Buhari's Last Testament

The Congress for Progressive Change is something of a populist movement with its presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, as the symbolic vessel of northern underclass angst and radical discontent. Much of this fury is not directed at President Goodluck Jonathan personally but at a national confederacy involving northern elites that has left the north impoverished. The ferocious support for the CPC in the ghettos and slums of the north is therefore a protest movement against a generation of northern oligarchs which has gained influence and affluence while misery and privation have proliferated in the region. Jonathan’s emergence is only a convenient trigger for the rage of the talakawa.

Buhari’s limitations as a politician, ideologue and communicator prevented him from framing the inarticulate groans of the talakawa in a broader grammar of national liberation politics as Aminu Kano, Sa’ad Zungur, Bala Usman, Balarabe Musa and others did before him. These were the luminaries of a northern progressive tradition that has roots in socialism and in the egalitarian preachments of Uthman Dan Fodio. This tradition has been remorselessly assailed to the point of near extinction by the conservative oligarchs. In the absence of progressive voices calling for social justice in the north, groups like the anarchist Islamist sect Boko Haram have emerged.

Where opportunities for social progress are denied, agencies of regress evolve. If the talakawa are denied opportunities to prosper in the 21^st century, they are seduced by merchants of chaos preaching the merits of a 7^th century Islamic utopia. If the present and the future hold no hope for the seething millions of uneducated and unskilled young males in the slums of the north, then a mythical past becomes more appealing. This is the secret of the allure of fundamentalists who preach a return to an idyllic pre-modern paradise – a return to statelessness since the state is deemed to have failed.

Buhari’s and the CPC’s failings left the party desperately unable to transcend its limiting definition as the party of glass-eyed mobs in the northern suburbs. With proper organization, the CPC may have been able to harness the rage coursing through northern slums to build a constructive opposition to the status quo. Instead, the party will now be terminally defined by the scenes of its supporters burning, killing and maiming, fulfilling the resilient stereotype of ‘the angry northern Muslim mob’ that scares so many Nigerians. Without critical orientation, the party has been reduced to the most primal manifestation of political violence – that rooted in religious differences. This is a pity but perhaps it was to be expected of a party that was apparently solely set up to facilitate Buhari’s pursuit of the presidency.

To be fair, Buhari is no religious extremist but he is uncharismatic, serious, and hopelessly oblivious to how he is perceived by many Nigerians. His record of addressing sectarian violence has been atrocious for one who aspires to national leadership. He seemed happy to milk his popularity with the talakawa, not worrying that their evident ownership of his candidacy was casting him as a sectional champion. He did little to counter his brand as a “defender of the faithful” even though a candidacy charged with such religious meaning is incompatible with the egalitarian settings of democratic contest, and particularly dangerous given our history of divisive politics.

Religion makes absolutist claims about the will of God. Democratic politics is about the supremacy of the popular will. Both claims cannot mix without perilous consequences. As we have seen, when a messiah is defeated at the polls, his disciples interpret it as apostasy and launch a violent inquisition to root out the infidels. This is the meaning of the post-election meltdown in northern suburbs which saw CPC supporters attack homes of Christians who were simply assumed to be PDP supporters and also attack Muslims who voted for the PDP.

It is difficult to believe that the ecstatic mobs at CPC rallies failed to intimate Buhari of the possibility of violent protest by his supporters in the event of his defeat. It was an outcome that could have been avoided or at least minimized. Buhari and his party must accept some culpability. He and the CPC dissociated themselves from the mayhem but it was too little, too late. True, we cannot blame all the violence on the CPC but the tenor of Buhari’s campaign in the north was like a spark to dry tinder. He, of course, has the right to feel disappointed by his electoral fortunes. But his refusal to concede defeat and his decision to challenge the poll results has cemented a reputation for gracelessness unbecoming of a democrat.

