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Tag: Chidi Amuta

Chidi Amuta

  • As Trump enrolls in the evil axis – Chidi Amuta

    As Trump enrolls in the evil axis – Chidi Amuta

    Last week, China seized the opportunity of its celebration of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War to celebrate some other dubious things. It was not just the victory of the Chinese Liberation Army over the Japanese imperialists in the World War.  It was also a celebration of the survival of the Communist order even if mortally wounded and weakened. It was above everything else an opportunity to exploit the current weaknesses of the Western Alliance to look forward to the emergence of an alternative world order.

    In the context of the contemporary world order largely dominated by the West and its values and economic rules, it was an opportunity for China as the second largest economy in the world to rally its allies and like-minded countries to showcase and foreshadow an alternative world order as a counterweight to the prevailing Western order in culture, diplomacy, economics and noise. The North Korean delegation to the conference even came armedwith a highly sexed up video of the future of the Evil Emire, one mae more attractive to tourists and visitors. It was a plagiarized version of the futuristic adolescent utopian video bandied by Donald Trum during his first term visit to North Korea.

    In other words, what China has just staged is a symbolic conclave of  alternative powers in the search for a new world order. It saw a gathering of countries like China, Russia, North Korea, Turkey, Iran  meet in China to showcase the outlines of an alternative world order. A very significant presence in the assemblage  was India represented by Prime Minister Modi. With China and India, the demographic gravity of the China conclave in the world cannot be under rated. Economically and demographically, China and India represent the face of the world ahead.

    To underline the gathering as a great power front, China staged a an impressive parade of some of its most recent military hardware and their underlying technological backbones. Russia’s Vladimir Putin grinned endlessly as he was witnessing a gathering that fits into his dream of an alternative world empire. Putin lives anddreams of the return of the Cold War era when a powerful Soviet Union stoodshoulder toshoulder with the West. Henowneeds a powerfull wealthy and belligerent China tosustain that illusion.

    The alternative world order is simply defined. It is an order marked by only one political identity: it is not Western. It is not liberal democratic. Its defining political character is authoritarianism. It respects no human rights. People exist to givelegitimacy to those who confiscate power and hold on to it under guise of some “democratic” mask. Those who oppose the authoritarian despot had better write their will as the despot has only one gift for the opposition: Death or permanent exile.  Its strategic aim is to counterbalance the policies, values and  leadership models that have become synonymous with the West since after the end of the Second World War. In place of free trade, free enterprise and liberal democracy, these countries offer centralized economics, and authoritarian rule and a crushing repression of civil rights. In place of freedom of expression and democratic political expression, they posit controlled speech, muffled expression and limitless censorship of individual expression. Silent acquiescence is miataken for peace and order. At best, these countries offer illiberal democracy in which the views of one party and the wishes of one man prevail over and above the diversity of the multiplicity of voices and tendencies in these very large countries.

    The politics of the contemporary world seems to have played into the hands of China and its oppressive allies. First is the rise and return of Donald Trump in the White House. Second is the ongoing war of territory in Ukraine between an ambitious Russia and  an expansionist NATO. Russia has survived an avalanche of US and western economic sanctions with the financial support of China and direct military assistance of North Korea and Iranian arms. India’s continued purchase of Russian oil has been interpreted as a major strategic sabotage of Western interest in the Ukraine conflict. Aspunishment, Trump has slammedanaverage of 50% duty on Indian goods coming into the US. In brutal retribution, India has symbolically joined the Axis of Evil led by a cynically smiling Xi jiping.

    Ordinarily the direct partisanship of China and North Korea would have defined a line of old animosity between the old West and East if indeed there was in Washington a typically American and pro -Western President. Donald Trump lives in the White House but his principal role models are authoritarians and despots. He has openly expressed admiration for Xi Jiping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, Viktor Orban of Hungary and a slew of small autocrats around the world. Temperamentally therefore, Donald Trump belongs to the authoritarian universe of the antagonists of the West. Inhis leadership rolemodels anddomestic policy direction, Donald Trump is merely an applicant for enrollment into the Axis of Evil championed by China and other authoritarian forces.

    Matters would have been simpler if at the level of domestic policy values Trump was Western or even American. He is not. He has instead systematically thwarted most of the values that make America distinct. His anti -immigration drive is a near maniacal crusade against immigrants, a drastic reversal of the immigrant essence of America. He has sent out armies of ICE officials to hound all immigrants. People have been yanked off schools, churches, farms, factory work places and bundled into waiting repatriation planes to be repatriated to countries they hardly know. Strange places like Uganda, South Sudan are being lobbied and paid to accept plane loads of immigrants from the US. Some of these immigrantsare crack criminals from American jails. In a few sad cases, children bornin America have been yanked off schools and playgrounds and bundled into planes waiting to head in no particular direction.

    Under Trump, major cultural markers of American civilization are being disfigured and erased. The Kennedy Centre, the Smithsonian Institute are all being rid of their historical resonance. Mentions of the heritage of slavery as a foundation of American prosperity and greatness are being deliberately altered or totally erased.

    Yet America has progressively defined itself in manners and worlds that make it distinct from the alterative world of the old Evil Axis. In the early days after the death of the Cold War, George Bush Jr. characterized the countries of the old left along with Iran as the Axis of Evil, a term that clearly indicated the diametrical opposition of the values of authoritarianism and arbitrariness against the Western values of freedom, free trade, liberal democracy and freedom of thought, movement and enquiry. It is doubtful if Donald Trump can be as bold as George Bush Jr. who was in every way a thoroughbred American Republican and embodiment of the core values and defining creeds of America and therefore the West.

    Before George Bush jr., his father as president had summarized the defining mission and character of America as the pursuit of a “kinder gentler” nation which would wield its soft power around the world without leaving doubts that its strength lay in its soft power.

    After the Bush era, Barrack Obama rode to power on the platform of an all inclusive America, a nation of immigrants from all over the world whose beauty lay in the diversity of its populace and capacities. The policy of Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness (DEI) was devised to accommodate the historical reality of America. It sought to give scope for every American, immigrant or home born, black, brown, white, Hispanic and Asian to come to American to pursue the American dream and give of their very best.

    Above all, the greatness of American was to be sustained on the freedom of thought, enquiry and movement as originally espoused by the founding fathers. A major block of this greatness was excellence in science, technology and the humanities. Underlying it all was a freedom to inquire into every aspect of human knowledge and endeavor. The universities were the consecrated centres of this great learning.

    On the contrary, Trump is somewhat confused. He is paraded as the president of America which remains the bastion of freedom and democracy all over the world. He has repeatedly expressed his admiration for authoritarian dictators all over the world as models of what he calls “strong” leadership. He has staged a massive military parade in Washington in imitation of the Chinese and Koreans.

    He has embarked on a massive takeover of time honoured cultural institutions and subsumed such take over under his ideological obsession with white nationalism. Anything that looks like respect for diversity, inclusion and equity in all major national institutions is being systematically thrashed and replaced with while supremacist personnel and ideas.

    These measures are all targeted at the democratic essence of the American nation. Literally everywhere and in all segments of American life, the democratic essence of the nation is under assault. The powers of state governors to decide on the most elementary aspects of the lives of their citizens are being challenged and replaced by federal fiat. The judicial branch is over burdened with cases challenging the authoritarian excesses of the Trump presidency. Never in any othe single presidential term has the powers of the president come under such systematic judicial scrutiny and open challenge,

    From an ultra republican nation, America under Trump has been struggling with the outlines of authoritarianism and a creeping monarchism in which Donald Trump and his minions and hirelings are functioning more like feudal prefects than as democratic officials. Americans have had to march in several cities against the kingship traits of President Trump.

    Trump’s  entire doctrine of “America First” is antithetical to the pursuit of a world agenda. Nations can act to protect their national interests  in matters of national security and economic protectionism but once a major power has declared a commitment to championing a global agenda, it is limited in its pursuit of national interest. A delicate balance has to be struck between national interest and the imperatives of the global agenda.

    A global agenda without the soft power of aid to the afflicted, food for the hungry, medicine for the sick and compassion for citizens in distress is no better than the criminal negligence of the worst authoritarian regimes. You cannot replace pain with more excruciating pain and anguish and insist that you are championing the emergence of a new world order.  This is what Trump is doing while insisting that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

    In pursuit of a more martial rule, Trump has imposed martial law in major cities starting from emergencies in Los Angeles, Washington DC and soon Chicago.

    The indiscriminate imposition of discriminatory trade tariffs on different countries with scant regard as  to whether they are allies or adversaries. India, Mexico, Canada, most of the European Union. This indiscriminate tariff policy has further blurred the distinction between allies and adversaries and widened the market for friends for allies of the evil empire. You cannot be the champion of a different world order when your actions, policies and utterances espose and champion the values of the other world.

    Taken together, all of Donald Trump’s actions, inclinations leadership preferences amount to a giant application to  the cult of evil empires. Instead of positing a strong alternative to the Axis of Evil, Trump is intent on unifying the world under one  authoritarian, protectionist and national umbrella. Trump’s vision is one in which the United States literally stands alone as one strong economic and military power at par with China but in a position to dictate to the rest of the world. I doubt that the thought of a hemispheric influence or global order appeals to Mr. Trump.

  • How politics kills universities – By Chidi Amuta

    How politics kills universities – By Chidi Amuta

    In what has become a familiar ritual of Nigerian campus trade unionism, ASUU has served notice of an imminent work stoppage. It is all about long standing service agreements over benefits and allowances that have been lingering for the better part of the last few decade or more.

    In the popular imagination, any mention of our universities connotes an interminable disruption of academic activities and of course endless unplanned holidays for idle youth .Here we go again. The net impact of ASUU’s unpredictable labour union habits has been degrading to our university culture and its overall place in national development and culture.

    The timing of this year’s ASUU strike notice is spectacularly dumb. This is the end of summer. For the last two months, pages of our newspapers have been filled with happy gleeful photos of notable Nigerians attending the graduation ceremonies of their children in Europe and American universities.

    These are the same people that ASUU expects to take political action to pay up their overdue allowances. They mostly have their children educated in  prestigious Western universities. And here we have some academic destitutes threatening to go on strike over salaries for teaching the children of poor citizens who have no choice than to be stuck in our dilapidated campuses. And ASUU expects to get a hearing ?

    In the 1970s and 1980s, the Nigerian university was at the centre of all serious discourse about national development and popular welfare. Governments, mostly military, paid attention to discourse on the campuses about desirable directions for national development.

    As undergraduates, we were attentive to national policy trends. We cared about petrol pump prices, about living standards, about the welfare of the masses, about primary health care and quality of education. Corruption in high places was a sensitive matter. We trooped out to engage the police and even the army on key national policy issues. We braved the tear gas and the truncheons and even live bullets to oppose the government of the day on issues that concerned the welfare of the masses.

