Ahmad
What is really wrong with the Nigerian politician? Why is he unable to find the sensitivity to connect with, the best interest of the Nigerian people? Why is the mercenary proclivity so deeply ingrained at the heart of the Nigerian political system? And in real terms, can this irresponsible political edifice be sustainable or will it crumble like a pack of cards, undfer the weight of its contradictions and its utter alienation from the Nigerian people? Why is the Nigerian political elite so wedded to hare-brained schemes of the most laughable, and bizarre proportions? Why does our politician think that the Nigerian people do not matter in his calculations?
I have thought long and hard in recent days about the frankly irresponsible attitude which rules at the heart of Nigerian politics in the past few days, because of the re-emergence of the “bastard child” of Nigeria’s current political transition: the Third Term Agenda. The bastard child re-appeared in the latest process of constitutional amendment in the National Assembly. WEEKLY TRUST ofNovember 22,2008, carried a cover report, which said that the nation’s legislature will be revisiting the controversial proposal for three terms of four years tenure for the nation’s president that was “rejected by the National Assembly during ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration”.
According to WEEKLY TRUST, this decision to revisit the Third Term Agenda was announced by Alhaji Labaran Yunusa Dambatta, the Vice Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Media and Public Affairs. If the proposal were to sail through, it is expected that President Umaru Yar’adua will become “the first beneficiary of the tenure elongation advantage which Obasanjo sought in vain”. If we had thought that historical memory, especially when veiy recent and still very much part of the political project, is a major ingredient of politicafsuccess, our own political actors prove us wrong. They think that historical memory can be abused or manipulated at will; what the people feel does not really matter. If they set out to get something, then nobody can or dares to get in the way of their ambition. Labaran Yunusa Dambatta told the media, according to the WEEKLY TRUST account, that “however offensive the three teim proposal may be, the Joint Committee on Constitution Review (JCCR) would still consider it, saying the Committee has no plan to reject any proposal for the amendment of the 1999 Constitution”.
But what factors will be responsible for the insensitive and very irresponsible statement of Labaran Yunusa Dambatta? Whose interest does the man represent in this scenario and wasfte not in Nigeria when lives were lost and a huge national movement was built to ensure that the Third Term Agenda does not materialize? Why will a member of the national assembly, who incidentally is supposed to be a member of the opposition now the mouth piece for what is clearly the most controversial, most unpopular piece of legislative action in Nigeria since 1999? Where must we locate the irresponsibility of those determined to foist a Third Term Agenda on our country and why do they think that they can pull it through, no matter the feeling of the Nigerian people?
Nigeria’s democratic transition since 1999 has been largely the triumph of individuals and political actors who did not invest in the struggle to win freedom from military dictatorship. The pro-democracy actors were soon marginalized with the commencement of the political process by those with a very well-oiled political machinery; and with a few honourable exceptions, Uke the late Chief Sunday Awoniyi and others like him, our politics was taken over by people who did not have a democratic credential or who genuinely believed that politics can be made to serve the common good of the people of the country. It was access to lucre as far as most of the political actors were concerned; and one of the most crucial indicators of the past few years is the well-known story of individuals who would enter Abuja by night bus because they couldn’t afford to travel any other way, but who then made it big as billionaires over these few years. It is types like these that became the foot soldiers of the effort to subvert the constitutional order, in order to be able to push for the Third Term Agenda. For the foot soldiers of the Third Term Agenda, it is a lucrati ve form of business which guarantees very handsome returns, with the most minimal risk to themselves. They are not bothered about the interest of the Nigerian people, because in most cases, they have not been elected anyway. They owe their place in the National Assembly or other political positions, to a regime of massive rigging and the manipulation of the political process.
The allegiance is to the political masters; that explained why people like David Mark, for example, fought with everything they have, to ensure that the Third Agenda was achieved during the regime of Olusegun Obasanjo. Of course, the Nigerian people defeated the Third Term Agenda, but isn’t it one of the absurd outcomes of our struggle, that it is David Mark that is presiding over Nigeria’s Senate? The one who did not want democracy became the main beneficiary of our struggle to defeat tyranny! The fact that those who never really want democratic, consolidation in our country often turn to be the greatest beneficiaries of thestruggle of the Nigerian people, comes about, because we don’t have a process of systematic removals of] these enemies of democratic consolidation from the public space. We don’t sanction those who work against the best interest of our people; and recent events show that it is these individuals I that earn the best privileges of the system. In my view, this background explains why individuals like Labaran Yunusa Dambatta will set out to abuse our collective memory of struggle to prevent the achievement of the Third Term Agenda under Obasanjo, to now boldly come out to say they will give Third Term to Umaru Yar’adua. It is imperative to institute a very sharp system of sanction which will be boldly administered against those who think they must profit from the most irresponsible efforts to subvert the nation’s constitutional well-being. On a final note, we need to remind Labaran Yunusa Dambatta, and those that share in his Third Term delusions, that the Nigerian people built a very formidable coalition to defeat Obasanjo, the real father ofThird Term. That coalition can and will be resurrected if the need arises again to defeat backward characters who think they can toy with the constitutional order of Nigeria. At a time of deepen crisis of governance in Nigeria, when people feel worried about the seeming rudderlessness of the ship of state, it beats the imagination that individual like Dambatta will campaign for Third Term. But he must get ready to do battle with the Nigerian people.
The fact that a well-known defender of the Third Term Agenda of Obasanjo, David Mark is heading Nigeria’s Senate cannot save them from defeat if they dare to push for the discredited Third Term Agenda this time around.