Since the days of Ahmadu Bello, northern politics has been a continuing search for a moral champion – a political quest for the twelfth Imam. Even Aminu Kano often framed his progressive socialist preachments in the syntax of Islamic liberation theology. Yet over the decades as Northern Nigeria has reeled from sectarian wars, the place of religion in public life has become contentious. In appropriating the rapturous ecstasies of the northern underclass, Buhari succumbed to the temptation to be a spiritual talisman and undercut his claims to national leadership. This was partly strategic. Financially outmuscled by its rivals, the PDP and the Action Congress, the CPC sought to compensate by whipping its northern base into a populist frenzy. Maigaskiya, (person of truth) the honorific bestowed upon him by this constituency, reflected the esteem in which they held him. Their love was insufficient to fetch him the presidency.

The main lesson of Nigerian politics, which opposition parties have repeatedly failed to learn, is that no party clinches the presidency by appealing solely or mostly to its provincial base. In fact, it is possible for a candidate to win without his home zone as Obasanjo proved in 1999. The victorious candidate is the one who can go beyond his homestead and build broad national coalitions. This is historically what the establishment parties – the Northern People’s Congress, the National Party of Nigeria and now the Peoples Democratic Party – have been good at doing. It is why Shagari fairly defeated Awolowo in 1979 and why Abiola defeated Bashir Tofa in 1993. (In fact, in 1979, Shagari won more votes in Rivers and Benue than in his native Sokoto) It is why Buhari has been losing since 2003. In contrast, the failed merger of the CPC and the AC illustrates the handicap of the opposition. The fact that CPC voters in the south have held their peace, while those in the north went on rampage shows the geographical location of the party’s soul. Buhari’s popularity in sections of the north, while unquestionable, was an insufficient basis for a national victory, especially given his reputational, financial and organizational deficits. Nigeria is a far more complex proposition than the fallacious “Christian south-Muslim North” formulation customarily used to explain our politics.   

In a bid to pacify the ‘north,’ President Jonathan may try to forge a consensus with the discredited old guard oligarchs. Ironically, these elites despise the puritanical and uncompromising Buhari, and would sooner negotiate with Jonathan so long as business continues as usual. Should Jonathan pursue this course, he risks being identified more closely with the problematic personalities of the north and reaping even more of the ire of the underclass. Instead Jonathan is better off cultivating a new generation of northern progressives to implement the rescue of the region from poverty. Jonathan’s emergence has sealed the retirement of the geriatric northern elites who have spoken for the region for the past forty years. Their failed politics of entitlement has reduced the north to a zone of misery. There is an opportunity here to inaugurate a new conversation about the north centred on people-oriented development instead of elite privilege.

Regardless of its showing in the gubernatorial elections, the CPC does not seem to have a long term future. Without Buhari’s halo, the party is simply an unwieldy aggregation of political outsiders and malcontents from other parties, all hoping that their proximity to Buhari may yield an anointing by association. With the general’s halo, the party is simply a personality cult. Nigerians who voted for Buhari had high hopes, but on hindsight, the CPC was always a poor vehicle for national change. The search for truly transformative alternatives will have to continue. In any case, the talakawa crisis remains a grave plague that we must confront as a society. Any viable opposition movement must tame the north’s feral ghettoes and translate the fury therein into transformative democratic energy.

As a 69-year old former military dictator, Buhari was always an implausible candidate of change. Most Nigerians had either not been born or were in their early childhood when he ruled. It should be clear now that his three abortive presidential bids have as much if not more to do with a fundamental lack of national acceptability than with the much vaunted rigging of the ruling party. He belongs to a generation that has long exhausted its potential. He should just go quietly into the night.  

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.   

Beyond Ballots and Bullets

Hopes that Nigeria’s 2011 elections would proceed peacefully and without incident have since vanished, replaced by trepidation as to what the electioneering and post-electioneering period hold. Arson, murders, abductions, terrorism, bomb attacks and other acts of violence have marked the electioneering campaign. Well-meaning Nigerians have dutifully expressed the usual mix of outrage and concern but the violence should have been expected. The very nature of Nigerian politics makes violence a necessary component. Nigerian politics is a quest to privatize the enormous fiscal resources disproportionately invested in public office. An investigation of electoral violence should take into account the huge amounts of petrodollars used to subsidize official sloth.