    We were not just participants in domestic affairs. Those were the days of active foreign policy. Nigeria was in the forefront of Africa’s new foreign policy in the late decolonization era. Nigeria was a “frontline state”, in the forefront of the final phase of the anti colonial struggle and the crucial state of the anti apartheid struggle. As undergraduates, we took positions that were even more radical than the government on Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

    Those were the days of the anti imperialist struggle when the Cold Was defined the relations among nations. The ideological divide among nations, between the communist world and the capitalist world also defined discourse in the academia. The academia were divided  between the right and the left. Our disputations were fiery and warlike. Most campuses were divided. Some were more so than others. ABU, Ife, UNIBEN and UNIPORT were the hotbeds of campus radicalism. The government was interested in our debates because it impinged directly on the government’s overall ideological leaning in the international system.

    The political elite heard us. They came to understand the campuses as an extension of the larger discourse in society.  More importantly, the campuses became a platform for the propagation of new and often controversial ideas. Each major university made its annual convocation lecture available to major politicians to air new ideas. At Nsukka in one year, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe tried to put to rest the then contentious issue of power sharing between the military and the political leadership of the country.  He proposed the controversial theory of Diarchy.

    At Ife in one year, Chief Obafemi Awolowo questioned the wisdom in probing previous governments since there had been no consequences in the past. In that controversial speech titled “Qui Bono?”, Awo argued that resources committed to the probes of the past were essentially wasted.

    In sharp contrast, today’s Nigerian university is comatose on national issues and literally castrated in its attitude to governments and public policy. ASUU has over the decades drifted into bread and butter trade unionism. The Cold War has ended. Ideology has withered as a major source of contention. The role of government has shrunk to that of an employer of labour and a payer of salaries. ASUU’s relationship to government has been reduced to that of a perennial debtor. Government accountability has been reduced to its ability to honour its labour obligations to agreements reached with campus unions.

    In return, student unionism has become consumed by the general exhibitionism and showmanship of the current political dispensation and culture. Crass partisanship has taken over student unionism. Student union officials now hire retinues of aides and officials with the same outlandish and foolish nomenclature as roadside politicians. They disturb the peace of campuses with the same noisy sirens as their partisan patrons and principals.

    Among the students body, favourite pastimes now include cybercrimes, kidnapping, blackmail leading frequent suicides, ritual murder for body parts in return for quick cash. There is hardly any Nigerian campus today in which any serious issue of national policy is being canvassed. Instead, it is all about transactions that catapult paupers into billionaires, skit makers into mega tik tok entrepreneurs overnight. The same very students bring huge SUVs and outlandish automobiles to cmpus in which many lecturers are on foot.

    This is the landscape of the Nigerian university campus today. Perhaps a some what equivalent development is taking place  on the American university campus since the onset of Trump’s second coming.

    The return of Donald Trump to the White House has unpturned the tradition of university culture in America especially in relation to its role in national development and culture. Since the foundation of America, the university has palyed four vital roles: it has been a mirror of the culture and tradition of freedom of enquiry and political freedom; it has been the pillar of a science based free society in which the fruits of science and technology have complimented a free market economy to grow a free economy; an avenue for the propagation of the freedom of peoples all over the world for which America has been associated and universities have been associated with the freedom of entry and exist of persons into America to partake in the pursuit of the American dream as the magnet of a diverse immigration driven society.

    Since his return to the White House, President Trump has driven a wedge among all these roles of the American university.He has sought to block funds for the endowwments of major universities  like Harvard, Yale and Princeton. He has used the immigration powers to block the visas of graduate students. He has sought to evict graduate students who hold known anti Semitic views.

    He has sought to curtail the entry of students from China and other destinations into American universities. Most dangerously, he assault on federal funding for scientific research in major universities has threatened America’s leading edge in global science and technology. He has even threatened free speech on university campuses especially to the extent that such exercise of freedom has to do with the interests of Israel.

    In general, universities have a way of preserving the past and foreshadowing the future of the society that gives them life. We send the youth to acquire higher education to light up the pathway to a future.

    The dreams of a new society and the values that should inform future development are encapsulated in the dreams, aspirations of the young men and women that throng university campuses during the foundation years of every society. The ideals of freedom and justice through enlightenment  and knowledge to cut the frontiers of a new world embodied in the rise of America as a force of new world civilization were embodied in the culture of the university.

    The American dream came to be anchored as well in the conquest of poverty that a college degree would guarantee. Most importantly, the freedom of enquiry, the endless quest for knowledge, the exploration of the unknown universe of science were part of the spirit of America.

    It was a spirit that encouraged the questioning of dogma and the interrogation of received dogma in all fields of human knowledge. The values that held society itself were not immune from the critical inquiry and rigoros interrogation which sustains university culture.

    Freedom of expression and inquiry are values shared by democracy and te university as an institution. When university campuses erupt in protest and revolt, something is wrong with the democratic environment. Since the re-emergence of Donald Trump in the White House, the turmoil and turbulence that has engulfed America’s governance has spread to even its most treasured campuses.

    Harvard, Princeton and Yale have not been spared the authoritarian incursions of Trump’s meddlesome  and disruptive politics. University funds are being withheld. Admissions policies have come under the axe of bureaucratic intervention. The right of universities to teach certain courses as well as their right to admit students from certain parts of the world or students who hold certain views have all come under the investigative ambit of an all prying State Department.

    Curiously, universities also live or die with the politics of the society that feeds them. If the American university declines in the wake of the Trump assault on American politics and culture, it will find a rough equivalent in the decadence of the Nigerian university following the decay of political values in Nigeria’s present political decadence.

  • Jonathan, don’t just run… please flee! – By Chidi Amuta

    Jonathan, don’t just run… please flee! – By Chidi Amuta

    A self -anointed select pack of northern political hounds has found a favourite seasonal mascot for each election cycle. Former president Goodluck Jonathan has managed to find repetitive mention in each election cycle.

    Hardly any presidential election cycle passes without a loud speculation of Jonathan as a possible candidate. In each election season since after 1919, his name has popped up as a likely contestant.  The presidential election of 2027 is no exception.

    An active political task force is currently busy around the country recruiting  converts and foot soldiers for a possible “draft Jonathsn” project. It is a northern project. It is also an anti-Tinubu factional ploy. The thinking is that Mr. Tinubu’s presidency has not quite yielded the outcome that some political interests in the north anticipated.

    The anticipation  is that a Jonathan run in 2027 could shake Tinubu’s hold on power or at best whittle down the size of his support base. Advocates of this move are even optimistic that Jonathan could topple Tinubu at the next election.

    Since the north-south rotation principle remains in force as a quasi constitutional convention, it is better to search for a southernerner who is statute barred from exceeding a single term.

    Jonathan fits into this mould, having used his first term in completing the leftover of the Yardua first term. In this calculation, Jonathan also meets other northern qualifications. He surrendered power to Buhari without much pressure.

    As president, he was a “friend” of the north, appointing quite a number of them to strategic national security posts. He is not a regional ideologue nor does he seriously advocate a restructuring of the federation as it is in any serious way.

    Since he lost and conceded to Buhari in 2014, Jonathan has found himself in the role of ready fixture for presidential candidate. It is either he half- heartedly longs to return to Aso Rock or enjoys the seasonal runs for the big job.

    In the now familiar seasonal Jonathan should run tradition, people find work in political caucus meetings, printing of posters, producing of jingles  about an imminent Jonathan run and, soon afterwards, the frenzy fizzles out as the man himself in his non comital indifference says nothing or does nothing. He just retreats into his shell since he did not mount any formal campaign.

    The trend is not new. In the run up to the 2023 election, Jonathan actually paid the N100 million entry fee demanded by the APC for potential candidates. He artfully credited the payment to some phantom northern farmers and herdsmen who so loved him as to want him back in Abuja. Why is it always northern groups that keep prodding Jonathan to realize that he still has political value?

    No one can blame Jonathan for aspiring to run again for the presidency. Every one of us has a right to aspire to any office in the political firmament. Barring constitutional  constraints, Jonathan has a right to show up as a candidate at every electoral season to vie for whatever he and his handlers want. But the matter of his electability is quite a different matter. That is strictly a matter for the public to determine based on his personal appeal and other qualities.

    Somehow, Jonathan has managed to keep himself quite busy. When he is not being speculated as a presidential candidate, Jonathan has been quite busy attending a series of democracy related engagements around the world in recognition of his earlier free return of power to Buhari. He is recognized as a friend of democracy and orderly transition of democratic power. That has earned him some considerable diplomatic gravitas, recognition and handsome estacodes.

    On the domestic political scene however, Jonathan remains  a problem child. He has been a product of historical accidents. He became a governor by accident, a vice president by accident and a President by supreme accident. His presidency ended out of political naivete and a certain tenuous hold on power.

    Taken together, therefore, the factors that propelled Mr. Jonathan to national power and prominence do not quite add up to qualify him as a political asset that can be deployed to  intervene in any serious national political quagmire.

    In the drama of politics, individual politicians become assets in two ways. They could possess personal political qualities such as charisma, wisdom, sagacity and unquestionable national acceptability which makes them automatic assets. In such cases, in times of national leadership vcuum, their names pop up. Obasanjo had this attribute in 1999.

    The second asset base that could heighten the demand for a political leader is a previous  record of outstanding record of service and performance in office. There is bound to be little controversy as to whether Mr. Jonathan was a spectacular president.

    Even on the signal project of restoring peace and order in the Niger Delta, Jonathan had to depend on the radical innovations of the mix of Amnesty and force introduced by the later Yar’dua. He was helpless on corruption, watched helplessly as Boko Haram took hold and carved out territory while periodically trucking away groups of girls into enslaved captivity.

    Tepid and often clueless on policy matters, Jonathan was in office but not in power, had authority but could not wield it. An inheritor of one of Africa’s biggest and then most powerful political parties, he watched helplessly while renegades chipped away at his power and splintered the party under his watch. A hostile coalition was born while he watched and Buhari hatched the political amalgam that eventually ousted him from power.

    Let us be fair. Jonathan is a good man. His rule provoked money scandals but none touched him directly. He has avoided nasty controversies. He has not snatched anyone’s wife or grabbed anyone’s land. He has so far avoided the usual nasty controversies that our past leaders get enmeshed in. He goes out and returns quietly.

    A quintessential gentleman and model past leader. No strong enemies. A few  friends here and there. Not much to quote from his words in office. He once said he was afraid to promise anything for fear that he might fail his promises. He did not want to be held responsible for anything. That this man could be a successor of the illustrious Adaka Boro is one of history’s most tragic illogicalities. No ardent devotees. No good or bad causes. Just an ordinary Ijaw man better left in his morning loin cloth and other morning rituals.

