abdulraheem
One issue that has worried me so much in recent years, especially since the 1999 transition to civil rule in our country, has been the poverty of leadership all around us this poverty id directly related to the crisis associated with out faulty leadership recruitment pattern. any cursory study of our leadership recruitment pattern will reveal a frightening drop in the quality of individuals getting into the public space in Nigeria. For example, the first generation of post-colonial leaders had their faults, but they were nevertheless highly committed leaders who gave their all to their country. But by the Second Repubic, 1979 to 1983, there was noticeable paucity of quality, as compared to the earlier period. However, the long period of military rule transformed the whole process of recruitment, leading to the emergence of criminal elements, whose wealth were directly associated to the canonization of fraud as legitimate platform of mobility in Nigeria. So, by the time the military period ended in 1999, we had literally lost all restraints, opening up leadership to drug addicts, mentally deranged and even self-proclaimed “genocidaires”! If all had continued to pretend this is not a problem the fact that we have continued to harvest underdevelopment and crisis, all point to the Leadership is poor at all levels in our country today, and this poverty is built upon a very irresponsible approach to politics. The most recent example, even when extremely tragic, is the even of the past few weeks in Jos, Plateau State. In the period since the 2003 General Elections I have repeatedly discussed the danger which Governor David Jonah Jang represents to the democratic health of Nigeria. Mohammed Haruna’s piece last week gave an astonishing illustration of the mindset of the man, David Jonah Jang; a diminutive ex-military man, who seems to be far too consumed wih hatred and with a most backward perspective about relationships in a multi-ethnic community. In a very sane society, David Jonah Jang would never have been allowed access to leadership, because of his vicious ethnic chauvinism, derived from that peculiarly crude reading of the historical processs. If Jang had ben born in Rwanda, he almost certainly would have been described as a genocidaire’. Yet that man was military governor in two Nigerian state, and eventually he has become the civilian governor of a third one, Plateau. These positions he attained, without purging himself of his contemptuous disregard for a component community of his state, the Maily Muslim Hausa/Faulani. This point we must return to eventually. But the ambience which facilitated the orgy of violence must never be lost; and that is the irresponsible regime of elections which Nigeria has harvested since 1999. With the victory of the PDPD and the eventual emasculation of the rational kernel from that party by the former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, a new attitude of “do-or-die” became installed in the party processes in Nigeria: no inner-party democracy; no position for dissent; the opposition is emasculated; party barons talk of “capturing” seats, votes or constituencies, etc. this militarized mindset has eroded confidence in the processes associated with democracy in an increasingly frightening manner in our country. The credibility associated with the contest for political positions has become lost and by the 2007 elections, it was clear to all Nigerians that we have lost the possibilities for change that can meaningfully impact upon the lives of the Nigerian people. It is trite argument today that what one does not have, he cannot give. Those who came to power in Nigeria, either at the center or in the states, in the main, were beneficiaries of the “do-or-die” politics of the regime of General Olusegun Obasanjo. Therefore, they have to keep up the charade that they were “popularly elected”; this is why whatever elections that they conduct, they must also steal, Willy nilly. Related to this, is the fact that in the major centers of Nigerian population, from the North to the South, there is a greater political enlightenment: in Lagos, Kano, Onitsha, Aba, Maiduguri, etc. in the places, the people have tended to vote for parties other than the PDP. Machinery and INEC, will ensure that elections in Nigeria, cannot be allowed to be free and fair into the foreseeable future. The final piece of this political background to the killings in Jos is the peculiar nature of local government elections themselves. This tier of government is one that is closest to the people, and there is a great interest in who gets eleted. However, a new trend which arose under Obasanjo is the tendency for the party in power in each state, to ensure that is “captures” all the local governments in its state. It does not matter that is is a PDPD, AC or ANPP state; the outcome is always the same. The party in power “wins” all the seats, and like mass produced goods there is a worrisome similarity in the way and manner that those ridiculous “elections” are conducted. Every state has a SIEC, the contraption which state governors use to install puppets and sidekicks as chairmen of local governments. The “secret” of the process is that governors will not allow other parties but their own to win seats, so that the boat of local government ‘Joint Accounts’ will not be rocked by the “gate crashing” of any other party into the fray. From the popular here say in Nigeria, monies in these accounts are the most abused and most corruptly misappropriated in Nigeria. It is at this level that “do-or-die” is exhibited at its most brazen! This background is very crucial in trying to understand the general ambience within which the Plateau State government chose to conduct its local government elections. It is the same setting of attempting to steal the elections in a manner which ensures that only the PDP controls the local government of Plateau State. The only difference here is the peculiar problem of the Jos North local government area. Of course David Johna Jang knew that his party would not win the elections, but he was willing to steal it all the same. Because apart from the electoral shenanigan, there was also the matter of putting the Hausa/Fulani community in their place, as they put it on the Plateau, because they are “settlers”. This much was the thrust of the advertorial of the Plateau State branch of Pentecostal Federation of Nigeria, published in THE NATION newspaper of December 4, 2008. Honourable Bitrus B. Kaze of the House of Representative, also had an advertorial published in THE NATION of December 6, 2008, which swam within the same currents of thought, in respect of the ethnic cleaveges in Plateau State, but especially in the Jos North local government. It is also instructive that the spokesperson of the Plateu State government, Nuhu Gagra, repeatedly described the Hausa/Fulani people as “settlers”; and it was a theme that was taken up in reportage by many sections of the Nigerian press. The Plateau elements who repeat the mantra of “indigene versus settler”, have not told us if being so-called “settler” vitrates their entitlements as citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It becomes even more unacceptable, if the governor of the atate, David Jonah Jang, is a leading exponent of this frankly backward mindset. It is important to point out that it is this type of mindset which provided the ambience for the genocide against the Jews in Germany during the Second World War, and it is the exploitation of the same sentiments which facilitated the Rwandan genocide. As we have seen, on the Plateau, hundreds of lives were consumed in the hatred which for too long has been incubated in the crazy idea of wanting to ……. “indigenes” who have the right to keep the “settlers” but in this tragic but preventable scenario, Governor David Jonah Jang discredicted and indicted himself, by suing his SIEC to manipulate elections which ended up stoking embers of destruction along the ethno-religious fault lines of his state and while the killings were still taking place, he took the irresponsible decision to inaugurate the local administrations which were the outcome of the fraud; but David Jonah Jang did far more to show his lack of the basic qualities of leadership by refusing to provide relief to the injured as well as the displaced! The crisis of the past two weeks in Plateau State has underlined the danger of letting individuals with deeply chauvinistic mindsets get the access to power; they endanger the health of society. It is of course likely that we will sweep the entire episode under the carpet as we are wont, hopeing that pious appeals to God will help to heal the wounds all around. But where there are infivuduals like David Jonah Jang still on the prowl, and controlling the levers of state power, then we might predict, just like night follows day, that we can never be too far was from crisis on the Nigerian Plateau! But if all is said and done about the irresponsibility of leadership and the criminality of politics which continue to facilitate killings around our country, I find most morally repugnant, the way sections of the press went to build their publicity around the unfortunate killing ot three youth corps members just because they happened to come from a section of the country and belong to an ethnic group! Of course we must condemn their killing, given their special circumstances as young men serving their country; however, I thought that everyman’s death diminishes us, as the poet John Donne said. But when highly respected individuals like Ambassador Dapo Fafowora and Segun Gbadegesin, both writing in THE NATION newspaper or Steve Ayorinde of THE PUNCH will be angry about those three without the same anger about the hundreds of others, who were also tragically killed; it says a lot about the problems of identity in Nigeria. My feeling is that we have reached a point where we must honestly ask difficult questions about politics, leadership and the issues of citizenship in Nigeria, if we hope to become a modern nation. It is a tragic irony that a few weeks after celebrating the Obama phenomenon in the Merrican elections, we will kill ourselves in the hundreds just to prove who was an “indigene” or the “settler”, with the governor of a Nigerian state being complicit in the events. But it we do not