Simply put, the excessively high financial reward for political office incentivizes the violence that marks the scramble for Abuja. And we are talking about the legal remunerations that politicians take home every month, not even the quantum of public funds which is stolen. The stakes involved in electoral competition are so high as to discourage fair play. Consider that the chance of becoming a federal legislator is the opportunity to become a multimillionaire. Nigerian legislators are among the highest paid in the world and are among the top earners in one of the world’s biggest kleptocracies. Combine the scale of poverty and inequality with the fact that politics now offers the surest route of upward mobility, transforming middle class strugglers into members of a super class, and we begin to understand why politicians cannot approach elections with the bonhomie of the golf course or a tea party. 

Political office offers an irresistible level of social security in a realm where life has become terrifyingly arbitrary and uncertain. Hoards of youths have plunged into politics to participate in the putrescent dream of astronomical returns for little or no labour that characterizes high office. But as more and more people flood the system in search of its outsized rewards, the cost of sating the hungry, pacifying the angry and indulging the greedy is making our democracy ultimately unsustainable. There are far too many people to be settled; the scale of avarice is beyond what the system can reasonably accommodate. And the ranks of restive outsiders excluded from the fest who are willing to violently pull down the temple of sleaze have swelled.

However, we must also look beyond the polls to a larger context. We live in an age of deregulated violence. Militant non-state actors like MEND and Boko Haram have demonstrated their ability to wage asymmetrical warfare against the Nigerian federation. Too often, we focus on episodes of subjective violence – the recurring bouts of sectarian strife in Jos, the occasional shooting at a rally, clashes between rival party supporters, etc. – and we miss the framework of objective violence, the supervening dynamic of repression and strife that makes conflict recurrent. Objective violence is institutional, invisible and thus difficult to spot but its portents are discernible. Any society in which 70 percent of the prison population is incarcerated without trial is a violent society. A realm in which politicians in sirened convoys can whip and run other citizens off the road is a violent society. A realm that permits extrajudicial homicides by state agents is a violent society. Our kleptocracy is a classic embodiment of objective violence. Official graft is depriving millions of healthcare, food security, employment and education – with catastrophic humanitarian consequences that rival the casualties of any deployment of guns and bombs. I argue that the objective violence of this kleptocracy fuels the subjective violence that we see around us.

There are three other dimensions of objective violence which lubricate the engines of conflict. Prebendalism, the personalization and privatization of governance and the transformation of offices into economic resources to be invested in communal allegiances, negates meritocracy and subverts the state’s capacity to deliver good governance. Over the years, prebendal politics has been institutionalized as the quest for strategic parity among ethnicities and regions in terms of control of federal resources. This quest informs the use of quotas, zoning and “federal character” in everything from determining admissions into public schools to staffing government agencies. In fact, these devices have created a bloated government bureaucracy and nurtured the cult of equal opportunity embezzlers that run Abuja.

Secondly, there is the electoral fraud which nullifies the civic will and generates unaccountable state power. The direct result of this is the culture of impunity that marks elite behaviour. Election rigging is, in effect, a stealth coup d’état and displays similar pathologies of violence as military rule. The third dimension of objective violence is the framework of legalized apartheid that we describe in blithely colloquial understatement as the “indigene-settler dichotomy.” It is basically a discriminatory regime that creates cadres of citizenship based on the lowest common denominators of kinship. In the lexicon of power, the term “settler” denotes the categorical exclusion of whole communities from civic life and political representation based on a calculus of identity, blood ties, ethnic and geographical origins. This regime sustains bloody ethno-communal conflict across the federation.

The chain of causality is clear. Kleptocracy triggers political violence. Due to the high stakes of electoral contest, elites adopt extreme measures to slither up the totem pole of political relevance and economic security. When these politicians recruit youths and arm them with cash and guns to execute electoral heists, they create the next generation of militants and terrorists. When these politicians take power, their impunity creates the material conditions that gestate yet more delinquency.