    Is this the Jonathan that is being mobilized or rehabilitated to oust or reinforce Tinubu? In either role, he has limited value.  The prospect of a Jonathan run sponsored by the north cannot frighten Tinubu. Nor can the possible support of a Jonathan add any significant value to the Tinubu return for a second term. It is a project of zero political value. It is at best a transactional venture with little mercantile ingenuity.

    And in any event, Jonathan does not possess the kind of financial muscle that could make him a worthwhile financial threat or cost Tinubu any loss of sleep.  The net loss would be Jonathan’s. His little political capital would be eroded. His residual public relations value as ambassador of democracy may diminish.

    Those championing Jonathan’s return to active politics are however lost in the wildernesses of our old politics. It used to be that once nominated by a regional cabal, a candidate was sure to win irrespective of what happens at the polling booths.

    Votes are tallied and recorded with ready made made results announced. Not so easy anymore with the interjection of electronic devices in the voting process no matter how crooked and imperfect they may be.

    More importantly, it is now easy to segment Nigeria’s voter demographics in order to determine where a politician’s voting bloc will come from. Jonathan does not appeal to any particular voter demographics.

    He sends out no particular appeal to no one bloc. In the Niger Delts, he may appeal to people who feel nationalistic about resource control but they do not represent the majority. The South East does not know what exactly to feel about Jonathan except that when he became accidental president he smuggled “Azikiwe” into his name cluster  and dropped it soon afterwards.

    In terms of youth appeal, Jonathan has none that I am aware of. He has no significant social media footprint. His name invokes nothing that the youth would like to identify with. He has advocated nothing that touches the youth. Nothing on unemployment,  youth freedom, artistic freedom national pride etc.

    Even common issues of mass murder, Internally Displaced Persons, natural disasters or youth empowerment have not managed to attract Jonathan’s sympathetic identification.  I am sure he is aware of the misalignments and injustice in our country.

    But he has not empathized sufficiently with the victims to attract a followership in the social media. Nigerian youth know Jonathan but I doubt that he knows them let alone feel their pain or wish to carry their burdens. For anyone to advocate a Jonathan run in 2027 is one of the most daft political ventures in the current firmament.

    Perhaps Jonathan’s best advice on this matter of a possible run in 2027, has come from his closest quarter. In a joint appearance recently with Mrs. Tinubu, the irrepressible Patience Jonathan was asked if she is nostalgic about her days in Aso Rock.

    Her reply was cryptic and  definitive: “I do not wish to return to the Villa. Those days are over.” For Jonathan, this is perhaps the wisest counsel in today’s circumstances. Incidentally, Mrs. Jonathan is on record as having uttered the most memorable and quotable lines of the Jonathan presidency.

  • Land of a million grudges with no consensus – By Chidi Amuta

    Land of a million grudges with no consensus – By Chidi Amuta

    There is something ultimately futile about desiring an alternative society without knowing what exactly it is. A restless society wracked by adversity to seek an alternative ethos is a fertile ground for reform or even revolution. But a revolutionary fertile ground without a national consensus is a recipe for anarchy. So, as the late popular musician Sonny Okosun, used to ask in that popular song: “Which Way Nigeria?”

    Those desirous of urgent change in Nigeria are frustrated. Worse still, those who hope that lasting change in Nigeria’s social and political landscape will come about as a result of  popular protest and upheaval need to think again.  They may have to wait a little longer if they insist on such change coming about in defense of a national consensus. That consensus does not exist and has never existed.

    Citizen action in demand for urgent change seems to be a futile project and a futile hope. There is no popular revolt or revolution in the horizon. Worse still, those who are impatient with the reticence and apparent indifference of the Nigerian public to their hard lives cannot understand the burden of our national history.

    They cite instances of recent social and political upheaval in places like the Arab Spring nations and even as recently as in Kenya and cannot seem to understand why the Nigerian populace is so docile and apathetic. We are so many and our social and economic troubles are so huge that all sensible political observers would expect us to flare up in the kind of massive unrest that brings about instant change.

    Our anger is massive enough to overturn the Titanic of any state. We are so many that our deprivations can sack any government. But yet it never happens. Not by any chance now or in the foreseeable future. The reasons are ingrained in our historical and political DNA.

    On the contrary, there are inbuilt series of factors that have frustrated and negated the possibility of revolutionary change in Nigeria.  The military coup of January 1966 was not exempt from this revolutionary reticence. Even before the gun powder of the coupists dried up, ethnic, religious, regional and all manner of conspiracies had seized the day.

    The original revolutionary fervor of the young officers was dissipated. The nationalist ideals that fired their original youthful anger was darkened. Motives and purposes were imputed that were never dreamt of and, soon enough, those originally hailed by the populace as redeeming messiahs and revolutionaries were quickly rounded up, locked up or neutralized as treasonous traitors.

    Soon enough, the mainstream counter revolutionary establishment forces seized the day and have held strong and strangulated the Nigerian state and society from quick change for the last more than half a century. In a sense then, the whole of Nigerian history since the collapse of the 1966 military coup has been a chronicle of counter revolutionary upheavals and the entrenchment of reaction as a permanent feature of our political DNA as a nation. Our successive political dynasties may call themselves fancy names like “progressives” , “nationalists” or “patriots” as the case may be.

    Some exceptions have been made in recent times- the ENDSARS protests, the Covid-19 hardship protests etc. But these were isolated episodic stirrings of mass anger. They were only tangentially political and hardly ever national in scope. Nor did they reach wide enough on the national scale. Collections of citizens driven by hunger and hardship to march in protest against the government of the day would be normal in nearly every society.

    The possibility that such anger movements could spiral into widespread political movements is usually a function of national history and political leadership culture. Even more important is the factor of the configuration of a national society. But in and of themselves, adversity, no matter how dire widespread , cannot bring about sudden total political change.

    In today’s Nigeria, for instance, adversity is everywhere in evidence and multifaceted. The things that make other people restive and explosive are in abundance everywhere in Nigeria. Insecurity has reached a Hobbesian height. There is hunger all over the land. Food is scarce and expensive. Most people cannot afford the bare necessities of life because they are dirt poor.

    People are homeless, sleeping in ope spaces. Most people cannot afford basic primary healthcare while most others are marooned because the cost of transportation has gone beyond the reach of many. Even what used to be the semblance of a Middle Class has been traumatically eroded into a penurious incapacity.

    The cries of anguish echo throughout the land. In this landscape, one would expect a nationwide upheaval and wild protest demanding immediate change of the status quo as a minimum. Not quite. No one is convinced about the possibility of such change. The doctrine of state security and public order are ingrained into the brains of a police and military that trace their  origins to a colonial vanquish ethos.

    To reinforce the air of animosity between government and people, those elected by our successive democracies  to preside over the state are openly displaying levels of hostility inherited from the colonialists.

    Their opulence from clearly unearned resources is mind buggling . On occasion, popular anger has even approach the precincts of power. Demonstrators have occasionally invaded the precincts and premises of even the National Assembly.  The state has retorted through hooded goons and overfed Alsatians!

    Calls for protests by Civil society Groups and known populist leaders have only been met with apathy and isolated adherence. On the few occasions when populist leaders have called the populace out to protest the hardship in the land, only a handful have shown up. In some cases, those who showed up were paid to protest or mobilized by political and other interests.

    On balance, our grudges are too many. Our troubles come from too many different directions. When people are hungry, are threatened by bandits, kidnappers, abductors and rapists in droves, they need extraordinary strength and focus to decide which pain is most dire.

    As it were, Nigerians now  need to be reminded and mobilized to respond to their own many grudges and existential threats. People no longer know when hardship to protest against or who exactly is the target of which adversity. Thus overwhelmed by multiple worries and deprivations, it becomes hard to choose which pain is more severe. In this situation, people are only reminded of the things that divide rather than unite us. On the day of protest, our dividing lines come alive.

    People ask what religious sects are the protest organizers? Are they Muslims or Christians? If Christians, are they Pentecostal or legacy sects? What ethnicity are the inspirers? Are they Igbos, Hausas, Yorubas or Ijaws? Is it a northern or southern protest? What geo-political zone is leading the protest? What do the organizers want? Which political faction or interest is behind it?

    Why can’t they come out in the open to demand for “something” from the people in Abuja? Parents caution their children and wards to stay home and away from the equally hungry and frustrated soldiers and policemen who are in any case looking for people to shoot to death? Even if you are killed protesting, there are no consequences. In a land without consequences for the most heinous crimes and offences, why go out to commit suicide in the hands of those paid by the state to kill the very citizens whose tax money pays for the guns and bullets used to keep the peace and maintain the order of the devil?

    In times past, there used to be a united nation. There was a time when our pains were collective and our sufferings a shared burden. We used to hear each other’s cries and feel each other’s pain. Our hunger, homelessness, insecurity or bereavement never used to speak in sectional dialects.  In the 1970s, student demonstrations used to gravitate around national issues.

    As undergraduates, we heard exh other from across great divides. Without modern cell phones, we heard each other loud and clear from ABU to Ife, from UNILAG to Nsukka and from UNIBEN to UI.  Whether it was the price of fuel, the cost of food, unemployment, alleged corruption by government offcials , inflation or sectarian intolerance, there was a national consensus from Maiduguri to Badagry, from Sokoto to Yenagoa.

    In those days, it used to be the belief that hunger and hardship obey no geography, worship no specific gods or speak no differential languages. Now, our hurt has been divided by the same things that have come to divide our people. Yes, indeed, as Chinua Achebe lamented before he bowed out, “there was a country”!

    We lost our nation and the things that ought to unite us. Abot all, we have never found a consensus as n elite, let alone one that we can pass down to our masses. Yet, we need to explore and understand the factors that breed and erode consensus in a diverse plural society. Our politics is divided. Our politicians are disciples of regional deities and ethnic creeds rather than a national belief.

    With no gods to worship, we have become a very religious people. Our values are less dictated by national pressures and more by promptings from churches and mosques than anything else. Superstition rules our lives instead of the fear and respect for enforceable laws and codes of conduct. Belief in the afterlife and the goodness that lies beyond the here and now.

    If hunger ravages today, look to the future when God will reward us with an El Dorado of abundance and feasting. The gods that find the most adherents are those that confer abundance and instant wealth. Those who come to church in Keke and Okada should return home in limousines as a demonstration of the favour of the Almighty. Those who have abundance today happen to be enjoying the blessing of Allah, our turn is coming!

    The pursuit of divisive federalism in most matters has deepened our search for a national consensus. Most Nigerians now think of their states and geo political zones before they bother about a pan Nigerian reality. More often than not, Nigerians off load their frustrations at the doorstep of their respective state governors. These tin gods and petty emperors  are the more visible emblems of the nation that has kept our hopes in abeyance. Most Nigerians even forget that the National Assembly is populated by idle people who are supposed to represent our constituencies as Nigerians.

