During the Jonathan
administration, an outspoken opposition spokesperson had argued that Nigeria
was on auto-pilot, a phrase that was gleefully even if ignorantly echoed by an
excitable opposition crowd. Deeper reflection should have made it clear even to
the unthinking that there is no way any country can ever be on auto-pilot, for
there are many levels of governance, all working together and cross-influencing
each other to determine the structure of inputs and outcomes in society. To say
that a country is on auto-pilot is to assume wrongly that the only centre of
governance that exists is the official corridor, whereas governance is far more
complex. The question should be asked, now as then: who is governing Nigeria ? Who is
running the country? Why do we blame government alone for our woes, whereas we
share a collective responsibility, and some of the worst violators of the
public space are not even in public office?
*Buhari and Jonathan |
The President of the
country is easily the target of every criticism. This is perhaps understandable
to the extent that what we have in Nigeria is the perfect equivalent
of an Imperial Presidency. Whoever is President of Nigeria wields the powers of
life and death, depending on how he uses those enormous powers attached to his
office by the Constitution, convention and expectations. Nigeria ’s
President not only governs, he rules. The kind of President that emerges at any
particular time can determine the fortunes of the country. It helps if the
President is driven by a commitment to make a difference, but the challenge is
that every President invariably becomes a prisoner.
He has the loneliest
job in the land, because he is soon taken hostage by officials and various
interests, struggling to exercise aspects of Presidential power vicariously.
And these officials do it right to the minutest detail: they are the ones who
tell the President that he is best thing ever since the invention of
toothpaste. They are the ones who will convince him as to every little detail
of governance: who to meet, where to travel to, and who to suspect or suspend.
The President exercises power, the officials and the partisans in the corridors
exercise influence. But when things go wrong, it is the President that gets the
blame. He is reminded that the buck stops at his desk.
We should begin to
worry about these dangerous officials in the system, particularly within the
public service, the reckless mind readers who exploit the system for their own
ends, and who walk free when the President gets all the blame. To govern
properly, every government not only needs a good man at the top, but good
officials who will serve the country. We are not there yet. The same civil
servants who superintended over the omissions of the past 16 years are the ones
still going up and down today, and it is why something has changed but nothing
has changed. The reality is terrifying.
The officials at the
state levels are no different, from the governor down to the local government
chairman and their staff. They hardly get as much criticism as the folks in Abuja , but they are busy every day governing Nigeria , and
doing so very badly too. Local government chairmen and their officials do
almost nothing. The governors also try to act as if they are Imperial
Majesties. The emphasis on ceremony rather than actual performance is the bane
of governance in Nigeria .
Everyone seems to be obsessed with ceremony and privileges.
A friend sent me a
picture he took with the Mayor of London inside a train, in the midst of
ordinary citizens and asked if that would ever happen in Nigeria . The
Mayor had no bodyguards. He was on his own. In the Netherlands , the Prime Minister is
a part-time lecturer in one of the local colleges. Nigerian pubic officials are
often too busy to have time for normal life. Even if they want to live
normally, the system also makes it impossible. We need people in government
living normal lives. Leaders need not be afraid of the people they govern. They
must identify with them. There is too much royalty in government circles in Nigeria . No
matter how well-intentioned you may be, once you find yourself in their midst,
you will soon start acting and sounding like one, because it is the only
language that is spoken in those corridors.
Elsewhere, ideas govern
countries. People become leaders on the basis of ideas and they govern with
ideas. That is why the average voter in Europe or North
America knows that what he votes for is what he is likely to get.
Clearly in the on-going Presidential nomination process in the United States ,
every voter knows the difference between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on
the Democratic side and between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump on the Republican
side. Such differences are often blurry in Nigeria : our politics is driven by
partisan interests; a primordial desperation for power, not ideas. It is also
why Nigerian politicians can belong to five different political parties and
movements within a decade.