decisively defeat the politics of “do-or-die” as well end the faulty leadership recruitment that will throw up the likes of David Jonah Jang in positions of authority, then Nigeria is doomed! Bracing up for Nigeria’s future It could not hae been a co-incidence that the report of the Justice Uwais Committee on Electoral Reform was released on the eve of the Supreme Court judgment on the 2007 General Elections. It was a well choreographed effort by the regime of President Umaru Yar’adua to give an impression that the business of state was grinding on, regardless of the uncertainties about the legal position of the regime in power. The other element of the deft move was to make the country believe that the regime was truly committed to a reformation of the nation’s political system through the far-reaching steps which the electoral reform process might entail. As it turned out, the Supreme Coirt of Nigeria, by a split decision confirmed Umaru Yar’adua, as having been elected in the 2007 polls. What it means is that the regime has found a legal justification for its existence, but implicit in the dissent of three of the seven judges, was that the regime is still unable to achieve the moral legitimacy which allows it to truly say that it rules in accordance with the will of the Nigerian people. Of course, they jubilated at the Aso Rock Villa, and PDP chieftains across the country have been buying spaces in Nigerian newspapers to congratulate themselves; but even they know that they have secured a very hollow victory and the silence of the grave yard in the country in the wake of their victory, is a referendum on the judgemnt which they have earned in the Supreme Court. Quite a number of people that I know have been disappointed about the verdict of the court, against the backdrop of the massively rigged elections which national and international observers attested to being the worst they have ever witnessed. Even Obasanjo, in the heat of the early days of the perfidy, acknowledged that there were problems with the polls, not to talk of the main beneficiary himself, Umaru Yar’adua, who had the modesty to say that all was not well with the process that made him president. So why will the Supreme Court’s majority of judges still go ahead to affirm the elections? All I can tell those who set great store by the judiciary and were therefore disappointed, is that they might not know or acknowledge it, but the court is one of the main pillars of a class society, and when the chips are down, they would retreat into the mode which aids the survival of their class project. We sat the same thing in 2003, when Obasanjo’s fraudulent re-election was affirmed; so why do people think it was going to be different in 2008? This point does not in any way erode from the decency and courage exhibited by the three judges who chose to dissent from the position of the majority. They showed that within the conservative redoubts of the courts, there are individuals who can reflect the feelings of the socirty and use the law to try to help us move in a direction which affirms hope for the people. Unfortunately, it fell far too short and as others have said, in response to the verdict of the Supreme Court, we lost the chance to deal a decisive blow against impunity and a very faulty electoral process, and therefore missed the opportunity to rescue the democratic process. It is looking likely, that Nigeria might have truly kissed democracy by, because there is really no incentive now for anybody to believe that elections can be won in a free and fair manner. The PDP is a behemoth tht is lost in its vote rigging ways, and for as long as it continues to hold sway, controlling the electoral process, the security forces and having so much access to money and state power, it will not be in its interest to have the process any other way. From the way it conducted the riggings of 2003 and 2007, a near flawless template has now been created: elections will be brazenly stolen; Nigerians will make a lot of noise; the tribunals will annul a few of the seats and new elections will be surrendered to opposition forces but at the end of the day, the Supreme Court will adjuge that maybe there were irregularities, but they were not sufficient to annul an election which the Iwus of this world would have massively loaded in favour of the PDP! There is a regularity about this template, you almost could set your watch by it! But it is clear today, that Nigeria is hopelessly lost in a morass of bad governance as a result of the emergence of regimes all around Nigeria that do not work for the Nigerian people because their mandates have not been a product of the freely expressed feelings of the people. This has deepened despair and those who carry on as if it is business as usual, miss the point that Nigeria is a ticking bomb which can explode at any instance. The party process has become so corrupted that people really can’t make a choice between the six and half a dozen of the main parties in the country today. It was Sam Nda-Isaiah who described Chief Edwin Ume Ezeoke, as being chairman of ANPDP, and half jocular as it might read, it underlines the depth of the corrupt party system