The Lynching of Nuhu Ribadu

Nuhu Ribadu’s defection from the All Progressive Congress to the ruling People’s Democratic Party has been greeted with savage personal attacks that have condemned him as a perfidious and opportunistic turncoat. By joining the PDP, the former anti-corruption czar is said to have betrayed his principles. Ribadu, it appears, is being held to a very rigorous standard of consistency – one that could only possibly be met by a political clairvoyant.

The absurdity and unfairness of the moral standard being applied to Ribadu become apparent when applied to the broader political landscape. Take Muhammadu Buhari who is widely lionized by his supporters as an incorruptible paragon. In 1998, he had told the BBC that he believed politics was “full of fraudulent acts.” “I cannot join people who will go and loot the treasury,” he insisted, “I have no plans to participate in politics” (Tell, March 16, 1998). In October 2000, Buhari stridently denied any interest in politics saying, “I have no desire to take part in partisan politics.” He was adamant that he would “not take part in partisan politics” despite being approached to do so (The Guardian, October 6, 2000). Within a few years, Buhari was seeking the grandest prize in Nigerian politics.

After his failed 2007 presidential bid, Buhari told the BBC, “I have been deceived by politicians, by the people who drafted me into politics. I have discovered that the people who drafted me into politics were not sincere after all; they only wanted to use me to get appointments or for their personal aggrandizement and not to serve the nation or the masses” (The News, September 24, 2007). Buhari was referring to, among other people, the All Nigeria People’s Party chairman Edwin Ume-Ezeoke and the then Kano State Governor Ibrahim Shekarau.

Should we not denounce Buhari for lacking discernment and for being serially deceived by corrupt politicians or for being unprincipled enough to team up with the same politicians he had vilified for being rogues? Is he not an inconsistent hypocrite for allying with Shekarau once again in the APC? No doubt, his supporters would prefer to see this as evidence of his forgiving spirit. No matter. After losing the 2011 polls, Buhari called time on his political career stating that there would be no more presidential bids. But yet again, he reneged on this promise. By the measure with which Ribadu has been judged, Buhari would have to be condemned as a congenital liar; a typical politician who cannot keep his word and is therefore no different from the much maligned Goodluck Jonathan who pledged to govern for only one term but has since reviewed his stance.

By the rigorous standards of political morality applied to Ribadu, it would be impossible for the APC itself (or indeed any of our political parties) to have come into existence. It would be unethical for veterans of the 1990 pro-democracy movement like Bola Tinubu and Kayode Fayemi to countenance making common cause with Tom Ikimi, who served as General Sani Abacha’s foreign minister, and Buhari who also served in that junta and persistently claims that Abacha was not the thieving despot that he undeniably was.

In late 2009, Ume-Ezeoke paid a solidarity visit to Shekarau, then governor of Kano State and lauded him for resolutely refusing to jump ship like other ANPP governors that had defected to the PDP – a strange remark since Ume-Ezeoke himself had championed his party’s alliance with the PDP in a so-called government of national unity two years earlier. Shekarau replied that Nigerians were in dire need of redemption from what he derisively called the “property development party” – a party which he said was suffering from a “cancerous ego and political jaundice” (The News, December 7, 2009).  Shekarau is now a PDP chieftain.

The APC chieftain, Nasir El-Rufai, who came to fame while serving in a PDP government, evinces little discomfort at being in the same party with Atiku Abubakar, the former vice-president whom he criticized for corruption in his memoirs. Abubakar’s trajectory in the last seven years has seen him migrate from the PDP to the Action Congress back to the PDP and now to the APC.

It is still unclear why PDP’s poaching of Jimi Agbaje or Ribadu provokes diatribes against these gentlemen while the APC’s recruitment of PDP stalwarts like Rabiu Kwankwaso, Rotimi Amaechi and Bukola Saraki is hailed as a victory for progressives. What exactly makes Ali Modu Sherriff or the catastrophically inept Murtala Nyako progressive? We may now await the defection to the APC of Aminu Tambuwal, a leader of one of the most avaricious legislatures in parliamentary history and his consequent baptism as a “progressive.”  It is worth noting that some of the elements now castigating Ribadu were involved in the ACN’s betrayal of his presidential candidacy in 2011 in favour enabling the PDP’s victory in the southwest.   

In October 2010, El-Rufai issued a scathing public statement asserting that Buhari “remained perpetually unelectable” and that his “insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus” are already well known. He cited the draconian record of Buhari’s military regime as proof of “the essence of his intolerance” and rubbished Buhari’s presidential aspirations saying that it was now “time for a new generation of leaders with new thinking and wholesome democratic attitudes to move our nation forward.” Buhari’s ill-tempered reaction to his suggestion that he abandon his presidential quest was “proof enough that a Buhari, the new Democrat, tolerant of views different from his own, is yet to evolve” but it would “take more than attacks on personalities to become electable. Having seen his version of discipline, Nigerians are not likely to cherish an encore.”(http://saharareporters.com/2010/10/04/el-rufai-buhari-should-stick-facts).  