    The greatest casualty of this balkanization of expectations is the crucial element of national elite consensus. No nation grows or achieves meaningful progress without a tangible national elite consensus. We need a platform of common grounds to unite the expectations and aspirations of all   Nigerians irrespective of class, belief, ethnicity and orientation. In a nutshell, what is the Nigerian dream or vision of a good life? To what platform of self fulfilment should the Nigerian child grow up in life? What society should form the benchmark of our collective aspiration as a people?

    On a casual school visit in the company of a governor friend of mine some years ago, we asked some JSS 3 kids what they would like to become when they grew up! The answers were quick and revealing:

    “Militant!”, “Kidnapper!”, “Dangote!”, “Governor!”

  • Whose president is Tinubu, anyway? – By Chidi Amuta

    Whose president is Tinubu, anyway? – By Chidi Amuta

    Midway into a rather routine and very tepid presidency, President Bola Tinubu is caught in strange identity crisis. Politicians from across the nation are asking the president to define whose leader he really is.

    The general public is equally embarrassed by what many see as an “anyhow “ government: no focus, no commitment, no clarity of policy and a harvest of adversity all over the land.

    Suddenly, no political constituency seems ready to claim Tinubu as their own even as he tries desperately to make things happen. To paraphrase his colourless predecessor, “I belong to no one …”, and apparently no one belongs to me. That seems to be the summation of the present state of Tinubu and his national constitutency.

    The presidential throne is literally on fire from every direction. The president himself is hardly loved by the populace. He lacks the charisma and personal electricity to attract the popular support that should alleviate his failings  to be glossed over and make his blatant sins forgivable.  His actual performance on the job is below average. He has neither the intellectual depth nor the firm grasp of national issues and the way out to convince anybody that he has a higher interest than just the fancy title and  the benefits of power.

    An inchoate coalition of parties and interest groups is in the offing with an openly declared intent to oust Mr. Tinubu from his rent free quarters in Abuja. The regional interests are not disguised. The most consequential is  a coalition of northern political interest groups. The entire norther political bloc seems to be united in the conviction that Mr. Tinubu’s presidency is not in their interest.

    They cite the declining security situation which has rendered the region dangerous. The roads are unsafe. Villages are being razed at will and their resdients taken hostage routinely by a motley of bandit armies who have defied the agencies of national security. The farms are similarly no go areas as farmers can neither plant nor harvest freely except by paying huge tolls to bandits to get to their very farms. Nor can convoys of harvested goods and farm produce  move freely through ambushes and road blocks mounted by bandits.

    In a most unfortunate propaganda twist by the Presidency, the myriad problems of the Tinubu government are being blamed on the fact that he is from the south. Tinubu’s chief town crier, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, has just screamed out . For him, Mr. Tinubu is being troubled because he is from the south, a rather desperate but unwise twist to a clear personal political problem created by failings of the president himself. In other words, there is a northern conspiracy against Tinubu. This silly divisive rhetoric is being erected to characterize an office whose principal aim is to unite a multinational country. Tinubu was elected to unite Nigerians, not to create and see regional adversaries in his self inflicted political problems.

    Underneath this lazy and mischievous diversion is the assumption that Tinubu’s policies are in the interest of the south. In other words, Tinubu is now being vilified for presumably placing the interests  of the south over and above those of other regions especially the north. What nonsense.

    The north has just organized a huge conference in Kaduna and ended up with a divided voice as to Tinubu’s precise political allegiance to the region that gave him most of the votes that installed him in Abuja. While the APC governors from the region insist that Tinubu has been fair to the region, the broad majority of free wheeling political agents from the region have disowned the man as a political traitor. Tinubu’s northern traducers point to an avalanche of grievances to make their point: Insufficient political appointments. Paucity of federal government projects and a general alienation of the core northern political elite from the policy making machinery of the federal government.

    As for the broad south, the picture is even more unclear and worrisome. The strategic South South cannot understand what hit them. Their voice in the Tinubu government is a mixed bag of a power drunk high and a thuggish low. The highs are Akpabio and the Wikes of this world and their variants. The lows are of course  the Asari Dokubos and similar thugs. Until he passed on recently, the respected E.K Clark never stopped lamenting the relative emptiness and lopsidedness of the Tinubu government as it concerned the marginalization of both the South South and the South East respectively.

    Tinubu’s matter with the South East is a different matter entirely. For a man who as Lagos state governor ran an integral and inclusive government that embraced a number of Igbos, the present total eclipse of the South East from national political life is scandalous. The alienation and exclusion of the region from the commanding heights of this administration has been heightened by a certain undeclared political hostility powered by the emergence and prominence of Mr. Pater Obi as the nation’s lead opposition figure.

    From the presidential election of 2023 to the present, Tinubu’s body language and grassroot political footwork has driven a dangerous wedge between the Igbos of the South East and their Yoruba compatriots in the South West. At the present moment, the social media and the language of common discourse on the streets between both groups is dripping with hate and bigotry. No one knows where this will lead in the run up to the 2027 elections.

    In Tinubu’s own South West, there is a discordant tune. The rest of the country has no doubt that what Tinubu is presiding over is a virtual ‘Yoruba republic of Nigeria’. Over 98% of the strategic federal appointments and still counting are filled with persons with Yoruba sounding names. These range from the highest positions in defence, security, finance, internal affairs, oil, gas, internal affairs etc.

    Accomplished Yoruba sons and daughters who have shared a higher commitment to the noble values of inclusive nationhood are embarrassed by Tinubu’s xenophobic and exclusive pattern of appointments. And yet within the Yoruba world, there is  loud grumbling  that Tinubu’s definition of Yorubaland is limited to a choice of his friends from the Lagos circuit and the Ogun state axis from where he has appointed four cabinet ministers in flagrant violation of the federal character principle and the spirit and letter of the 1999 constitution.

    Yet the preponderance of Yoruba sounding names at the top of all strategic posts of government leaves a permanent stench of sickening ethnocitrism and decadent political myopia.

    Ordinarily, while expecting the President to have a more  enlightened sense of balance and inclusiveness, most Nigerians will feel better if indeed key political appointments at the federal level minimally represent the broad spectrum of the nation’s diversity. In the present situation, the feeling of state capture by Tinubu on behalf of the Yoruba faction of the national elite is inescapable.

    Matters would have been somewhat lighter to bear if indeed the appointees were giving the nation a sterling quality of governance. Instead, the Tinubu administration has run the  Nigerian state aground. Performance of key sectors is at its lowest ebb. National security is literally absent. Service delivery is nil while the welfare of the populace has been pulverized by an avalanche of taxes, thoughtless levies, tariffs and incoherent policy measures all of which have left a world of misery and increased poverty and frustration. Arguably, corruption and lack of transparency is at an all time high.

    Tinubu’s Yoruba world is not the universe of Obafemi Awolowo that combined the best technocrats and bureaucrats and even invited the traditional business acumen in the best Yoruba tradition to create a Western region which became a model region. Instead, Tinubu’s Yoruba federal republic is a hopeless land of corruption, incompetence, mediocrity and epic lack of capacity in all spheres.

    This is not the first federal administration to include a sizeable number of Yoruba elite and technocrats at the top. President Ibrahim Babangida had Olu Falae, Ojetunji Abayode, Bolaji Akinyemi, Olikoye Ransome Kuti, Babs Fafunwa, Michael Omolayole, Tai Solarin, Wole Soyinka, Maria Sokenu and many other brilliant and accomplished Yoruba sons and daughters at the helm of national life and the team delivered sterling quality service to the nation.

    I am personally troubled that Tinubu’s choice of Yoruba ‘best’ has devalued national service and now runs the risk of degrading the high standards that the world has come to associate with the Yorubas as a race. These people are associated with world class values, sense of equity, hospitality, accomplishments in science and  technology, the administration of justice, democracy and the rule of law as well as art and culture.

    For this great civilization to be reduced now into the current Abuja rabble of office seekers, small thieves and pick pockets at the helm of the present administration is a crime that Tinubu should apologize to the Yoruba nation and ancestry for. No gravity of power grab can excuse this hubris by any standards. Indeed, Tinubu owes Nigeria an open apology for inflicting the worst stock of the Yoruba on the nation.

    Tinubu’s current quandary as to his real national constituency may end in greater confusion unless he is ready to rediscover the source of his original sin and redress it. That original sin is that he has failed to rise to the lofty height of the nation, Instead, he has spent two years struggling to reduce a great nation to the limited size of his stature, vision and politics. To discover his mission, Mr. Tinubu has to rise to the magnitude of his national canvass.

  • Who is scared of Peter Obi? – By Chidi Amuta

    Who is scared of Peter Obi? – By Chidi Amuta

    There is a novelty in today’s political landscape in Nigeria. Real hard power is in the hands of President Bola Tinubu, an elected leader. On the other hand, soft populist power is in the hands of an unelected aspirant to the throne, Mr. Peter Obi.

    For good or for ill, President Bola Tinubu is ruling Nigeria. But Peter Obi is reigning all over the country. The name on nearly every lip on the Nigerian urban street or village bush path  is that of Mr. Peter Obi, a man who has come to personify the dreams and longings of most ordinary Nigerians for the ideal leadership model for a nation tormented for so long by an embarrassing lack of purposeful and sincere leadership.

    As it were, we have a ruler put in place by the mechanics of the democratic process and his antithesis erected by popular acclaim in the minds of the urban street and village people. The elected leader lives, rent -free, in the stifling opulence of the Presidential Villa in Abuja. The other man lives everywhere in the hearts and minds of the people who call this land their home.

    To a large extent, the whole drama of the 2027 presidential election will play out as a vicious referendum to choose between the two men as the future president of the country after 2027.

    Over two years ahead of 2027, the political landscape has donned the garb of active electioneering and festive campaigning. Wherever Mr. Peter Obi goes in the country, a certain celebratory air follows him. The crowds gather in nearly uncontrollable throngs. People scramble to catch a glimpse of the man dressed mostly in black.

    Even if he does nothing, the people are happy that the man visits their area and reaches out to touch their points of pain wherever they may be. At IDP camps, in villages newly razed by the fire of misguided anger, in poor homes newly bereaved by irate violence and in markets razed and looted by the anger of frustration. In prayer on Fridays or supplication on Sundays, Mr. Peter Obi joins us.

    He was only a presidential candidate back in 2023. Today, he is not anybody’s presidential candidate. In a nation fiercely divided between those empowered to rule and the majority condemned to sigh everyday, Peter Obi is merely aligned with the emergent undigested opposition alliance, uncertain where to finally pitch his political tent.

