By Olu Fasan
Akinwunmi Ambode, governor of Lagos state,
has been thrown under the bus. He will not serve a second term in office not
because the people of Lagos state
rejected him in an election but because his godfather, Bola Tinubu, pulled the
plug on his re-election bid. When somebody dies, Christians often say, quoting
Job 1: 21, that “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away”.
*Tinubu and Abode |
Other leaders and members of the party are either vassals or
serfs, obliged to genuflect before the absolute leader. Recently, Ambode made a
public ridicule of himself when, at an event, he left his place next to Vice
President Yemi Osinbajo saying, “Your excellency, I want to stand next to my
boss”, and dashing across slavishly to stand beside Tinubu. Such toe-curling
grovelling is how serfs relate to their lords. The new lackey, Sanwo-Olu, has
already vowed that he would “never ignore the fatherly advice” of Tinubu,
meaning he would not be his own man as governor. Tinubu talks eloquently about
democracy and progressive politics, but he is not a democrat and not a real
progressive. There is nothing democratic about a leader who arrogates to
himself the power to determine the political fates of others. And nothing is
progressive in a politics based on self-interested calculations.
For strategic reasons, probably linked to his future
presidential ambitions, Tinubu supports Buhari’s re-election bid, even
endorsing him to run unchallenged in the party, with all the potential rivals
either silenced or shooed away, despite Buhari’s poor performance and the fact
that he would be 80 years old in the final year of his second term, if
re-elected. Yet, the same Tinubu had no qualms in brazenly thwarting the
second-term ambition of a young man who has performed well as governor.
That’s not progressive politics; it’s retrograde and
self-serving. I shed no tears for Ambode. He was a beneficiary of Tinubu’s
patrimonialism, and now a victim of it. But I care deeply about democratic
values. Ambode’s treatment bore much similarity to the dark politics of the
Soviet era. The party decided that Ambode must go through a primary to seek
nomination for his re-election bid. Fair enough. But, then, a few days before
the primary, the so-called Governor’s Advisory Council (GAC), the party’s politburo,
met in Tinubu’s house, with Osinbajo in attendance, and endorsed Sanwo-Olu as
the party’s candidate for the governorship election.
The council’s spokesman said: “GAC has endorsed
Babajide Sanwo-Olu as its preferred candidate ahead of the primary”. Ahead of
the primary? Well, that’s exactly what the Soviet or Chinese politburo would
have done: endorse a candidate behind-the-scenes and expect the obsequious
party members, who have been conditioned to be servile, to simply rubber-stamp
the decision. Where was the level-playing field? Where was the fairness?
What was the purpose of a primary in which the party machine,
whose word was law, had publicly endorsed one of the candidates? It was a
charade. The APC National Working Committee saw through it, but it would rather
sacrifice Ambode than antagonise Tinubu, whose support Buhari needs in Lagos and
some of the other South-West states in next year’s presidential election.
Similarities between Lagos state
APC and the Chinese Communist Party There are striking similarities
between Lagos state APC
and the Chinese Communist Party. China ’s
state capitalism is characterised by the omnipresence of the Communist Party in
the Chinese economy. And virtually every Chinese civil servant is a
card-carrying member of the Communist party. Similarly, the governance of Lagos state
is characterised by the omnipresence of the APC, with the party’s leaders
having their fingers in every pie.
In a recent article, a commentator, Kayode Ogundamisi, who
knows the ins and outs of the politics of Lagos APC, described what he called
the “mafioso nature of the APC in Lagos ”.
He said that “Lagos state
civil service is an extension of the party structure”, adding that “hardly
would you find a Lagos state
civil servant who is not a card-carrying member of the party” and that “Lagos
APC has political leaders who depend on state resources”. That’s more like a
communist party than a modern progressive party! Indeed, who are the
“progressives” in Nigeria today?