Even when men of ideas
show up in the political arena, they are quickly reminded that they are not
politicians and do not understand politics. Gross anti-intellectualism is a
major problem that Nigeria
would have to address at some stage. Some of the administrations in the past
who had brainy men and women of ideas in strategic positions ended up not using
them. They were either frustrated, caged, co-opted or forced to adapt or shown
the door. The question is often asked: why don’t such people walk away? The
answer that is well known in official corridors is this: doing so may be a form
of suicide. Once inside, you are not allowed to walk out on the Federal
Government of Nigeria, and if you must, not on your own terms. So, governance
fails even at that level of values: that other important element that governs
progressive nations.
Partisan interests are
major factors in the governance process. These seem to be the dominant factor
in Nigeria ,
but again, they are irresponsibly deployed. The crowd of political parties,
religious groups, traditional rulers, ethnic and community associations,
professional associations, pastors, priests, traditional rulers, imams and
alfas, shamanists, native doctors, soothsayers and traditional healers: they
all govern. They wield enormous influence. But they have never helped Nigeria and
they are not helping. All the people in public offices have strong links to all
these other governors of Nigeria ,
but what kind of morality do they discuss? Those with partisan interests,
including even promoters of Non-Governmental groups (NGOs) all have one
interest at heart: power and relevance.
The same priests who
saw grand visions for the PDP and its members over a 16-year period are still
in business seeing visions and making predictions. Those who claim to be so
powerful they can make the lame walk and the blind see have not deemed it
necessary to step forward to help the NNPC turn water into petrol. If any of
these miracle-delivering pastors can just turn the Lagos Lagoon alone into a
river of petrol, all Nigerians will become believers, but that won’t happen
because they are committed to a different version of the gospel. As for the
political parties: they are all in disarray.
The private sector also
governs Nigeria .
But what is the quality of governance in the corporate sector? The Nigerian
corporate elite are arrogant. They claim that they create jobs so the country
may prosper, but they are, in reality, a rent-seeking class. They survive on
government patronage, access to the Villa and its satellites, and claims of
indispensability. But without government, most private sector organisations
will be in distress. The withdrawal of public funds into a Treasury Single
Account is a case in point. And with President Muhammadu Buhari not readily
available to the eye-service wing of the Nigerian private sector, former
sycophants in the corridors are clandestinely resorting to sabotage and
blackmail. A responsible private sector has a duty in society: to build
society, not to donate money to politicians during elections and seek patronage
thereafter. And if it must co-operate with government, it must be for much
nobler reasons in the public interest.
The military are still
governing Nigeria
too. They may be in the background, but their exit 16 years ago, has not quite
translated into a loss of influence or presence. In the early years of their
de-centering, many of them chose to join politics and replace their uniforms
with traditional attires. Their original argument is that if other
professionals can join politics, then a soldier should not be excluded. They
failed to add that the military class in politics in Africa
has shown a tendency to exercise proprietorial rights and powers, which delimit
the democratic project. In Nigeria
such powers and rights have been exercised consistently and mostly by, happily
for us, a gerontocratic class, whose impact, I believe, will be determined by
the effluxion of time.
And it is like this:
the President that emerged in 1999 was a soldier: the received opinion was that
only such a strong man could stabilise the country. His successor was the
brother of another old soldier; he and his Deputy were personally chosen by the
departing President. He died in office, but for his Deputy to succeed him, it
helped a lot that he was also a favorite of the General who chose his own
successors. When this protégé fell out with the General, in retrospect now, a
miscalculation, the General turned Godfather swore to remove him from office.
And it happened. In 2015, another former soldier and strong man had to be
brought back to office and power. When anything goes wrong, a class of old
Generals is the one who steps forward to protect and guide the country. The
only saving grace is that they do not yet have a successor–class of similarly
influential men with military pedigree. But when their time passes, would there
be equally strong civilians who can act as protectors of the nation?
The media governs too.
But the media in Nigeria
today is heavily politicised, compromised and a victim of internal censorship
occasioned by hubris. Can the media still save Nigeria ? It is in the same pit as
the Nigerian voter, foreign interests, the legislature and the judiciary. But
when there is positive change at all of these centres of power and influence,
only then will there be change, movement and motion, and a new Nigeria.
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