    But for now in every way, Peter Obi is the happening thing in our national politics. His presence makes the people happy but makes fellow politicians uneasy.

    Rightly or wrongly, Peter Obi has touched a vital node among ordinary Nigerians. He addresses their worries; promises to reduce their burdens and reconnects them with their national heritage. Though a comfortable and successful entrepreneur, Obi eschews the arrogance of the moneyed oligarchy. His tastes are modest just as he supports good causes all over the country with his hard earned resources.

    On the other hand, his fellow politicians and rich elite are uncomfortable with Obi. They fear that he will upturn their gravy train. Huge imported SUVs will go out of fashion to be replaced by ordinary people movers.

    Palaces and mansions paid for with public money will go out of vogue. Free endless nightly champagne orgies will not be a benefit for those who rule us. Obi has promised to reverse these privileges and reduce their excessive perquisites. He will end the entitlement state and put Nigerians back to work for the prosperity we desire.

    No more white elephants. No further phantom projects. No Alaskan highways running from Sokoto to Badagry to be completed centuries after we have all died. An end to endless borrowing to fund government as showmanship.

    The prosperity of the nation will no longer be measured in statistical publications and Power Point projections but in health clinics where people go to seek life and cure, schools where learning takes place and real lives of real people that inch away from poverty with each passing day.  Peter Obi’s vision of development and the future of Nigeria is frightening to the business and political elite.

    Something even more curious has now happened. By the logic of the present state of our political discourse, Peter Obi can as well be said to have hired President Tinubu as his 2027 campaign manager. Each step, each statement Tinubu makes reinforces an Obi argument. Every misfortune that befalls the nation under Tinubu’s watch is  weaponized by the Peter Obi squad.

    Every policy that punishes the people is debited from Tinubu’s account and its opposite credited to Obi’s looming paradise. Every bandit attack, every armed robbery, each kidnapping and abduction, every company that shuts down because power is too costly under Tinubu’s watch is yet another  reason why Tinubu is no good for the job he got and why Peter Obi should come and assume the office in 2027.

    In everyday real life, in the legacy media and overwhelmingly in the social media, we now seem to be living in the Age of Peter Obi. Fear has gripped the political space. Some incumbents can hardly hide their fear. That is why some governors are fretting and shaking. And politicians too are frightened that something in the horizon is a threat to their good life.

    Edo state’s semi illiterate governor cannot stand the Obi frenzy anymore. He has issued a decree that Obi can only visit the state after due ‘security’ clearance. An earlier decree had been issued by the Benue governor along the same lines. It does not matter if the man is coming to commiserate either the bereaved or donate money to the many displaced. Just don’t come! Keep your money and compassion!

    And these are duly elected governors who claim overwhelming INEC fabricated mandates. And yet they are afraid of a lone citizen with no INEC result sheet, no armed goons, no authorized state funded hooligans. Just an ordinary man not surrounded by government goons or masked hooligans; merely an ordinary man wearing cheap clothes and throw- away shoes armed with an alternative truth.

    Voices of sensible Nigerians have entered the fray. The basic freedom of a Nigerian to move around freely, to visit the people in their places of joy or pain is being abridged and threatened by elected or appointed officialdom . Femi Falana had threatened to press charges of human rights violations. Ohanaeze has warned against profiling Obi. The Obidients have threatened reprisals if any harm should come to Obi.

    Earlier in the week, it was Obi’s 64th birthday. A coalition of Kaduna state youth had organized a rally and street march to celebrate the man. But the Kaduna state police command will not hear of it. It proscribed a rally it knew nothing about, citing the usual fear of hijack by hoodlums and criminals.

    Obi’s name in the streets will cause insecurity in a state that has been a hotbed of reql insecurity for more thqn a decade! Ordinary innocent Nigerians just joining a birthday street procession will cause an insecurity that has become a permanent feature of our national reality. Ordinary innocent Nigerians intent on celebrating another citizen’s birthday were branded by the police before they left their homes!

    For the first time in our national politics, a fear factor has been activated in our political unconscious. Prefects and captains of the criminal state are frightened. I am not sure whether frightening the gangster state is good politics. But Obi is not a usual politician. He shoots straight. He is not in the business of doublespeak.

    The people love him for the truth he tells and stands for. But political truth is different from religious truth. Reality is more complex than Peter Obi’s utopian vision. The crises that have humbled and shredded our nation come from diverse sources and have taken time to entrench. They need time and rigor to address and surmount. Obi says he is ready to work so that Nigeria can be made to work for us all. That is the difference I see him bringing to the table. Populism is helped when it is armed with realism.

    Those afraid of the Obi factor like the governors in Edo and Benue are wide off the mark. Their utterances and actions are in fact treasonous. How can a democratically elected governor of the federal republic of Nigeria threaten to prevent a fellow Nigerian from moving freely into and out of any part of the country. The man is not a criminal.

    He is not coming to your state to kidnap, abduct, steal or incite. He may be coming to donate money or food items to the distressed or show solidarity with those afflicted by our present myriad of adversity. Persons who lack a basic understanding of basic freedoms and  liberties have no business  assuming the lofty office and fancy titles of governor let alone presiding over the life and death of entire states.

    But Nigerians are not detracted or distracted. Institutions and organizations are latching on to the Peter Obi brand magic and pull. A little known Dominion University in Ibadan has just appointed Obi its pro-Chancellor. Within 24 hours, its Instagram followers grew from 530 to over 4,000! If Obi attends your event, your public rating skyrockets and your political rating also shoots up.

    Peter is my friend and brother. Two years ago when I turned 70, my children organised a dinner at the Ikeja Marriott . I asked them to invite my friends including Peter to join us at dinner. I didn’t hear from him. But midway in the dinner, all hell was let loose. Peter emerged. The music changed. My private dinner became a political jamboree.

    But he enjoyed the food and the atmosphere of light hearted recollections and jokes. The crowd saw a messiah in making. Peter saw companionship and a chance to be among friends to honour me! Obis presence is now a requirement. He was vastly blamed for not being at Buhari’s burial. His presence at the Awujale’s condolences was hailed. Obis presence at nearly every event all over Nigeria is as important as his absence. Hardly any other political figure other than the President commands such significance in today’s Nigeria.

    While the major political parties may yet await their ritual conventions to decide their flag bearers, the public mind seems to have settled the matter. Incumbent president Tinubu is digging in, using incumbency power to expand his political reach and using patronage to widen electoral possibilities for his party. His ruling APC has rejigged its structure. It has chosen a party man from Plateau with a Vietnamese sounding name as replacement Chairman after chasing away the dollar loving Ganduje who has been appointed to collect tolls at all airports.

    On its part, the new ADC coalition is gearing up as an opposition fountain head. It is on a nationwide shopping spree for credible and politically influential members who are sufficiently hungry to frighten off the sitting APC people. It is a scramble for the keys of the rent free presidential accommodation at Aso Rock as well as the combination for the vault of the Central Bank and the money safes of the NNPCL.

    The stakes to snatch apex power from a Nigerian incumbent are as high as the pile of cash in either the CBN or the NNPCL. They are even more grave and dangerous. But democratic change demands that those who seek to topple the pinnacle of power cannot afford to be afraid of even the most deadly of Macchiavelli’s rough tools and tactics.   Those same very tools are available in the open market for all power seekers.

    Hidden beneath the national excitement about the prospect of an Obi presidency is that Obi has touched Nigeria in  sensitive places. Obi is an Igbo man. There is a contradiction here. Peter Obi has come to  Nigeria seeking an opportunity to rule the nation differently not because he is Igbo.

    Many Nigerians see him for what he is; a sincere advocate of good governance.  But many insist on seeing him as an Igbo politician. Peter is many things rolled into one. He is an exemplary Nigerian. He is a politician. He is a business man. He is of Igbo extraction. Understanding him requires a mixture of these understandings.

    There is none of these attributes that should make Peter any less qualified to seek Nigeria’s presidency. And there is nothing in the Nigerian air, land or sea that should exclude Mr. Obi or anyone else who honestly seeks to posit an alterantive to Mr. Tinubu’s rule. Democracy permits that imperative.

    The imperative that has created the Peter Obi populist movement is available to any other member of the budding opposition.  But in order for another voice of opposition to arise and gain competing dominance with the incumbent to the extent of threatening it as widely as the Peter Obi movement, it must find its own original voice and find the consistency of messaging that has produced Mr. Obi.

    Unlike in 2023, Peter has found his solid ground. He should accord to fellow Nigerian citizens their due respect.  But he must stand up never to be intimidated by anyone or group. His Igbo identity should be only an added benefit. Nigeria owes the Igbos arrears of justice.

    That added advantage should embolden his quest but he must come to Nigeria with courage and boldness, not a beggarly meekness. He must have at the back of his mind the wisdom that a lion never gives birth to a coward.

  • Coalition of the frightened – By Chidi Amuta

    Nigeria’s 2027 presidential election will be a nasty duel between two chaotic coalitions of politicians. Both coalitions are curiously fueled by fear. For the APC ruling coalition, it is the fear of being challenged and possibly thrown out of power.

    It is that fear and its insecurity that fueled the drift of the APC towards degenerating into a virtual one party oligarchy. In the panic and anxiety, the APC was busy swallowing up politicians and frightened parties into a virtual single party. That was before the birth of the ADC coalition.

    As a counterweight, we have just witnessed the birth of the ADC, a yet incoherent coalition of equally frightened politicians. They are dedicated to sacking Bola Tinubu from his lucrative job and rent free Abuja accommodation.

    The fear on the side of the ruling APC is the fear of losing incumbency power with all that traffic of money money and influence. On their part, politicians in the opposition ADC coalition are mostly in mortal fear of a future lifetime in the political wilderness. It is the fear of lifelong political irrelevance, of imminent poverty of means and name recognition.

    United by fear and desperate for power, both camps are poised to wage a nasty political war with interesting dimensions in 2027. Already, there is nervous panic within the APC and the government. Aso Rock minions are screaming aloud even if the wolf is merely still a shadow.

    Even before they get to know what the ADC is all about, incumbent choristers are predictably swearing by Mr. Tinubu’s survival powers. On their part, the gathering opposition politicians have served Mr. Tinubu quit notice.

    There is however a very consequential difference between both camps and the fears that currently rule them. The APC coalition has a defined leadership. It is all about Mr. Tinubu and the survival of his presidency onto a second term.

    On this, there is no guess work. The APC bloc is in power and office. APC devotees know and can swear by Mr. Tinubu. They know Mr. Tinubu  well, warts and all. They know their man, his political strengths and weaknesses. They know his limitations as a leader, his controversial resume, his shifting classmates, his bad English and atrocious elocution.