            

Because political offices are also seen as resources, the competition to occupy them rapidly moves from the personal to the ethno-communal terrain, pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other. This is how kleptocracy and prebendalism sire ethno-religious conflict. The “indigene-settler” dynamic kicks in as rival politicians use apartheid in a bid to divide the opposition and to monopolize power. The more conflict spots there are, the greater the number of guns in circulation. Yet once there is a lull in political violence or ethno-religious conflict those guns remain in circulation, often finding their way into the armouries of urban gangsters and thus escalating urban crime. Just as armed robbery spiked after the civil war when hoards of youths proficient in the use of arms streamed into urban areas, political and sectarian violence are similarly fuelling urban insecurity, with former political thugs and hired muscle striking out on their own as independent gangsters.

Violence organically feeds itself. The Umuleri-Aguleri communal conflict in Anambra during the late 1990s created a generation of combatants who, after the war ended, moved to Onitsha where they promptly inaugurated a reign of terror as gangsters. Following the abject failure of the police to contain them, Anambra retained the services of the Bakassi Boys, an ultraviolent vigilante group that used terror to cast out terror. Beginning from 2001, they executed over 3000 suspected criminals over a period of eighteen months in an orgy of public lynching. The group was disbanded after they had evidently been co-opted by unscrupulous local politicians and turned into enforcers for special interests. The subsequent proliferation of gangs of ransom kidnappers in the southeast led to the deployment of the army to Aba in 2010.  

Similarly, homicides have spiked dramatically in Jos, the once serene city now sundered by sectarian tensions. Because the police force is woefully ill-equipped to address the new gangsterism and terrorism, the military has been deployed to police the city. Across the federation, the escalation of urban crime has led to the creation of joint military-police task forces. This militarization of constabulary functions is a recipe for disaster. It is doubtful that democracy can be nurtured in the presence of tanks and guns. Similar militarization of the Niger Delta in the 1990s led to the growth of militancy in that region and will most likely produce similar outcomes in this instance. Even so, as more citizens realize that the state can no longer provide security, the cardinal commodity of governance, they will take to self-help. We will see a continued increase in the spread of firearms as families undertake to protect themselves, as well as a rise in vigilantism.   

How do we stop this cycle of violence? Presidential assurances of free and fair elections are inconsequential as long as the kleptocracy remains in place. De-escalating the armed scramble for Abuja calls for the drastic reduction of the entitlements of public functionaries. The costs of government must be scaled down and the culture of extravagance that accompanies high office abolished. This should be the basis of government that is truly accountable to the people.

In the mid to long term, we should demolish the framework of racist identity politics by abolishing the indigene-settler dichotomy and affirming an inclusive and unconditional citizenship. We should also seek to decentralize governance by distributing more resources and responsibilities away from Abuja to rejuvenated local government authorities. Political and sectarian violence have intensified over the decades in tandem with the centralization of power in the unitary command and control system of military rule. As power shifted from regions and local authorities to the centre, the scramble for Abuja came into being with politicians jostling for one centralized power source. If the locus of power is restored to municipalities, creating multiple centres of democratic authority, it would not only restore the relationship between power and the public, but also reduce political hostilities.

These mid- to long-term measures are goals for the near future around which a political consensus should form. In the meantime, as the terrifying outcomes of objective violence manifest, there is a need for vigilance, for voices of reason to stridently highlight structural injustices and root causes rather than flail at mere symptoms. Politicians must show uncommon resolve and statesmanship to defuse a building incendiary discontent. And people of faith are perfectly entitled to be prayerful. Difficult days lie ahead.     