El-Rufai’s acidic comments on Buhari’s electability would later be seized upon by Jonathan’s campaign team. In his memoirs, The Accidental Public Servant, published in 2013, El-Rufai (now a Buhari ally) lamented that his comments on the former head of state were still being brought up incessantly “as if I could not change my views based on new facts, information or emerging circumstances” (p.450). Herein lies the central lesson. Politicians change their views all the time based on “new facts, information or emerging circumstances.” Like Ribadu, Buhari, El-Rufai, Atiku and any political personage we care to name have at various times exercised the prerogative of changing their own minds.

It remains only for voters to decide whether or not these changes in perspective constitute such egregious reversals that they permanently place the politicians in question in terminal disrepute. In making this judgment, it is important that we do not hold politicians to a standard higher than that to which we are willing to subject ourselves. Nor should we confuse prideful inflexibility and our delusions of infallibility for a noble fidelity to principle. Being flexible enough to learn, adapt, and change one’s ways is, after all, also a principle, and a worthy one at that.

It would take people who have never changed their views and never will; people who are either incapable of learning or unwilling to do so, to insist on the exacting standards of consistency with which Ribadu is being bludgeoned. Inflexibility and infallibility are dangerous.

Of course, utterances matter and public figures should be called out on their perceived inconsistencies as a means of keeping them honest. Here, for example, is a scorcher from that erstwhile scourge of corrupt and inept power-brokers, Reuben Abati in The Guardian of October 2, 2005: “Even when a Nigerian leader is openly stupid, a Nigerian in search of his or her own share of the national cake, and who has been invited to come and eat, cannot summon the courage to tell him so. The unfortunate thing is that the people who manage to get to the corridors of power are ever so grateful that they dare not speak the truth.” As self-indicting, self-fulfilling prophecies go, this statement is probably unparalleled.          

Given the melodrama surrounding Ribadu’s defection, it is perhaps necessary to seek electoral reforms that would allow independent candidacies. Letting individuals run on their personal antecedents rather than on nebulous party platforms may give us more clarity in judging their worthiness for public office. It will also save us the histrionics that accompanies these defections. In the meantime, we should weigh the choices before us and vote for good governance regardless of what party label it comes under.

Political nomadism is to be expected in an environment where ideological distinctions are still ill-defined and where self-interest, patriotism, idealism and Faustian pragmatism must necessarily co-exist.  We must also grasp the distinction between political expediency and administrative acumen. The fact that Kwankwaso and Amaechi were once in the PDP does not detract from their administrative accomplishments. Similarly, in or out of the APC, Ribadu remains a superior alternative to Nyako.  

Our addiction to cartoonish heroes and villains warps our electoral choices. Democratic politics is not about canonizing saints. At worst, it is a calculus of greater and lesser evils. At best, it offers a choice between competence and incompetence. The important thing is to choose, on balance, the best man or woman for the job.

(All images sourced online) 

Change We Can't Believe In

In our complex, plural, often fractious society with various mutually-suspicious interest groups, you do not win the presidency by being (or appearing) visionary or radical. You do so by looking harmless, passive and unthreatening. You do not win the presidency by serving up a revolutionary manifesto or rigorously grappling with issues; you do so by affecting a genial cluelessness. You win by demonstrating an extraordinary capacity to regurgitate stale clichés and to utter the bleeding obvious with an air of intellectual profundity. This is the true genius of successful presidential aspirants and it is sadly reflective of where our politics has calcified at the moment.

Muhammadu Buhari looks too threatening to win the presidency. Behind the stern mien lurks a seething moral zealotry and a righteous indignation at what his country has become. During his term as Head of State that zealotry came to the fore when armed with repressive decrees, his regime declared a war on corruption, handed out hefty jail terms to corrupt politicians and attempted to frog march the country into the future. Buhari’s running mate is Tunde Bakare, a pastor, attorney and activist who earned his stripes as a preacher railing against the materialistic excesses of Nigeria’s Pentecostal elites and thundering against official corruption. Thus the Buhari-Bakare ticket is led by two puritans…and two authoritarians, for the Pentecostal movement is an authoritarian institution and its pastors tend to be totalitarian oracles.

Whether a ticket led by two men of authoritarian disposition can deepen democratic habits is a fair question. But Buhari is feared for other reasons. The fanatical support he enjoys from swooning and ecstatic mobs in the north scares many southerners who fear that the ex-general is a closet religious extremist. This allegation owes less to reality than to a smear campaign against the general mounted by President Obasanjo’s minions during the 2003 polls. Buhari has tried to counter this fear but clearly deems it beneath his stature to address such canards. The cruel irony is that in a bid to dispel his sectarian image, he has been forced to play “religious politics” by picking a pastor of questionable political clout as his running mate. Whether this will assuage fears remains to be seen.  More importantly, many elites fear that a President Buhari will resume his war on graft after a 26-year hiatus with renewed vigour. For all his grassroots support especially among the northern underclass and others who see him as a potential change agent, Buhari simply frightens too many people – people who could otherwise be valuable supporters.