    The APC clan know the line up of their leadership- the Akpabios, Wikes, Gandudjes, the Umahis and Matawalles of this world. There is no guesswork as to where the money for the 2027 war chest is going to come from. Fighting an incumbent government means fighting the entire machinery of state, the security apparatus, the business support muscle of the state and its logistical prowess.

    On the contrary, the ADC coalition is a zone of infinite uncertainty. No one knows its precise leadership. If you ask me, it is a ship with multiple captains. All the arrow heads of the coalition are all “presidents” in waiting.

    If you lock all of them up in one room with a mandate to emerge a day later with a leader who shall wear the mantle of ‘presdient’ come the 2027 election, you will be shocked when the door reopens. There will be many ‘presidents’ all dressed up to run: Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar, Rotimi Amaechi, Nasir El-Rufai, Kayode Fayemi etc.

    In effect, beneath the fanfare of the announcement of a coalition, very little is settled about the leadership, structure or strategies of the new coalition. It is still a nebulous promise dressed in hope. But hope is not an agenda nor a programme.

    Perhaps it is still early in the day but the public needs to get a clearer idea of who is going to lead this pack in order to hedge sensible bets. The initial impression of the coalition as a conclave of equals leaves room for a struggle for leadership which could  destabilize the coalition.

    Inbuilt in the potential leadership tussle are certain  constants of Nigeria’s political reality. The north-south balance of power, the Christian-Muslim dance, the generational question and the reality of an emerging youth majority and urban population question.

    If indeed the ADC coalition overcomes its inherent leadership contradictions, it may have to resort to the mechanisms of a party primary in order to sort itself out on the matter of power sharing. Once a party convention resolves the leadership power sharing questions, the coalition should pretty much be ready to face the APC.

    Prior to now, the Tinubu political machinery was at an advanced stage to dominate the entire political space by 2027. A gale of defections and decampments from everywhere into the ruling APC raised fears of the onset of a curious one -party state. Those who were not migrating to the APC were left in the other besieged parties, waiting either to be annexed by the all mighty APC or cast away in a looming political wilderness.

    The few significant parties outside the APC orbit were well within easy reach of the devious squad of the ruling party and its many recruitment agents. Mr. Tinubu’s political Warrant Chief, Mr. Wike , assigned himself the job of destabilizing the PDP permanently. Inside the besieged APC, he recruited his own conclave of compliant governors- the Group of 5 – who had all been promised ambassadorial jobs by the Tinubu government.

    The rest of the herd of Nigerian politicians outside the ambit of the APC were scattered and groping. The idea of a political coalition was always alive for those who know the Nigerian political landscape. It was a matter of when. The broad aim was clear: chase away Mr. Tinubu from a job he grabbed and can hardly do.

    Yet, chasing Tinubu out of the Villa may not be so easy. Nor is it the most difficult task before the ADC coalition. Tinubu is not a political soft cookey. He has vast experience. He is either equipped with vast troves of cash or knows too many people who can drown the Atlantic in cash at short notice. He has a very deep and stubbornly predictable  home base.

    The Yorubas are many and politically sophisticated. They do not need to be lectured on their collective self interest or their interest in the Nigerian enterprise. That home base can be marshaled into political solidarity when threatened in the larger Nigerian landscape. It may not be enough to guarantee anyone an automatic residency in the villa. But it guarantees Tinubu some political asset base to fall back on.

    Tinubu is backed by a massive political party which Buhari built on the tottering edifice and ruins of the dying PDP. Tinubu’s APC inherited an unwritten political alliance with the street north followership of the xenophobic Buhari and his army of imported armed zealots and jihadist fundamentalists. Thus armed, Tinubu will not be an easy pushover.

    The gathering ADC opposition is also a vast political war machine but one that is still mostly a potential power base. Its power lies in the demographics of injured masses. Over ten years of APC rule has severely injured the vast majority of ordinary Nigerians across board.

    Among the rural and urban majority hunger and hardship are raging like wild fire. Nearly all the indices of poverty are in free play among Nigerians.  A party and leadership that had inflicted such hardship on most people deserves the penalty of rejection at the ballot. That is the hope of the ADC coalition.

    The APC government has a trove of claims to justify wasting the last two years. It has claimed all manner of bogus achievements under the banner of something called “renewed hope agenda”. It boasts an avalanche of Power Point  presentations ranging from phantom GDP projections, hundreds of millions of dollars borrowed, cash payouts to students, traders, etc. Taxes, levies and charges abound. Morgues and undertakers are doing big business.

    Over and above the appeal to a populist crowd, the emergence of the ADC  quickly highlights an urgent need in the Nigerian political party system. The emergence of the ADC is a necessary progression towards an ideal two party architecture.

    Whatever the APC stands for, Nigerians expect the opposition ADC to counter it at the level of ideas, policies and socio political vision. For whatever it worth, the emergence of an opposition coalition is a positive development for the development of the Nigerian political party system. The great majority of viable and credible democracies around the world have evolved into two party systems.

    By its acronym and scant policy statements, the APC is a presumptive ‘progressive’ party. It opposes a non -existent conservative formation. But the truth of course is that the APC is both a progressive , centrist and Conservative Party all rolled into one. Most of its leaders and members are starkly ignorant and illiterate of where they stand on the spectrum of political ideals. It does not matter what the APC stands for or does not stand for. Whether it likes it or not, the ADC has to stand for something in direct  opposition to the ruling party.

    Therefore, against the widespread hunger of today, the ADC must stand for food for all; in place of the massive un- employment, it must posit opportunities to put Nigeria back to work; in place of widespread insecurity, the new coalition must posit a template for a more secure Nigeria. Tax relief for the poor must replace draconian taxes, levies, tariffs and wicked charges on fuel, energy, medicines, books and transportation.

    In sum then, the ADC must articulate a bottom up social democratic platform. This must be in the form of an actionable manifesto in the hands of every literate Nigerian. Above that, the new party must communicate and drive for an elite consensus on this alternative social democratic template. In effect then, the mandate sought by the new coalition must be based on a practical commitment to a fairer Nigeria.

  • Rivers: Anatomy of a crooked truce – By Chidi Amuta

    Rivers: Anatomy of a crooked truce – By Chidi Amuta

    The public has been treated to some settlement of the political crisis that has engulfed Rivers state since after 2023. President Tinubu and his Rivers political ‘Warrant Chief’, FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, have been crowing to the hearing of all that they have struck a deal on the palaver. The sketchy details indicate that Tinubu will shortly call off the state of emergency and re-install Fubara in the Port Harcourt Government House.

    Reportedly, Mr. Fubara has agreed that he will be a single term ‘compliant’ governor, ceding place to whoever Wike and Tinubu decide will fly the APC flag in 2027. Fubara would resume a subservient relationship with King Wike and allow him significant inroads into the affairs of the state especially the money traffic. There are other unprintable details of the agreement that are not fit for the consumption of a decent public. In all likelihood, some guarded truce is to come into effect in the troubled state and all factions are to sheathe their swords till the fire next time.

    On the surface, the peace deal is good for national security in that sensitive corner of the nation. It is welcome news for the people of Rivers state who have been virtually without a functional government since after the 2023 elections. It is also welcome relief for Mr. Fubara who has been literally boxed into an impossible corner for most of his troubled tenure as governor.  He was hardly allowed to unpack his suit case before being called out to fight for his political life. The truce deal also appears good for president Tinubu whose credentials as a leader have been called to question on the basis of his handling of the frequent troubles in Rivers state.

    Outside these generous concessions, everything about the new Rivers peace deal is spurious, suspicious and tenuous. In response to the impending euphoria over this political cease fire, I want to enter a wide ranging dissention.

    The Tinubu and Wike truce deal is merely an understanding. At best, it is likely to usher in a short spell of quiet to allow preparations for 2027 to gather steam and gain ground. As a mere cessation of hostilities, it will merely drive the hostile forces underground to a zone where they can hardly be controlled. The reasons are abundant. The lines of political disputation in Rivers State are not synonymous with just Wike versus Fubara.

    It is more complex than that. It is Wike and associates versus Fubara and tribesmen. Tinubu is not in a vantage position to broker peace in the state . His party, the APC, has only a tenuous foothold in the state. The dominant faction of the APC in the state remains the Amaechi wing  which Wike used the security forces to scatter and destabilize. That faction is now likely to join the new ADC coalition and leave the APC an empty chamber. The truce will give them room to regroup and regain momentum but under a new political umbrella.

    Even within the PDP which Wike has shredded nationally, the party’s hold on the state is predicated on Fubara’s continued relevance in the apex power tussle. If Mr. Fubara is now barred from seeking a second term in office, he will have no incentive to decamp to the APC or recruit followers for the party. If he has political creativity, he should initatie another deal that makes his joining the APC contingent on the removal of the ban on a possible second term for him.

    Mr. Fubara is not likely to stick out his already strained neck except it will make him stronger and render Wike weaker and redundant. By the eve of 2027, Wike will have to decide on his precise partisan affiliation. He is either in APC to bolster Tinubu’s re-election bid or back in the PDP which he will have pulverized by then. It is doubtful if indeed the PDP will remain in serious electoral  contention In 2027.

    In the interim, the coalition of opposition forces now in the making may rally round the banner of the Peter Obi to complete the routing of Tinubu and the APC in Rivers State, a process that was well underway in 2023. The coalition has ready strong leadership in Amaechi and his followers. In Rivers State, the new coalition will be an anti-Wike and anti-Tinubu coalition.

    There are other powerful forces and factions with equally strong stakes in the politics of the state. The incumbency factor on which Wike and Tinubu are riding rough shod on Rivers state is nearly over. In the next one year, Tinubu will be gasping for breadth  to secure a second term in office in the face of a vicious and powerful opposition.

    Even if security breaks down in the state once again, Tinubu will have lost the power to declare yet another State of Emergency in that state. Many other areas of pressing national security  like the Benue-Plateau-Nasarawa axis will threaten us all with fresh urgency. A president with an uncertain political fate cannot guarantee any governorship candidate  tenure security let alone decide on who enters the ballot in a state that his party does not control.

    By the eve of 2027, Wike himself will have no significant foothold on power to decide on who rules Rivers State. For a politician with a feudal manorial inclination, he may need to seek alternative farmlands or just retreat to safeguard his huge treasure warehouses.  His ministerial tenure will be at its tail end, surrounded, as I am sure, by a deluge of complaints, scandals and looming investigations.

    On his part, Mr. Fubara will be ending his first term as a victim incumbent, a man more sinned against than sinning. He was harassed in his first term, disengaged briefly by hostile forces in a State of Emergency declared on a partisan footing and literally chased away from power by the duo of an imperial minister and an autocratic president. His adversaries will by then have little power over him. He is likely to look up and see the fading ghosts of Wike and Tinubu  and ask both ghosts: “Death, where is thy power?”