Nigerian Dreams, Visions & Nightmares

There was once a Nigerian dream. Nigerians believed that through diligent study at school and hard and honest work, they would live better than their parents had, and give their children the tools with which to secure a better life. Indeed, if one phrase could summarize the essence of the Nigerian dream, it is “the better life”; an optimistic resilience in the face of sundry challenges in the belief that tomorrow’s harvest will exceed that of today. It is a progressive cycle in which one generation’s expectations become the experiences of the next. This, in a nutshell, was the classical Nigerian dream. It was a blend of a neo-Calvinist work ethic and our traditional communitarian ethos which held that individuals were the children of the whole community. In the mainly Muslim north, the same dream found expression in Ahmadu Bello’s proclamation of the region’s guiding values as “work and worship.” The dignity of a productive life would be anchored to the spiritual imperative of a life of faith. Economics would be balanced by ethics.

Over a half-century ago, this dream inspired communities to pool resources to build schools and send their most promising children abroad to study. It led them to transcend the boundaries of rural life and aspire to the armaments of modernity. It produced a generation of nationalists who fought and won the struggle for independence. For those nationalists, the classical Nigerian dream became the ultimate objective of national liberty. Independence promised a new expansive space within which Nigerians could aspire towards a full creative life. They believed that the moral purpose of the state was to underwrite the pursuit of the better life. This belief found powerful expression in the premium they placed on education. Obafemi Awolowo, one of the most articulate exponents of this moral purpose, dubbed his political vision “Life More Abundant” – and defined it as freedom from want, ignorance, disease and British rule. His emphasis on universal education, universal healthcare and full employment essentially summarized the political priorities of the nationalist patriarchs.

This notion of the state as an empowering force and enabler of human potential is a thread running through Awo’s democratic socialism, Aminu Kano’s democratic humanism and Azikiwe’s pragmatic socialism. The progressive consensus was that government existed to enable citizens become autonomous social, political and economic agents. This socialistic impulse bore good fruit. Between the 1950s and the early 1960s, regional governments built schools, hospitals, and roads and invested in enterprises in which they had comparative advantage, leveraging their natural resources while developing their human capital.

Two momentous events altered the course of Nigerian history – the discovery of oil in 1956 and the military intervention of 1966. Nigeria shifted from the competitive communalism that had seen regions drive growth, to a unitary military government that centralized control of oil resources. As successive military regimes tightened their grip on oil resources, the central government became a leviathan dispensing alms to beggar states. The post-civil war oil boom sparked a rural-urban drift with hoards of youths streaming into chaotic cities in search of their share of the national cake. Federal control of petrodollars transferred the locus of power from the regions and states to an alien and alienating governing entity at the centre. Whereas politics previously had been localized and municipal, with regions running basically on tax-based social economies, the new politics necessitated a scramble for the centre where a new form of wealth was shared out amongst lucky partakers.

Thus was born another Nigerian dream – the pursuit of wealth without sweat squeezed out of remote oil-rich creeks at human and ecological costs that most Nigerians were blissfully unaware of. But it was a dream for the few and a nightmare for the many. Communal values and Calvinist ethics were displaced by new Machiavellian moralities that perceived boundless possibilities for the self. Pentecostal prosperity preachers have essentially appropriated and apotheosized this dream. Where the first Nigerian dream at least attempted to supply a sense of citizenship, the second dream has informed a radical self-interest that reduces civic being to conspicuous consumption.

The old Nigerian underclass of domestic servants, house-helps, guards and drivers who were shaped by the classical Nigerian dream were exemplars of contentment and longsuffering. While they toiled in the gilded corridors of the affluent, they held resolutely to the belief that their educated children would ascend the greasy totem pole of upward mobility and eventually reach down and ransom them from the stygian depths of want. But the structural adjustment programme of the 1980s brutally annihilated the old middle class that was shaped by the Calvinist ethos of dexterity and sacrifice. Today’s aspirants to upward mobility are less fatalistic about their prospects. Encouraged by the prophets of prosperity and nouveau rich kleptocrats, they have acquired a taste for instant gratification, a raging sense of entitlement and personal fiscal possibility, unhindered by the prudish constraints of “archaic” moralities. Thus, the rich plunder the state while a desperate underclass in turn robs the rich. 