Nuhu Ribadu suffers from basically the same limitations as Buhari. The former police officer made scores of powerful enemies during his term as anti-corruption czar when he hunted down several high profile fraudsters and thieving politicians. Ribadu is seen as embodying the promise of the independence generation (those born in the 1960s) and has attracted many young urban middle class professionals to his campaign. But Ribadu has lost the toga of incorruptibility to Buhari and is now running solely on youthful promise and potential. Even so, Ribadu can at least look to the future, but for Buhari, 69, this is clearly his last presidential venture.

This leaves us with Goodluck Jonathan, the incumbent and frontrunner in the race for Aso Rock. Jonathan fulfils all the requirements for winning the presidency cited above. He is not a radical and has no record of any strong views on any subject. His placid demeanor, in contrast to say Obasanjo’s abrasive persona has made it impossible to cast him as a hate figure in the north even after he torpedoed the PDP’s zoning arrangement. He is clearly a deal-maker and a conciliator rather than a confrontational type. His unlikely ascent from obscurity resonates in a religious country as the stuff of pop religious mythology. His campaign has nimbly exploited this by portraying his rise as the quintessential Nigerian folktale – a man from provincial backwaters rising to be president aided by divine favour. And, as incumbent, he has a war chest of public and private resources surpassing anything his rivals can boast of.

Above all, Jonathan’s appeal lies in his novelty. As the first ethnic Ijaw to sit in Aso Rock, his presidency is a symbolic recompense for the long-neglected oil-producing region. His other names ‘Ebele’ and ‘Azikiwe’ have enabled him to skillfully appropriate the affections of the southeast. His appointment of the first Igbo army chief in 40 years has deepened those affections. For many, Jonathan’s presidency signals the reintegration of the south and southeast zones into the national project. It breaks the perceived northern hegemony of national leadership and conveys a sense that people from other parts of the country can aspire to the highest office in the land. In this regard, Jonathan’s presidency speaks to the deep-seated need for equity and justice in the Nigerian subconscious.

Ethnicity should not matter in our politics in 2011. But Jonathan’s rivals have acted as if it does not matter at all. They have failed to seriously interrogate the roots of Jonathan’s appeal, to grasp the sense of inequity and exclusion that sustains his popularity, and to make the case that their own governments could deliver more tangible goods to those that feel excluded as against the merely symbolic properties of a Jonathan presidency. Instead Buhari and Ribadu, betraying a tin-ear to the sentiments in the southeast and the Niger Delta, picked running mates from the southwest, leaving those two zones with no option on the field except the incumbent. Perhaps, in their calculus, those two zones were deemed unwinnable and thus conceded. The polls will prove this strategy right or wrong.

Yet, Jonathan has significant chinks in his presidential armour. His reign in Bayelsa was so anonymous that not even his handlers have used it to make a case for his presidency. His vice-presidency was largely nondescript. Jonathan has never won an election on his own steam, and his one year in Aso Rock has not dispelled the image of a man promoted beyond his competence by fate. His intellectual minimalism agrees with a society that disdains ideas and scorns men of thought. His handlers have trumpeted his PhD as though it is a Nobel Prize – a scandal in a country that produced Azikiwe, Awo, Aminu Kano, Ahmadu Bello, among others – in an age in which politics was for men of thought and erudition. A more demanding electorate would have scrutinized Jonathan’s claims to the presidency more closely.

As it stands, Jonathan’s campaign rests primarily on his incumbency yet he is yoked to the disastrous brand of his party, the PDP, whose 12 years in power have been appalling. He has built a personal brand and distanced himself from the party in the public consciousness. He has not cast his campaign as one of continuity but as “a breath of fresh air.” Thus placated, many Nigerians excuse him as a good man who just happens to be in a bad party. This is bollocks but it works for some and Jonathan is genuinely popular.

There is one last thing to his advantage. Oppositional figures do not fare well in Nigerian politics. If not, Awolowo, Aminu Kano, Gani Fawehinmi and Pat Utomi might have done better in their presidential adventures. We may romanticize mavericks and outsiders and crown them with such epitaphs as “the best president Nigeria never had” but we rarely validate them with votes. There are many reasons for this. Culturally, we venerate authority and so find the iconoclasm of democratic competition unnerving. Nigerians may disparage the ruling camp but would rather join it than oppose it. Under military rule, political and economic survival meant seeking accommodation with the establishment rather than challenging it. Nigerians still respect the establishment and prefer giving it a new veneer to discarding it. In this sense, our society is conservative. Jonathan and the PDP will benefit from this dynamic this year. Unfortunately, Buhari and Ribadu will suffer for it.

But there are signs that this sort of conservatism is ebbing away provoked by widespread disillusionment and the emergence of a new generation of Nigerians. Young voters, unburdened by memory and prejudice, are more likely to challenge the status quo. This is why the Action Congress and the Congress for Progressive Change have mounted such strong campaigns this term, and it holds great promise for the future. The opposition parties will achieve more in future if they venture out of their provincial strongholds with more conviction to build national networks.

Jonathan has been clever as a servant of the status quo posturing as a change agent. This weekend, most Nigerians will probably agree with his claims at the risk of choosing symbolic change over substantive transformation. His likely victory tells us where we are as a society.