Ayomide
Expectedly, members of the ruling elite in our country will be back-slapping with vigour this week; it iw ten years since the expiration of the last military regime and commencement of civil rule. Warts and all, the political process had wobbled along, like a punch-drunk boxer, whose dementia pugilistica has clearly become a soruce of worry for those around him; in the meantime, he carries on with a deluded assumption aobut his own prowess! It couldn’t be otherwise. In ten years, Nigeria’s political elite has shown the worst possible traits in almost every indices of measurement and yet the system has not collapsed on its head. It is therefore no surprise, that it takes the elasticity of people’s tolerance for granted.
But the important this is to place our society’s mal-development of the last decade, especially under the domineering control of the PDP into a ccontext which allows us to make a sense of why we are where we are today. Let us also be clear about it; ours is a deformed democratizing process which is held hostage by a venal ruling elite, most of whom are undermocratic in a value and anti democratic in practice. It should not be forgotten, that some of the most prominent faces of the past ten years have been apologists of military dictatorship; or who can forget the roles played by Tony Anenih to shore up the dictatorship General Abacha or the fraudulent justifications which Ojo Maduekwe gave for Abacha’s continued dictatorship, in the infamous one million man march, not too long ago?
Nigeria had the incredible situation of a negotiated transition, which allowed the departing military regime to determine which of the political players would inerit power, after it had been weakened in a war of attrition with democratic forces. It was weakened, but not defeated. On the other hand, the democratic forces were unable to muster the political clout to carry the battle against military dictatorship into the realm of political power. It was outwitted by the more wily political elet which could us the miltary’s need of a face saving exit that retained a status quo from which all the anti democratic forces can continue to gain from. This is the background which explains why it was the Ojo Maduekwes and Tony Anenih that would again become the prominent players in the civilian project of the past ten years. It is therefore this reality which explains the ciris of governance that Nigeria continues to suffer.
In a decade of civil rule, Nigeria’s democratic project has suffered an arrested development, simply because the inheriting elite have intentions other than the deepening of the countent of remocracy. Obasanjo deepened the tendencies of authoritatrianism and brought his own peculiar manner of brigandage into the process of governance. A kleptocrat who needed to banish a humiliating poverty, after the imprisonment he suffered, Obasanjo presided over a systematic process of fleecing Nigeria and had himself surrounded with individuals of proven thieving proclivities. The venal conduct in the centre, despite preachments by the old bully, therefore became the template for the elite across the board. Stealing ceame the raison d’etre of political power. And to facilitate this process, the electoral process was subverted with imputnity and in places like the Niger Delta, the PDP regimes hired cut throat lumpens as political thugs to steal elections with the connivance of the Obasanjo presidency. This was because it served the short term interest of all concerned.
Once power had been consolidated, the lumpen scum was left to its own devices and before long, these transmogrified and became today’s “militants”. The chickens of the irresponsibility have returned home to roost, endangering not just the ruling class project, but the entire fabric of our country. Ojo Maduekwe addressed the diplomatic community this week, and gave frightening testaments of the depth of crisis that our country has been locked into by its irresponsible political elite. 150,000 barrels per day of crude oil is stolen in illegal bunkering; and between 2008 and now, the Niger Delta “militants” have killed 38 JTF personnel, while 38 are missing and 55 were wounded. Similarly, 5 military gunboats were destroyed and 3 were seized and furthermore, 24 automatic weapons and 579 rounds of ammunition were captured! These fact illustrate the grvity of the situation oas well as being an indictment of Nigeria’s ruling class. The country is alarmingly being pushed to the edge of the precipice of failure and the military actions of the past few days only serve to make the point, even more poignantly.
As it is, ten years of civil rule has not translated to the break of the mold of arrested democratic development, because the poltical process is still largely authoriatian. The party system is under developed and those in control areocntent to keep them as vote-rigging contrations; they lack inner-party democratic life and are not vehicles of ideas and debates. They do not have an organic link with their memebership and do not convey the democratic ideals of the Nigerian people. People have seen through the hollow gestures and empty promises of politicians and because the process does not serve them, people survice by their own device. The danger of alienation from the people is that no one will defend the system if something serious happens to threaten the hegemony of fraud and theft is threatened.
The political elite can continue their back slapping and revelry, but they should give themselves the pause to reflect on how they have failed the democratic aspiration of the Nigerian people. In ten years, they have deepened underdevelopment, even when a few of them and their allies in business, have become fabulously rich through access to political power. It cannot save their hegemony in the long run; ruling class projects survive and thrive only when the oppressed people have been ideologically won to accept the ruling class project as the “natural” order of life. The criminal preying on the state and vandalism agains symbols of the state, show that in Nigeria, the ruling class project is endangered. This is something they should worry about.
Tajudeen Abdulraheem: My friend, my brother my Comrade
I am writing in my hotel room in Asmara, Eritrea; I opened the DAILY TRUST site and saw the shocking news of Tajudeen’s death. I have cried; I phoned my wife to break the news and I have been terribly distraught! Tajudeen is dead? To be honest, I cannot find the words to continue with a tribute…