            The second Nigerian dream has found expression not only in the grand larcenies of rogue politicians but also in the delinquencies that haunt the Dickensian cities over-populated by the scramble for a piece of the national cake. These delinquencies are apt symbols of our political degeneracy. Armed robbery, which grew alongside the metropolitan chaos of the oil boom era, symbolized the militarized capitalism purveyed by messianic soldiers who essayed to redeem the country at gunpoint but ended up simply looting it.

The 1980s introduced hired assassins to our society – mystery gunmen that slew their victims without stealing a dime before melting into the shadows. Death itself had become a marketable commodity deliverable on demand with extreme prejudice. A new growth industry of murder contractors emerged to embody what Niyi Osundare described as a “culture of mayhem.” The era also spawned ritual killers that preyed on innocents for use as sacrifices in rituals for wealth. The emergence of the fraudster by the 1990s was an apt metaphor for the long con that was messianic militarism. It is no accident that these three archetypal villains – the hired assassin, the ritual killer and the fraudster – emerged during the Babangida years, when a martial kleptocracy in the garb of a neo-liberal reform regime eviscerated the public infrastructure of the classical Nigerian dream. They were manifestations of society’s descent into Mammon worship in an age of recessionary hysteria and repressive politics.

Today’s burgeoning ransom kidnap industry is perfectly symbolic of a society held hostage by vampire elites that extort multi-billion petrodollar ransoms from state coffers. For the commoditization of human life is the logical consequence of the apotheosis of wealth. Finally, the emergence of sectarian terrorists detonating bombs indiscriminately in the midst of unsuspecting crowds signals the nihilistic consummation of the second Nigerian dream. The zero-sum politics of greed and Machiavellian self-interest has culminated in the self-destruct sequence of anarchic violence. In addition to being sold for profit, human lives are now extinguished for nothing with clinical efficiency and in the perversely democratic anonymity of mass death. Many of our cities and towns, turned into de-industrialized wastelands by decades of socio-economic holocaust, are now theatres of warring sectarian militias locked in the cycle of mutual assured destruction. How do we pull back from the abyss of anomic horrors?

Our challenge is to recover and re-interpret the classical Nigerian dream as a progressive social vision that leaves no Nigerian behind in the quest for moral and material betterment. A new generation of progressives must now articulate a politics of meaning that restores moral purpose to governance. They must undertake the rebuilding of our civic infrastructure – public healthcare, universal education and those systems that foster a common citizenship. We must reconstruct our social capital that was depleted during the years in which privatized selfishness became ascendant. We should recapture the cooperative spirit that enabled communities to establish schools, dispensaries and scholarships for their brightest children. New generation ethicists must extricate Nigerian spirituality from the grip of materialism, the stranglehold of charlatans and its incest with anti-intellectualism and redefine it as a social spirituality that rekindles our best moral instincts – empathy, enterprise, community values, social justice, a sense of the dignity of the other and a notion of the common good. Recovering the classical Nigerian dream is the calling of our times.

Politicizing the Anointing

In a multi-religious society like Nigeria where matters of faith are often contentious, we should at least agree on one cardinal principle: Politics should not be used for religious ends while religion should not be used for political goals. This maxim is prone to flagrant violation, more so in an election year. President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign has been most guilty of this infraction. In one of his campaign ads sponsored by the United Nigeria Group, a voice intones at the beginning, “Let God’s will be done,” and goes on to exhort listeners to vote for the Jonathan/Sambo ticket because it is “God’s will” for the country. In another ad featuring some home video stars, the Jonathan/Sambo ticket is described as “God’s choice.” The Jonathan campaign has generally cast the president as some sort of divine elect or anointed king. This trend of religious politicking is worrisome.

