Ahmad
Nigeria made a transition to civil rule ten years ago, in 1999, with expectations for a better life. And who can blame a people who went through the excesses of military dictatorship, when the Nigerian state got perilously dose to becoming a criminal state, with frightening indices in practically every sector of national life. Hopes were therefore high, that it couldn’t get any worse than what we harvested under the jack boots of the military. The political elite inheriting the mantle of state control would work its socks off to show the superiority of civil rule and provide the leadership for a democratic transition and its gradual consolidation; Nigeria will be made to work for its people again, or that was the hope.
But there was an unrealistic assessment assessment of the context of the transition. A negotiated exit of the military was not actually a defeat of the psychological complex of military dictatorship or its methods. The inheriting elite were a clone of the worst excesses of military dictatorship; many of them were in fact the flotsam and jetsam of the dictatorial complex which took Nigeria down and were so wedded to the complex within which they attained political maturity as it were, that an instinctive disdain for the Nigerian people underscores their politics. Tony Anenih, Ojo Maduekwe and Jerry Gana are archetypes of the new dispensation; yet they were handmaidens of military rule. Anenih played a significant role as an undertaker of the aborted transition which gave birth to June 12 and proved his bona fide as an enemy of the democratic hopes of the Nigerian people in multisided errands for military dictatorship. Ojo Maduekwe danced on the grave of democracy with gusto during the infamous ‘One Million Man-March. Jerry Gana is the classic AGIP: Any Government InPower. Yet these individuals became principal beneficiaries of the transition of l999!
Civil rule eventually came, warts and all; and it immediately became obvious that we have inherited the proverbial stomach of an elephant (tumbin giwa): there is a hodgepodge of materials therein! Chaps who the day before ran around begging to be elected, suddenly found themselves in government houses and sitting atop billions of naira. In the best of times, modesty has never been a virtue of the Nigerian lump en-bourgeoisie; but with the power to dispense largess; steal their states blind and determine who can or cannot be rich in their fiefdorns these individuals found an arrogant spring to their steps. They became the all-knowing “Oga”; they alone determined what project was put in place in their states, and the commissioning of a borehole, a tasteless architectural piece, an obscenely over-priced bridge, name it, then becomes an opportunity to praise to high heavens the ‘political sagacity’ of often less- than -averagely-intelligent individuals. “Oga” is delivering “democracy dividends”;
he is the best thing that ever happened to the state, etc. A commissioner in a North Central state used to be regularly slapped by his governor, by all accounts, but would never stop praising his principal! Another governor whose father was said to be a colonial court messenger uddenly transmogrified into royalty. His commissioners sat on the floor in his presence, while he retained a clown to praise a forged ancestry. Grovelling and kneemg by government officials before governors became the vay of Nigeria’s civil rule transition from 1999. A sickening caricature of feudal ways of old but which is really an annoying part of an elaborate fraud. Those who grovel obscenely know that Oga na tief man, to borrow the title
of one Tunde Fatunde’s plays; they want a slice of the cake themselves, and realize only a massage of the bloated ego of the tin-god governor will facilitate access. They will stomach any humiliation to attain their end. The process is then reproduced throughout the entire process of governance. A humiliated commissioner does same with subordinates; local government chairmen their councilors and the machinery of state visits humiliation on the Nigerian people.
This culture of grovelling obeisanceIs-reflection of a deep-seated anti-democracy. There is no debate; nobody dares to canvass a contrary viewpoint and there is a frightening uniformity in the conduct of governance in our country: everything revolves around the governor who hardly stays in the state capital. He is sometimes away in Ahuja but more often abroad ostensibly searching for investment; most of the time he is actually hiding the loot stolen from his state. Life grinds to a halt literally and on return an elaborate charade is faithfully broadcast on the local radio and television stations; arrival being timed for when the monthly allocation has been collected from Abuja. Between 1999 and 2007, the FOREX market in Kano, located at WAPA, was said to have a Jigawa Day which coincided with the near-lunatic junketing of then governor, Saminu Turaki. Nenadi Usman, Obasanjo’s Finance Minister, I think it was, who alerted to the manner state governments were affecting the fortunes of the FOREX market through purchases using monthly allocations.
Ever more ingenious schemes to fleece the states appear each day, from the creeks to the savannah, most hardly have any relevance to the simple but essential life enhancing developments desired by the people. These uneconomic and often hare-brained schemes consume huge sums of money as well as wipe away memory and history. Not that memory or history ever meant much in ilie search for novel ways to deplete resources of the country. A whimsical attitude rooted in a complex of kleptomania often informs the white elephant projects which litter our country today.
And you wonder why we acquiesce in such crimes; or in most cases people are so economically challenged or plainly too hungry and simply cowed to care as the future of our country is mortgaged. A new fad is to take huge loans from the capital market after monthly statutory allocations have been creamed off; this is one of the issues in contention between Governor Gbenga Daniel and the Ogun State House of Assembly.
Civil rule in the hands of our lumpen-bourgeoisie proves the point that an uncultured ruling class cannot midwife modernity. In ten years, civil rule is merely a caricature of military dictatorship. The kernel of the times includes party structures without internal democracy; supremacy of ‘OGA’; manipulative use of power and a serial rape of national resources. Nigeria is held in bear hug by bandits; unless and until we break that suffocating hold the nation will slide into greater chaos into the future. The Nigerian people must interrogate the processes, content and bullet points of civil rule because it has delivered far less than the expectations of 1999. We either struggle to change the fraudulent political process or it consumes the country!