    The political foot soldiers that have so far powered the crisis in Rivers on all sides will be scattered in different directions as they seek new alliances and alignments. The beleaguered state legislators will literally have no mandate or any constituency as they scamper for new relevance in new partisan affiliations. There will be no governor to fight and a Wike will have nothing to offer them in return for endless and fruitless lawsuits.

    Even the judiciary, for a long time serially weaponized in the Rivers crisis, will be at a loss as to whom to back and on whose side to deliver those transactional judgments. In this confusing scenario, Rivers could degenerate into a judicial anarchy and a political jungle. Somehow, true democracy as the rule of the people could prevail as today’s war lords will recede into the twilight of political irrelevance.

    More importantly, the grassroot forces that determine the locus of power in Rivers will by the eve of 2027 be rehearsing for a go at the governorship. The critical divide between the upland and riverain zones will return in full force.. The Ijaws will return in full force to stage a forceful stake for their son, Fubara, who has been variously wronged and victimized. The least they will be asking for this time around is that their son be allowed to complete a second term like other citizens. They will have the power of the constitution backed by law to back their demand.

    The demand for this equity will be staged forcefully through street marches by half naked women, militants armed with all sorts of dangerous implements and ill -mannered propaganda converted into war songs and dangerous slogans.

    National security will meet and mix with political upheaval. Law and order will take a back seat  as peace and public  order take precedence as priorities of state responsibility. The federal government at this point dares not mention the word ‘emergency’ as the vocal majority In Rivers will see any federal intervention as an invasion of the powerful minority of Ijaw nationalists. Advocates of democracy, justice and fairness will scream very loud and drown other noises.

    The Ijaws are by no means the only significant majority ethnicity in contention in the Rivers State governorship jostle. Outside Wike’s Ikwerre upland base which has had its fair share, the Ogonis are the next most consequential political demographics in the state. Their stake in the governorship has been long standing. Add this to their international environmental presence dating back to the Ken Saro Wiwa era. The Ogonis are on UN record as the most prominent victims of Nigeria’s abusive and mostly unregulated oil and gas industry. Key Ogoni political actors like Magnus Abe have in the recent past expressed strong interest in the governorship of Rivers state. The space that the new cease fire deal will create is likely to create space for this group to  re-energize their effort.

    In the midst of the 2027 power stampede, the concern of the world and indeed the nation will not be on what Tinubu and Wike want  or think. The international community especially will focus on the elections and how far violence and intimidation are deployed by untidy political actors. It is democracy itself that will be on trial, not a deal of political convenience entered into by an endangered president and his besieged party and political contractor.

    Yes indeed, Mr. Wike is likely to deploy his armada of cash and  clubs to ensure that Fubara is finally buried politically. But Fubara will not be alone in the fight for survival. He will be joined by other powerful partisans who cannot possibly go to bed with Wike. And Wike will be in the battlefield of 2027 only to the extent of seeing how big a slice of a possible Tinubu victory he can  bring into the basket. If he gets something big, he could return into federal reckoning. If not, his road to political oblivion will be paved with the debris of his untidy past glory.

    The political drama that has engulfed Rivers State in the last couple of months, we come face to face with a broad spectrum of  political features that should be of interest to future observers of Nigerian politics. In President Tinubu’s teleguiding of Rivers politics through the use if a sole agent, Mr. Wike, we witness a modern equivalent of the colonial Warrant Chief in national politics.

    In the colonial era, the Warrant Chief was a paid agent of the colonial authority who wielded authority and controlled power at the local level on behalf of the colonial power. His authority came from the colonial power and he owed his influence to this external source. That has been the role of Mr. Wike on behalf of Tinubu and the ruling APC. Wike donned the red cap of his political master and has recklessly flaunted his illegitimate authority with reckless abandon.

    At the level of Wike himself, he has demonstrated the power of the political God father as a factor in Nigeria’s democracy. This successive breed of politicians  insist on choosing their successors mostly at the level of state governors. Political God Fathers insist on controlling the destiny of their surrogates especially the state finances and appointments. Wike was not just content with installing Fubara in the government house. He wanted to dictate appointments, budgets, spending limits in addition to political control of grassroots support and downstream followership.

    As a political God Father, Mr. Wike was out of power as governor but wanted to retain control of the affairs of Rivers state while wielding ministerial power as FCT Minister. Things fell apart because of the incompatibility of these divergent levels of political power and authority dynamics. An overbearing minister also wanted to be the emperor of a state he previously governed with scant accountability and maximum recklessness.

    On his part, Mr.Fubara was victim of a failure to understand the nature of power. He thought he could be in office, enjoy the perks of power, relish in the fanfare of state power while someone else called the shots and held the purse strings. How infantile? He failed to realize that power without authority is a mere caricature. Office without power and political control is a joke.

    In an attempt to reconcile these divergent antagonisms of power in Rivers, all major contenders are riding an impossible tiger of political power and are all likely to get badly bruised. Tinubu is unlikely to determine the political outcome in Rivers in 2027.

    Mr. Wike and the President are most likely to fall out and apart on the swords of their huge stakes in both Rivers State and national politics. Wike’s use value as a political contractor and Warrant Chief is fast expiring  and may be completely obliterated or neutralized by 2027. The recourse to cash and brute force to stay relevant may be countered by new forces that just want a change from the old order.

    As for Mr. Fubara, his future as a political factor in Rivers will depend on how deftly he moves to convert political name recognition into real power and regional influence in the Niger Delta. It is ultimately a matter of courage on his part.

  • Benue: Human sacrifice and the nameless war – By Chidi Amuta

    Benue: Human sacrifice and the nameless war – By Chidi Amuta

    The Nigerian governance road show rolled into Benue state earlier this week. The president and a motley collection of officialdom rolled into the state to see why so many innocent people are dying unnecessary deaths in the hands of nameless killers.

    As it turns out, the president and his significant lieutenants had to be pressured to go and see the carnage in Benue for themselves. By the time they woke up to go there, over 200 innocent Nigerians had been butchered in repeated waves of mass slaughter.

    The political opposition had wondered aloud as to why Mr. Tinubu would go everywhere else other than the forests of Benue where the killing of innocent people in their homes had degenerated into a gruesome sport that was claiming hundreds of innocent lives.

    People would go to bed and never wake up alive. Those who ventured to their farms hardly came back alive. Some who escorted their livestock to the grazing fields lost both livestock and their own lives. Vengeful reprisals had become a daily feature of life. Herders of cattle would be lucky to survive a trek through the trail of bloody forests.

    As is typical in a presidential system, Tinubu’s visit was long overdue. An unstated rule of the system is that the president goes to meet the people where they are in pain. Empathy breeds bonding which yields political capital. The Tinubu visit to Benue was dual in purpose. It would get the president to the root of the executive pitfalls that led to the degeneration of order in Benue.

    On the more substantive note, it would re-establish the sovereign authority of the Nigerian state by stamping a footprint of force and coercion on those still defying the authority of the federal state. As it were, something bigger and stronger than mere local and state governments was coming to town. Tinubu was coming to Benue with the full weight of Nigeria’s compassionate and coercive heft.

    What the public imagination expected was the president as a leader of war coming out to douse the bloodshed with a bigger show of force than the miscreants and killers were used to. We expected to see the commander- in- chief in combat gear, arriving the theatres of trouble aboard a helicopter, accompanied by helicopter gunships and surrounded by his force commanders and field operatives.

    Tinubu was not going to the killing fields of Benue as a ‘nice man’ or community friend. He was going there to stamp the authority of a commander in chief on an errant,  part of his sovereign territory to hand down a note of warning that unmistakably says to trouble makers” NEVER AGAIN!

    While the preparations for the presidential trip were on, the public began to notice some unusual trends. The Benue state government began to take out full page welcome advertisements indicating that Mr. Tinubu was going to Benue on a meet and greet state visit. The usual charade and comedy of Nigerian statehood crawled out.

    Communities, dance troupes, mobilization of youth groups and other familiar Nigerian fawning were being readied to give the president a befitting welcome. Confusion. Were we going to see an end to the festival of human sacrifice and endless blood letting or yet another comedy of state festivity and governance as a joke?

    To worsen the matter, the size of the presidential entourage kept ballooning.  From  all the reports, at first, it was going to be the president and a few aides on a whistle stop field trip. Then the Inspector Genenal of Police was relocating as an advance party to stabilize the situation, preparatory to the presidential arrival. await the arrival of the president. The Chief of Army Staff was doing the same thing, Then a flotilla of ministers, Senators, the NSA and plane loads of sundry minions were all in the sagging boat.

    Well, the trip has come and gone with its busload of comedy and tragedy, The president reportedly could not get to the communities worst affected. The road to the place is impassable! Speeches were read by community leaders and government officials. The President was at his predictable platitudinous best. He called on the people of Benue to cooperate with their Governor to bring peace to the state. He also urged the people to live in peace with one another. Business as usual. Dances and claps!

    The media was all over the place waiting for the usual ‘handout’ press statements. Both army and police advance parties did not showcase any bandits arrested. Worst of all, the president did not come close to the victims let alone empathizing on camera with those worst affected. The rest of the nation at home was lost for words. What was this all about? That is the giant question mark on most lips. Tinubu carries the dance steps of his repid presidency wherever he goes.

    Prior to this visit, repeated appeals to security agencies and those in authority had fallen on deaf ears. Politicians traded in the festival  of death as they recruited and owned their own gangs of killers. Ethnic bigots and religious zealots took turns in aligning with partisans and gangs of killers. A state now ruled by an elected  clergyman had become neither Christian nor Muslim as armed marauders openly wielded weapons of war  in search of easy victims.

    Everyone became a victim. Fear ruled the land.  The open question was now whether the mascot of democracy and political competition had become a blood thirsty ogre. Did democracy in Benue now need human sacrifice to thrive? Had it degenerated into a blood thirsty dragon perennially on the prowl for victims. Tinubu hurried off to Kaduna state without finding answers to these troubling questions.

    As it were, the institutions of state dedicated to maintaining peace and orderly mutual existence had turned out helpless and incapable of maintaining an order and peace that had never been there in the first place. The police was useless as it was quickly outgunned by rival bands of bandits and roving gun men. And the military? Its involvement in civil security operations had become an open question mark all over the country. In Benue and parts of Plateau and Nasarawa states, the military had become an over dressed joke and money guzzling machine of bloody but undeclared wars.

    The quickest and easiest explanation was to see a herdsmen versus settler farmers confrontation as the root of the crisis. That lazy explanation has lingered over the years. But the herders are not new to the Benue communities that were now being attacked by armed militants. Nor did the Benue local communities start being settled farmers just yesterday. Both modes of economic existence had historically co- existed and earned their keeps mutually over the many years past. Though friction between both groups had occasionally occurred. It never degenerated into this free for all bloody festival  of frequent killings.