In the days of Obafemi Awolowo, Aminu Kano and Ahmadu Bello, the progressives
were clearly distinguishable from the conservatives and feudalists.
Conservatism is an ideology of entrenched privilege,
feudalism and static social order, while progressivism seeks to liberate the
human mind and improve the human condition. But the so-called progressives in Nigeria today
enjoy entrenched privilege, they behave like feudalists or aristocrats and keep
people down as plebs and serfs. What’s more, they feed on state resources,
accumulate stupendous wealth and acquire political power and control.
Their progressivism is not about liberating minds and
enhancing people’s social progress, as Awolowo’s was, but about enriching
themselves and their cronies. It is progress for the few, not the many! Think
of it. Despite the economic achievement of Lagos state, the fifth largest economy in Africa , with a GDP of $136bn, why is poverty
and inequality so widespread in the supposedly progressive state? Why are two
out of three people in the state living in slums, according to the World Bank?
As the Financial Times put it in a recent special report on Lagos state,
“Nigerian’s millionaires and billionaires share a city with people living in
indescribable squalor”.
The British prime minister Harold Macmillan said in the 1920s
that, “the central aim of domestic policy must be to tackle unemployment and
poverty”. That’s how governments are judged in the West and how any government
should be judged. But governance is also about political freedom, about the right
democratic and political cultures. But Tinubu’s politics is autocratic, which
is why his political influence has waned significantly in the South West.
His attempts to impose governors in South-West states, such
as Ondo and Ekiti, and even Kogi state, backfired spectacularly with people of
those states resisting his interference. APC recently lost in the Osun state
governorship election not only because of the poor performance of his acolyte,
the outgoing governor, Rauf Aregbesola, but also because the people resented
Tinubu’s interference. It took an unprincipled alliance with Iyiola Omisore,
who the APC had accused of a multitude of sins, for the party to snatch victory
from the jaws of defeat. Feudalism or patrimonialism is incompatible with
cosmopolitanism The risk of a backlash is even greater in Lagos state. Lagos is
a cosmopolitan state. And feudalism or patrimonialism is incompatible with
cosmopolitanism.
People in cosmopolitan states, such as London and New York ,
don’t want to be told what to do. For instance, in 2000, the Labour Party
decided that Ken Livingstone was too radical for the party, and anointed,
through a closed process, Frank Dobson as the party’s mayoral candidate.
Livingstone ran as an Independent candidate and beat Dobson hands down.
Londoners hated the unfairness and being taken for granted. The same Londoners
later elected Boris Johnson, a Conservative, as mayor, and Sadiq Khan, a
Moslem. That’s the maverick nature of cosmopolitan cities.
Even in Lagos state,
Michael Otedola, of the “conservative” National Republican Party (NRC),
defeated the candidate of the “progressive” Social Democratic Party (SDP) in
1992 to become governor. And, in 2015, Ambode beat the PDP candidate Jimi
Agbaje, who is running again next year, by a slim margin of just over 100, 000!
Truth is, as I said, cosmopolitanism is completely at odds with feudalism or
patrimonialism. David Held, a former professor at the London School of
Economics, and an authority on cosmopolitanism, lists the following as its principles:
equal worth and dignity, active agency, personal responsibility and
accountability, consent, reflexive deliberation and collective decision-making,
inclusiveness and subsidiarity and the amelioration of urgent need. Held
describes them as “the principles of democratic public life”. Sadly, these are
not the values that APC in Lagos state,
under the feudal grip of Tinubu, is offering the people.
But they are running a big risk. Nothing says that APC will
rule Lagos for ever.
The spirit of cosmopolitanism might just trigger a change of guards. And that
won’t be a disaster. After all, as I wrote elsewhere, there is no difference
between APC and PDP. Tell me, how is PDP’s Agbaje less a progressive than APC’s
Sanwo-Olu? The parties are mere interchangeable vehicles for gaining
power. But, at some point, the feudal hold on Lagos politics
must stop!
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