In a society as religious as ours, faith will always be an ingredient of politics which at the best of times is an unstable alchemy of the empirical and the irrational. However, there is a difference between the incandescent political morality of Aminu Kano, whose religious scholarship sharpened his advocacy of democratic humanism and the opportunistic charlatanry of former Zamfara Governor, Ahmed Sani, the erstwhile proponent of Sharia, now an anonymous presence in the senate and last seen battling charges of child-trafficking and pedophilia. There is a clear difference between the thoughtful Spartan Christian faith of Obafemi Awolowo and the hypocritical self-righteous sanctimony of former President Olusegun Obasanjo whose presidency became a pulpit of bull.

Some will argue that the tenor of Jonathan’s faith-based campaign is simply political brand marketing, a scheme of communication that acceptably deploys religious idioms. Certainly, there is a clear effort to construct a usable myth around Jonathan as a man of providence and to dramatize his political trajectory as the stuff of the Nigerian dream. But Jonathan is in danger of becoming a candidate whose claims to leadership rest solely on the fortuitous manner of his ascendance to the presidency. His rise from anonymity to the highest office in the land within a decade, marked by serendipity rather than apparent competence, is being sold as a portent of divine favour and good tidings for the nation at large. There is a place for fairytales in politics, but to hinge our beleaguered country’s hopes on the good fortune of a candidate is, to say the least, imprudent. To advertize that fortune as a supernatural imprimatur upon his candidacy which we must accept for our own good is deception.

Nigerians have previously trusted in usable political myths to their grief. Even General Abacha was hailed by some as a messianic soldier ordained by God to cleanse the rot of the Babangida years although he had himself been an essential part of that rot. Obasanjo’s spectacular sojourn from prison to presidency evoked all kinds of pseudo-mystical interpretations and earned him the toga of the anointed – a concept which he took far too seriously. The late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua emerged as a dark horse in 2007 to clinch the presidency; an office for which his more famous elder brother had strived and ultimately died in vain. Again, some people saw providence at work in Yar’Adua’s emergence and sold him as a divine choice. Indeed, after his victory in the fraud-riddled 2007 polls, Yar’Adua urged his opponents to accept his election as the will of God. These are the results of the bastardization of politics in a religious society.

Religious politicking signals the crisis of legitimacy and stature ailing Nigerian politics. As the state has degenerated over the past two decades, its captors and operatives have increasingly sought to import legitimacy from the religious domain to deodorize their political pursuits. At the opening of the Lagos Central Mosque in 1988, General Ibrahim Babangida declared that the economic recession – which was exacerbated to no small extent by his structural adjustment programme – was “the will of Allah.” Such dissembling has become more pronounced since the inception of the Fourth Republic. Obasanjo constantly declared that his presidency was God-ordained. Ahmed Sani’s declaration of Sharia law in Zamfara effectively made him an Ayatollah – a defender of the faithful – without manifestly improving his performance or enhancing the lives of the people. In 2002, his deputy, Mahmud Shinkafi (now governor of Zamfara) issued a fatwa calling for the murder of Isioma Daniel, a Thisday fashion writer for an innocuous reference to the Prophet Mohammed in an article that some Muslims deemed offensive.

The danger is that ideologically bankrupt and amoral politicians will increasingly seek to legitimize their misrule by draping their failed politics in theological garments, thus casting themselves as prophets. The culture of impunity that already denominates public life can only be deepened by delusions of spiritual infallibility. Politicians typically seek transcendent authenticity by pressing flesh with clerics and getting photo ops with the country’s most respected “men of God.” But many are now defining their politics in religious terms, thereby altering the dynamics of democratic engagement and paving a highway to theocratic fascism. In this setting, failed politicians can always blame the electorate for being of little faith. Politics is conducted as holy war and governance becomes a personality cult. Dissent is criminalized as Luciferian insurgence against divine order. Social criticism becomes blasphemy and lawful oppositional activism becomes apostasy. Can terminal excommunications and inquisitions be far off? We should also fear that these ersatz theocrats will provoke an extremist backlash from zealots who believe themselves ordained to cleanse the society of elite hypocrisy. It is no accident, after all, that Boko Haram and allied groups have flourished in the Sharia states where politicians have cynically played the religious card.  