in our country. Party leaders in opposition spend more time seeking the opportunity to fraternize with the PDP than think of providing alternative platforms around which the Nigerian people can be mobilized to win power. Let us make no mistake about it, Nigeria needs a patriotic stream of parties and leaders who can provide new directions away from the rottenness which the PDP regimes have instituted since 1999: a dubious privatization process which transferred our patrimony to individual cronies of the regimes; a devaluation of all sections of national life; massive theft of monies meant for development at all levels of our society; a brazen institutionalization of corruption; the deepening of a culture of violence and gangsterism; the deformation of the democratic process and arrest of its development and the erosion of the electoral process. The period since 1999 has been one of consistent denial of the actualization of the promises which the Nigerian people felt that democratization can actualize. If we believe in our country, and have the patriotic feeling that we can work for its future, then now is the time to seize the moment to build new party systems. THE GUARDIAN newspaper of Friday, December 12, 2008, carried a report about the national convention of one of the small parties of the left, Democratic Alternative (DA) which held in Ilorin. The leader of the party, Dr. Abayomi Ferreira, said something which I found very instructive. He argued that “in order to build a true Nigeria state, new values, interest and images, we need politicians who are fully dedicated to the rapid economic development of Nigeria, irrespective of foreign investors. No country has ever been developed by foreigners except for their own interest. Only new political parties that have no historical linkage with the right wing politicians and military dictators who have decimated our country in the past 58 years can do it”. Where are those parties? Well Ferreira listed them: “Such parties are a already in existence, the DA, NCP, NAP and the PRP”. Good point, except that implicit in his list is the problem of positing an alternative to the reigning corrupt orthodoxy of the PDP, ANPP, and so on. Why is it difficult for the patriotic segment of the Nigerian society to seize the historical moment and come together to form a grand patriotic party? Why must we have insignificant parties in the pockest of the individuals who lead them? PRP and Balarabe Musa; DA and Ferreigra; Labour Party with a few other individuals! Wha Nigeria needs today and for the sake of the future of its people, is a party which will provide a platform of inclusiveness for all who genuinely want to work for the future of the country and its people. If we must pull away from the precipieceo f a failed state, we need political actors, who think; those who are committed to the independent development of our national productive forces as against thepresent obsession with surrendering to market forcesand the diktat of imperialism. It is obvious that the economic politices of the past eight years are a monumental fraud: they have created a few billionaires; they have sold our national assets; created a bandit from of capitalism but have not put the Nigerian people to work. What is on the ground today cannot leade the country on the path of development. The patriotic segments of Nigerian socirty must know that the new stage today, is to create a new political platform to fight for national liberation; the political economy of the PDP years has reduced us to a fate worse than the classical neo-colonies of the nineteen seventies and eighties. This is a fact! Ironically, I think that there are significant points in the Uwais Committee’s report that we should help to actualize; they are significant, especially if we also build new political parties. They include the suggestions that we should have proportional representation, as opposed to the winner-takes-all system and the recommendation for independent candidature. These must be pushed for, because they can become useful kernels of democratic consolidation in our country. However, I hasten to add that for as long as the monopoly of the PDP and parties like it is not challenged, then even such reforms will end up a miserable token. What needs to be challenged is the arrogance that the PDP will continue ruling the country, when it is wedded to the unpatriotic economic platform which has ruined Nigeria. The PDP and parties like it are not dedicated to patriotic project of national development; these are parties which represent he complete victory of the worst manifestations of comprador/crony capitalism, without any patriotic content. They surrender our country to bare-faced rape and leave our people in despair. The challenge is how to take Nigeria away from this route; but it will not be done, if we don’t have political parties of patriots, with patriotic ideas willing to build a new future fro the Nigerian people. The riposte that is befitting, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the flawed 2007 elections, is to re-possess the old slogan of the Nigerian left: “Don’t Agonize, Organize”! The time to organize is now!
