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)
