to “wake up from their slumber and take responsibility. They must lift up their eyes and set their sights high and far into the distant future. Citizens must stop collecting money from politicians in order to vote them into public office. Money for votes destroys the future of democracy and undermines citizens’ moral capacity to hold public officers to account…Citizens must organize to pursue their own interests, which is actually public interest”. But there is no way citizens can attain this kind of development-enhancing consciousness without intense and sustained political education.