It may sound
naïve, especially for a person who is obviously a partisan, but my concern and
alarm have little to do with who won or lost in the National Assembly
leadership elections palaver. Easy as this can be lost on the gladiators, we
could be collectively sabotaging the poor ordinary people of Nigeria desperate
for change. Could this elite which has consistently failed to find its mission
and do for its people what their old classmates in schools in the United States
and the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the West, have done for their people in
Asia and Latin America, unwittingly miss this window built on a change mantra,
and betray another generation? It was with this spirit of wondering how easily
we chase power, unmindful of purpose that I exclaimed on seeing the political
bloodletting in the National Assembly leadership selection. My reaction was, Oh
my God, not again! With the process and outcome clearly signalling disunity,
lack of discipline and weak goal-setting, and severe goal displacement, the
least impact would be challenged implementation of what the people voted for.
Oh no! It’s
not happening again. Not again in my life time! But it was happening. The sense
of déjà vu was not just troubling, and evidently palpable, it had a puzzling
force that left you feeling and wondering how this is possible; the way you
feel when a 747 or an A380 is tossed around by mere wind in clear air
turbulence. The vote for change had run into turbulence at the inauguration of
the National Assembly. It was not about who won or who the battle was against.
It was about a public brawl and the change agenda.
It was about
the ordinary people who had persevered so much in the face of underperforming
and uncaring governments beholden to special interests and so seemingly unable,
or unwilling, to go where less endowed rivals in other parts of the world have
gone, and dramatically improved the lot of the people. To drive a change agenda
for which the people voted in April, legislative common purpose was a clear
imperative. To go to legislative inauguration without party discipline and with
a fractious mode and the old ways, of, money and personality politics in top
flight, was to betray the voters of this country, and that is what June 9 means
to me. Hope has again been annulled and for the third time in my life a costly
battle for change has again been hijacked. As 1993 and 1999, so seems to have
gone 2015, if the people do not fight back.
I was
lamenting these things when someone called my attention to an advertised full
page opinion by some concerned APC members in the Daily Trust Newspaper of June
9. That advert was so reminiscent of the kinds of advertisements published in
1993/94 by the Concerned Professionals that I did exactly the same thing I did
in 1993.
In that
year, many of us had canvassed a change agenda. The Social Democratic Party and
its torch- bearer, Chief M.K.O. Abiola, had come to symbolise that change. Two
days after that historic vote, I journeyed to the US to attend a convention. It
was at that convention that a Ugandan delegate came up to me, very angry,
saying: “You Nigerians, you Nigerians, whenever Africa is set for progress, you
drag us back.” I was not sure what he was talking about, but that was how I
learnt of the annulment of the June 12 election. I immediately packed my stuff
and went up to my room and began writing an OPED piece that would appear under
the title, “We Must Say Never Again.” That piece resulted in the founding of
the Concerned Professionals. That body acquitted itself well in the struggle
against military rule. It was a principle-based struggle. They may have sent
policemen to beat us up as we protested and sent assassins after a few like
myself but the principle was not lost on them.
When Sani
Abacha passed and they withdrew under pressure, we erred in thinking our work
was done. The politics of the last 16 years that followed left Nigerians so
exasperated that they jumped on the Change mantra. So uplifted were they with
the outcome that they assumed their world would change dramatically come May
29. Such was the expectations that analysts worried the expectations were
unrealistic and bordered on expecting miracles.
Then comes
June 9. For days before the votes for the National Assembly leaders, I kept
saying that for me, it was not about a particular candidate but about a process
that shows party discipline and national consensus around an agenda for change.
If the process gets fractured, I had warned what will happen will include a
return to the old ways of vote buying in which goals of the common good are
traded off in the old goal displacement ways, for money and self-interest. Then
there is the loss of speed on consensus critical for change legislation. My
song was clearly a borrowed verse from the US President, Lyndon Baines Johnson,
and Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammed: It is better for all to be inside the house
pissing out, than for some to be outside the house pissing in.
It is easy
to see it as a simple political game if you miss the cost of these simple games
for why Nigeria is poor and our society is marked by much disharmony. You may
then analyse the New PDP vs other groups in the All Progressives Congress, or
checking certain power blocs. Even many of the actors who presume to be acting
in self-interest have embraced a narcissism that has blinded them to their own
long term self-interest, as they embrace short term personal gain. Because of
this the “only business in town”, politics, manages to do continuous damage to
the real sector businesses which give life to a majority of the people. But to
the short sighted, it does not matter, this is politics. So, my view was, sort
these things out, whether in smoke filled rooms, or in a sanctuary of truth and
love for the suffering poor of this endowed society. The signalling from a
public brawl that will bruise egos and carve cleavages into the polity and etch
animosities into the relationships even in intra-party affairs may create
momentary victories but they have a sad way of amounting to pyrrhic victories
and delaying the reclaiming of the promise of Nigeria.
With
mountain high challenges in the economy, trailed by an unemployment time bomb,
security problems that go beyond the Boko Haram and kidnappings, and
electricity and petroleum sectors, in much need for reforms, even as
corruption, failing education and health care make us a tribe of refugees around
the planet, now was not the time for politics as usual.
I have tired
of worrying about raw political power, quest for possessions and quick
inclination to predation (The 3Ps) muzzling Purpose, to prevent progress, in
Nigeria. June 9 brought it home again. There could be merit in the pocket wars
and persons that were the target of breaching the consensus for change on that
day, but the consequence will no doubt be progress deferred. The big losers,
the people, the small mechanic who needs electric power for a job to earn the
next meal, the farmer who remains in subsistence because poor infrastructure
locks him out while public officials live like Lords off a wobbly state, to the
truth and prescription the citizen typically go away forlorn for they swallow the
lies of politics as usual. The only solution for me is people power. The people
must say to a political class riding roughshod on their well-being: Enough is
enough. People power must come to save the people recovering from the euphoria
of a promise of change that seems deferred again.
What was the
purpose of the vote for change? The purpose is an elite that for one generation
failed a people and denied them the progress they deserve and desire, should
change their way and bring progress to the greatest number of people. The
patience had worn thin. Now, it is the people who must now take back their
country anyway they see fit. They cannot watch as Singapore escapes Third World
status, South Korea becomes one of the most knowledge-driven high income societies
on earth and Brazil goes from potential to a top 10 economy in the world. These
countries found a patriotic elite at some point that sacrificed for progress.
Since Nigeria has been repeatedly denied such by its elite, the people may have
no choice but to rise up and save themselves. There were enough blame for June
9 to go around, from the APC hierarchy whose complicit role was put forward in
the advert I referred to in the Daily Trust by some concerned APC members, to
the PDP leadership whose business, no doubt, is to make the party in government
uncomfortable but which must know that in decent societies a government must be
allowed to settle in and not for legislators to collaborate with those across
the Isle in ways that can be disruptive. Fortunately, it’s never too late to
begin again.
Utomi, a political economist and Professor
of Entrepreneurship, is founder of the Centre for Values in Leadership
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