Illiberality In An Age Of Conspiracy

By Dan Amor

For those who have a profound appreciation of power and its most penetrating insight as well, the fact of the matter, as the Italians once succinctly put it, is that power cannot be wrested no matter the paradigm one uses without certain attributes by the group or individual that jockeys after it. Popularized as the Three Cs in political parlance, any group that earnestly seeks power must be cohesive. It must be coherent. And it must be conspiratorial. 

*President Jonathan 

In an attempt to wrest power from President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, even before the Senate's Doctrine of Necessity following the untimely death of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, some hawks have tried to employ certain machinations including coercion and brigandage to humiliate him from the pinnacle of power.

Few Nigerians have been so persistently, so perversely and so pertinaciously maligned in the folklore of our political evolution. Even before Yar'Adua was officially pronounced dead, there was  cataclysm in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) arising from the sharp division between defenders of entrenched interests who insisted that the North must retain power and those who insisted that the sanctity of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria must supervene.  That is where Jonathan's problem started. With the intervention of the Senate, he assumed the Presidency in acting capacity and later as substantive President. In 2011, northern politicians insisted that Jonathan should not run, which is grossly unconstitutional. Again, the Constitution gained upper hand, and Jonathan, in what was considered a free-and-fair election by local and international observers, won a pan-Nigerian mandate as the country's fourth democratically elected President.
























*Obasanjo

His declaration as winner of that election did not go down well with those who still think that Nigeria is their bona fide property which must be ruled and her resources freely looted by them in perpetuity. Soon after the announcement of his victory, routine killings of youth corps members who were employed as ad hoc staff by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) began in Bauchi State and other parts of the North. No sooner had the people's outcry against this wicked attack on the youth died down than the Boko Haram insurgency started in the North East as a political weapon of the Northern political elite. Since then, there has been this grand conspiracy amongst some disgruntled elements from the core North to make the country ungovernable for Jonathan. Yet, the President has demonstrated resolute political savvy and resilience to transform all sectors of the national economy. 

One inimitable fact is that those who don't want Jonathan to have his second term as Nigeria's president are saying this not because he has not performed but because of other ulterior motives. Although the conspiracy amongst a section of the political elite against Jonathan borders on desperation, the most troubling and disturbing is the temptation to jump into the bandwagon of the old order mentality in the name of a phantom slogan of 'change'. It is unthinkable to see some Nigerians dancing like frenzied ogbanjes clamouring for the old to replace the new as in putting old wine in a new keg and pouring the fresh one way. It is the height of illiberality.

*Buhari

The question that keeps engaging the minds of sensible people around the world  about leadership in Nigeria is: must it always be the Obasanjos, the Buharis and the Babangidas? Doesn't Nigeria have other competent leaders? Why must military dictators who misruled Nigeria and squandered all her opportunities for growth continue to dominate the political space? Is the country a fiefdom? Many Nigerians are yet to ponder over these questions. Some Nigerians even believe that it is their God-given right to rule over others in perpetuity. Then there is also a section of the Nigerian intelligentsia that is yet to come to terms with the reality of the Nigerian condition. The political class has pauperized and manipulated them so much so that they have virtually lost every sense of proportion. Their dalliance with these retired misfits whose executive incompetence left Nigeria a legendary, fractured fairy tale, until the emergence of Yar'Adua and Jonathan, is the highest form of conspiracy against the future of this country. They have failed to inform our teeming youths, especially those born during or shortly after the Buhari military dictatorship, of the dangers of recycling such monsters as leaders in the twenty first century. Now, what is expected of our young politicians who have the interest of the country, not that of an aggrieved, parochial and selfish cabal, at heart is the courage to assertively tell those oldies that the country would make do with a new crop of leaders in tandem with what obtains in other countries of the world.

Even our intellectuals some of whom have forgotten so soon where the rain started beating us, are expected to shun the gains of jumping into the bandwagon, together with its trappings, and try to evolve a new political ideology for the country. The media, which have unfortunately jumped into the frenzy, are expected to educate, conscientize and sensitize the electorate on the need to weigh the experience of the past and have the boldness to make intelligent and informed choices while discarding that slavish notion in Western media propaganda that an intemperate, old and crafty dictator is better than a well educated, meek and democratic president. Why are Nigerians so indifferent? We have so much wallowed in indifference that we are often taken as fools or worse still as toys with which several assumed leaders who care only about their pockets satiate their private fantasies. We pretend not to know what our foreign friends who have conscience say about us when we package and deodorize expired rulers such as Buhari as change agent in this time and age. An invidious international dimension to the conspiracy has just been revealed. There is an international plot by some aggrieved Western nations including Britain and the United States to cause confusion and disaffection in Nigeria. Some elements in these countries have been having series of nocturnal meetings with Nigerian opposition leaders outside the country to force a regime change in the country.

*Babangida

Their grouse with President Jonathan comes from the fact that the Nigerian leader has laboured so hard to prevent them from freely looting our crude oil and the economy as they have always done. This bad belly against the Jonathan administration springs from the fact that due largely to the high cost of doing business with them and their disdain for Nigerians, the Jonathan government has chosen to associate with the Chinese as equal partners in bi-lateral trade and investment. It is this that has caused some disgruntled elements in the international community to gun for regime change in Nigeria despite Jonathan's spectacular performance in office. For them, an aged dictator who would allow them free hand to loot the oil without respect for its owners is better than a young performing President who will not allow them free reign over the nation's resources. This is, indeed, the heart of the matter. Another member of this conspiracy ring is former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Jonathan's estranged God-father who recently abandoned the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in a most shameful display of ingratitude to the party that gave him the ticket to misrule Nigeria for eight miserable years. For him, Jonathan must go because the latter has refused to allow him have back his aborted third term bid by dictating to him what to do. These are the dimensions the conspiracy has assumed. While we must ignore Obasanjo for his lack of tact and colour, all patriotic Nigerians should summon the courage to tell the Americans that every nation on the face of the earth reserves the right to choose her friends and trade partners. Those familiar with America's power politics on the international scene know that it operates the stick-and-carrots approach. It is only unfortunate that some educated Nigerians, especially of the opposition clan, who have now subscribed  to the politics of "stomach infrastructure", have forgotten to situate the United States' viciously self-serving and ruthlessly selfish foreign policy. As far as Americans are concerned, anything, no matter how disruptive or destructive of another country's sovereignty, is deemed permissible and legitimate in pursuit of America's national interests. This is therefore not the time for us to fold our alms and watch our dear country being violated and humiliated by local schemers and their foreign collaborators as the conspiracy lasts. Our overwhelming support for Jonathan and his victory in the March 28 Presidential election will guarantee our total liberation as an independent people.
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Amor, an Abuja-based writer contributed this piece to SCRUPLES.