    The Benue tragedy and the attitude of officialdom to it reveals so much about the lingering insecurity that has held Nigeria hostage for over a decade. First, the fight against insecurity has become part of the ritual of state. No speech is complete if it does not accord insecurity a pride of place. Politicians are not complete in their appearance if they do not weaponize insecurity as a cardinal political crisis and a reason for them to be re-elected.

    People need to be killed to remind us that there is insecurity in the land and to justify a new round of political shenanigans. Our democracy now needs constant blood letting to appease the gods of re-election. Democracy in Nigeria now needs human sacrifice to thrive. Those who two years ago trooped out to vote for these politicians provide the canon fodder for the feasts of human sacrifice.

    As if that is not enough, the mercantile part of the insecurity is everywhere on display. These industrial killings now necessitate additional defense and security spending, new weapons, new air platforms, flashy new aircraft and drones of untested capacity manned by ignorant and illiterate soildiers – all  to contain an insurgency of untrained civilians and bandits who are mostly hungry.

    Those who listened carefully during the Tinubu stopover may have heard something that I think was disturbing. Many political voices insisted that the new scale of killings in Benue small of ethnic cleansing and genocide. That language is clearly frightening in Nigeria. It is even worse so in a location that is the binding belt of our fractious federation.

    It raises questions about our recent political past. Who armed the herders? What is the source of the sophisticated weapons of war with which these Janjaweed -style killings are being executed? When did the herders acquire this lethal capacity? Which politician brought in and armed these herder gunmen and for what end? Since when?

    Most importantly, what is the nationality of these gunmen and killers? If indeed they are from outside Nigeria, at what point do we identify their nation of origin? If the killers are non-Nigerians, when will our security authorities switch our insecurity from internal insurgency to an international confrontation between Nigeria and the nation(s) that are the source of these killers?

    When are we going to call this war its rightful name in order to wage and end it?

  • Wrestling with democracy – By Chidi Amuta

    Wrestling with democracy – By Chidi Amuta

    Of all the nations that profess an embrace of democracy, Nigeria has had a field day of celebrations in recent times. Last year, we celebrated 25 years (a quarter of a century) of the return of democracy from over four decades of military autocracy. In 19999, Nigerian history and providence chased off a stubborn military  hegemony and replaced it with a hurried and untidy transfer of power to elected civilian authority.

    More recently, we have just been celebrating two years of the Tinubu presidency, the 5th  such dispensation in the post military period. And last Thursday, once again in an annual  ritual that has been in place since after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election, we observed yet anther episode of the annual June 12.

    Democracy Day. Prior to now, Democracy Day used to be  on May 29th, the day Nigeria returned to democracy after the decades of military rule. Political pressure and expediency has since consecrated June 12 into a national Democracy Day over and above May 29th.

    In all this jumble of anniversaries, there is a sense in which Nigeria may have become one nation in which democracy both as a concept and national event has become almost a deity with an annual worship calendar. Different national leaderships now make it a duty to celebrate and observe the various democracy anniversaries if only to remind themselves of their fundamental commitment to developing and consolidating a democratic culture.

    For a nation that has spent the better part of its post- colonial history under non-democratic rule, these fetish observances can be justified. From 1966 to 1999, the greater part of Nigerian history was spent under the jackboot of military leaders. Of the 15 leaders that the nation has been under since after1960, 7 have been pure military officers thrown up by coups in one form or the other. In terms of duration of reign, of the 65 years since after independence in 1960, only roughly 46 years have been spent under sporadic civilian democracies, interrupted, except in the last 25 years, by military interventions.

    Of course, no one can celebrate our long military interregnums. Yet no one in their right mind can dismiss the years of military rule as completely wasted. On the contrary, it can be argued that the greatest and boldest acts of nation building in Nigeria took place under the military. The founding fathers hardly began the task of national building. But their single most important achievement was the procurement of flag and anthem independence in 1960. The edifice they inherited from the colonialists was an unfinished business. It was an arrangement, not a viable nation state.

    They left us a tripartite ethnic behemoth. Hegemonic peer group conflicts led to ethnic tension and eventually a sad and wasteful civil war. The military intervention that followed, though sad in itself, led to many nation building initiatives. There was the creation of states from 12 to the present 36 state structure of the federation. The military dismantled the hegemonic four region structure  and reduced the lure of regional hegemony and antagonism.

    The military also began the process of integration of the nation by de-sectionalizing the security forces. A unified national police and military command structure was created for the nation. Under the new arrangement, personnel from all over the country were deployed to serve all over the country irrespective of their states of origin, thus ending the threat of regional hegemony and ethnicization of national secueity institutions which was at the root of the crisis and civil war.

    More strategically important, it was the military under the leadership of General Yakubu Gowon that pioneered the establishment of key national unity institutions. The National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) Scheme, now in its 52nd year was established to forge in young Nigerian graduates a new sense of national unity.

    There was also the establishment of Unity Secondary schools to offer secondary school education to Nigerian children in their formative years while they embraced a system of national merit moderated by a sense of balance and unity. Children were encouraged to attend these unity schools all over the nation to embrace national unity while growing up under a regime of meritocracy that also allowed for a certain equality of opportunities.

    Similar nation building initiatives like the Civil Service Reforms, the Federal Character Principle,  quota system and balancing of opportunities in the public services were also initiated. While the policies to pursue a balanced federation were pursued, there was an allowance for the states as federating units to aspire to their individual attainments to excel and develop along their own lines and at their own pace.

    However, the mechanisms of nation building adopted by the military were not always well thought out. In an attempt to balance the federation and unify aspirations, the military tended to see the nation more as a barrack than as an organic  polity with inherent human diversity and internal differences.

    The military tended to apply a uniform template  which did not provide for the difference of culture and rate of development of different parts of the country. This has of course led to a certain uneven development among different zones of the country. But it does not invalidate the principle of pursuing  the challenge of nation building.

    The years of democratic intervention in our national history have had their inherent values as well. They have posited a political counter culture to the years of military autocracy. By its nature, military rule is inherently restrictive in terms of citizen freedoms and rights.

    The military did not allow the freedoms of expression, association and belief to flourish. A nation, no matter how well structured, is first and foremost an organic  domain of freedom. When people are not accorded their full rights in a free society, development and national structure mean little. The military restricted freedom in the national space to their unified vision and garrison perspective.

    With hindsight, we cannot forget too soon our experience under the military jackboot. The military beat us up if they felt we were not observing garrison discipline. They occasionally  flogged us with horsewhips for minor traffic offences.

    They curtailed the freedom of the press, did not allow the flowering of civil society organizations nor allow the flowering of ideas that were antithetical or opposed to the dominance of their authoritarian ethos. You dared not disagree with government. Dissent was treasonous. A society that restricted ideas was bound to die instalmentally.  Under the military, our nation was dying gradually as a union of ideals. That was the tragedy that befell Nigeria in the decades of military rule.

    However, the spells of democratic civil rule that intervened allowed our people to exhale once again. Due process replaced impunity. Debate replaced ultimatums and commands. Institutions like National and State Assemblies provided avenues for policies and programmes of government to be subjected to interrogation and cross examination. Government lost its magisterial absolutism as elected officials who were accountable to the people replaced arbitrarily selected officialdom.

    As against the prevalence of decrees and other forms of arbitrary rule, the moments of democratic rule have allowed for the return of formal legislation at national, state and local government levels as the sources of legislations to guide the making of laws for  governance.

    Democracy has brought with it the familiar challenges of matching freedom with development. Nigeria’s adoption of the US-type presidential system poses the challenge matching the form of democracy with the substance of social and economic development. Under the existing democratic system, there are 774 local governments, 36 state governments plus one FCT government. And of course, there is an almighty federal government with 40-50 odd ministries and over 500 extra ministerial departments strewn all over the country.

    Questions have been raised about the appropriateness  of Nigeria’s present form of democracy as an instrument for development of the country. The central problem is how the nation’s economy can sustain the elaborate machinery of the democratic institutions and also generate enough  extra to fund social and economic developments for a nation as large and complex as Nigeria.

    In spite of nearly a quarter of a century of formal democracy, therefore, Nigeria is yet to imbibe the cultural attributes of a democratic society.  Our politicians still act with impunity on policy issues. The tendency to take arbitrary actions over and above legislated ones remains a constant temptation of the political leadership. The impulse to clamp down on free speech remains a constant temptation with key politicians as they occasionally order the  arrest and detention of journalists and opposition figures sometimes for weeks without trial.

    In recent times, a few state governors have degenerated into imperial autocrats. They have harassed and intimidated their opponents, used intemperate language in their public utterances and tended to blackmail their appointees into toeing whatever partisan routes they have opted for.

    A more interesting spillover of military authoritarian culture on current Nigerian democracy is the deliberate enlistment of military security operatives by politicians during electoral contests. This tendency is a carryover of the notion that military fiat can be summoned to  influence the outcome of electoral contests.

    It is not only politicians and political leaders who have continued to suffer from this nostalgia for the military days. Even among the civil populace, elements of garrison mentality still linger. People occasionally invite soldiers to settle inter personal squabbles.  Soldiers still beat up civilians like power company workers, tax collectors and rival traders in market related squabbles. In disagreements, policemen and soldiers have engaged in open fisticuffs with each other in defiance of law enforcement agencies. In all of these incidents, the basic democratic belief in the rule of law and due process  is often jettisoned in favour of  jungle justice.

    In the electoral process itself, Nigerian democracy has continued to wrestle with the basic requirements of the democratic process. Every democracy depends for its credibility on the reliability of the electoral process itself.  Ballots must be cast unimpeded. They must be counted and their count must be the sole determinants of the final outcome of the electoral contest. Once this process is compromised or tampered with in any manner, then the democracy in question is less than  free and fair. No matter how elaborately a democracy celebrates itself,  ceremony cannot in and of itself confer legitimacy and credibility on the system.

    It is commendable that Nigeria has scaled these significant milestones in its democratic journey. It is also opportune that the milestones of democratic transition are celebrated and marked. These ceremonies indicate an irreversible commitment to the sustenance of democracy as a permanent feature of the Nigerian political ecosystem.

    Democracy is by no means a destination. It is a process and often a turbulent journey. That journey must however indicate a trajectory of progress. The periodic observance of campaigns and electoral time tables is in itself a sign of progress and commitment to democracy as a destination.

    But successive governments that result from democratic processes must themselves renew their commitment by reinforcing the guardrails of the democratic endeavor not just as occasional showmanship but as an ingrained cultural value system. A leadership that results from a given democracy can only be as credible as the process that produced it. A credible democracy is therefore the bedrock of a respectable nation.