Why Do The Worst People Rise To Power?

 By Dan Onwukwe

First, a confession: The above headline is not original to me. It’s that of a young American political scientist, Brian Paul Klass. Brian is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, America’s flagship monthly magazine. He is the author of Corruptible: Who Gets Power and how it Changes Us. He’s the co-author of How to Rig an Election.  His research interests include: Authoritarianism , Democracy, US politics, Political violence, and more.

Lessons in power will continue to elicit intellectual conversation. It’s not for nothing. It’s so because what leaders do while they are trying to get power is not necessarily, to borrow the words of historian Robert A. Caro, “what they do after they have it”. It’s, therefore, not unkind to say that it has been the misfortune of Nigeria to watch worse people rise to power and use that power to bend people to their will and impoverish the citizens.

They have no agenda but to dominate others. Such men don’t seek power to accomplish real goals. Their drive for power is inseparable from what they wanted power for. Haven’t we seen that in our politics and governance, its raw, unadorned essence? That’s the point Brian is making. He says only if leaders, whether in politics or business, will realise that the positions they hold are like a trust on behalf of the people, and in that respect, whatever they do,  affect the people, either positively or negatively.

It troubles the mind, and sometimes, hard to understand why the worst set of politicians are rising to power in our country. It throws up the following poignant questions: Why is Nigeria’s present generation of politicians worse than the previous ones? Why are our political leaders not measuring up in the leadership scale? Why are we lacking transference political leaders, who possess that ability to connect with the people and shape their aspirations? Is Nigeria jinxed?                                                   

You can ask your own questions. The truth is, today many find it difficult to trust anyone in politics. They have also observed with great pain that the legal and political systems favour only the wealthy and the powerful. Is this utter realism a function of the nature of power and the complexity of ambition, and the role that the greater good can play in the making of a leader, and thereafter, turn him into a tyrant, always disrespecting, with impunity, the political party in which he ran and got elected?

How terrible our politics has changed, indeed.  For instance, could it have been possible in the previous democratic dispensations, for a governor of a state to declare public holidays just to receive a ‘President-elect’ who  ‘won’ a controversial election on a different political party, possibly to mock his own presidential candidate who he had beef with?  Who says our politics is not a fun to follow?

It reminds one of Lord Acton famous quote that ‘power corrupts and absolute power cortupts absolutely’.  That’s why Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state seems to be ‘winning’. Really? Didn’t you see during last week’s visit of President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu to Rivers state, and what happened there. You see, power reveals more than it hides. That’s what happens when a leader feels he has got enough power, when he thinks he doesn’t need anybody anymore, he begins to think and act in a manner that he is bigger than his own political party.

But power is transient. Very soon, the curtain will go down, so will the raw power and braggadocio. Don’t get me wrong. This is not peculiar to just one political leader. It has become the occupational disease of most  Nigerian politicians, only that the impunity and tyranny are getting worse now. As historians will remind us, having a larger end has always been very important for political leaders than businesspeople.

 It’s all about the disappearance of conviction politics that has thrown up men without solid character and integrity as champions of equity and justice. This has done irreparable damage to our politics, governance and leadership. Any keen observer of Nigerian politics will agree that our politics and politicians have become some kind of enemy of their own people. No permanent enemy, but permanent interests                                 

A few years ago, Matthew T. Page, a non-residential scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Education, and former U.S. Department top expert on Nigeria, and co-author of Nigeria: Where Everyone Needs to Know, made a profound observation of what drives politics in Nigeria. He says that in  “Nigerian politics, there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies”.

He argued that in our politics, shifting alliances might indicate the construction of strong opposition coalition, but the very changing political field may present challenges of building good governance. Funnily enough, he likened Nigerian political parties, and indeed, the politicians, to the old Lagos yellow danfo minibuses swerving erratically, bulging as too many passengers squeeze themselves inside, the drivers clinging viselike to both steering wheels and wads of naira notes. Interesting observation, isn’t it?                     

Such comparison is not for nothing. It asks the following questions: Is there really morality in Nigerian politics? How low and erratic can politicians go sometimes? Why must selfish interests be the driving force  always? It really stinks. Sometime last year,  Matthew Kukah, the erudite Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese broached this issue . He cautioned loyalists of politicians not to kill themselves in supporting their candidates. Kukah was responding to the exchange of pleasantries of the then Presidential candidates of the APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, at the Private Wing of Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.  

For Kukah, that’s a lesson to learn for the party faithful of the candidates. “These politicians”, Kukah said, “have lived their lives struggling for the national cake which they will distribute among themselves. It is, therefore, in the interest of ordinary Nigerians to know that they have to vote to stay alive”… As we saw in the recent elections,  scores of parties’ supporters were killed as a result of clashes in different parts of the country.

That has not stopped the politicians from remaining friends, despite the horrible things they have said against one another. Indeed, the literature of our politics is replete with many uncomplimentary things some politicians have said against one another, only to double down later. Take Governor Wike as an example,  what he said about Mr Peter Obi, former Governor of Anambra state, and the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party. 

Watching Wike in an excitable embrace with Obi during the latter’s visit to the state last year to commission one of the projects executed by the former ahead of the election, tells the story that, if bad behaviour is a disqualifying offence, none of our politicians will be fit for public office. Recall that Wike had described Obi with the most superlative, fitting and dignified language, and promised to provide him(Obi) with “logistics support” for his presidential campaign. What happened later?

He worked against Obi during the presidential election. Tinubu became his man, his ‘darling’, in whom all is good and beautiful. We  perhaps forgot that Tinubu’s placeholder, one Ibrahim Masari had told anyone who cared to listen that Wike was working for APC and Tinubu. Make no mistake about it, Wike has been a revelation of this dispensation.

He has done some wonderful things, and some terrible things too, and they all came from the same place. A few years ago, this is what Wike said about the APC and President Muhammadu Buhari: “When I hear people declaring for APC, saying the party should continue the good job of Mr President. What good job? Good job of people dying everyday, of naira falling everyday? 

I feel ashamed that we have gotten to this level of sycophancy, where people say they like the good job of Buhari. What’s good job of Buhari? Is hunger the good job? Is poverty the good job? Is insecurity the good job?                              For me, the answer is simple: If speaking from two sides of the mouth, telling outright lies, exaggeration, playing fast and loose with the facts, and doubling down are political offences, no politician in Nigeria will seek political position in the country. Without a vision beyond their own selfish advancement, they will be paralyzed and thrown out in shame.

But is there shame in any of them? Shame has become a passé for them. It has become a badge of honour to them. Imagine the Majority of the House of Representatives, Alhasan Doguwa boasting that having four wives and 28 children are good leadership skills to aspire as Speaker. Can you beat that? That’s how, to paraphrase Peter Obi, ‘lunatics have taken over the asylum’.   

*Onwukwe is a journalist and commentator on public issues