It is in this context that we must critique the Jonathan campaign and the general political field. The president’s recent appearance at the Redemption Camp where he was prayed over by Pastor Enoch Adeboye raises questions about the propriety of mixing politics with faith. Adeboye is one of Nigeria’s most respected clerics but is increasingly vulnerable to criticism as a leading luminary of a religious establishment whose choice of secular friends has been unscrupulous and whose deficit in social conscience and activism has become a moral millstone around its neck. Indeed, these religious elites are seen as collaborators with corrupt corporate oligarchs and rogue politicians in an infrastructure of kleptocracy.

The 2011 election must not become a referendum on candidates’ piety. The ads’ implicit and explicit appeals to superstition, emotionalism and irrationality are fraudulent at a time when we need to dispassionately invigilate the political options on parade. Their sectarian overtones are unwise in a country where religion is often a polarizing theme. Above all, it devalues what should be a serious contest of ideas for the right to direct Nigeria’s course in the 21^st century. Bala Usman, the late radical historian, argued that religion in the public square is largely an instrument of social control deployed by political elites to mask the true nature of their self-serving adventures in power. He held that the manipulation of religion to mobilize political support is largely responsible for sectarian discord in Nigeria. The tenor of electioneering so far is consistent with his thesis.

As citizens, we have to exercise discernment in a dark age of false prophets. We must judge aspirants by their fruit. What is their track record on dealing with poverty, hunger, homelessness, disease and the vast range of dehumanizing plagues afflicting Nigerians? We must jettison vacuous religious rhetoric and ask concrete questions about social justice, equity and economic growth. Politicians should not contend for hearts and minds in churches and mosques but on the stomp and in debate forums where they can outline their reasons for seeking office. People of faith must insist on these ground rules so as to protect religion from profanity by political hacks. Keen students of Nigerian religiousity understand that the god invoked in these ads is a deceptive construct forged in the crucible of elite corruption and mass suffering, superstition and gullibility. Politicians must also eschew pseudo-religious buffoonery in order to renew a vocation now overrun by conmen. We should judge candidates by their competence and character not by their eligibility for Al Jannah lest we surrender our fate to charlatans.  

The Future of Progressives

The most urgent question in Nigerian politics at the moment is not the outcome of the 2011 elections. It is the possibility of forging a viable progressive alternative to the extant political order. Several analysts interpret Nigerian politics as a Manichean drama between the “evil” ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party and an angelic opposition. This portrait is simplistic to the point of silliness. What ails Nigerian politics is bigger than a single political party; it is a militarized and parasitic political culture of which the PDP is only the most obvious example. It is a system, poisoned by the long years of military dictatorship, which cuts across party lines. The PDP is its most visible manifestation because it is the dominant party. Therefore, it would be a mistake to reduce political change to simply changing parties in power. Ejecting the ruling party will count for nothing if we do not change the reigning ideas.

A second view of Nigerian politics shared by many of its practitioners and analysts is that ideology is inconsequential; that tags such as ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ are passé. Again, this is a legacy of military rule which virtually eliminated ideas from politics and redefined it as a contest of cash and brigandage. It is true that Nigerian politicians mostly do not reckon with ideology. Indeed, to the extent to which political parties are ideological communities, we do not have authentic parties at the moment; only protean constellations of interests ever changing in accord with personal fortunes. The PDP is thus the biggest and the most successful congregation of strange bedfellows in the field. But ideology does matter. Over the past two decades, governance has been shaped by what can only be described as a free market kleptocracy entrenched by a raft of neo-liberal reforms that emphasizes untrammeled liberalization, huge cuts in social spending, privatization and the devaluation of the naira.

These measures are consistent with the structural adjustment programmes that were promoted by western governments and Bretton Woods Institutions during the 1980s and were discredited by the 1990s. General Ibrahim Babangida fundamentally altered the fabric of state-society relations by imposing SAP in 1986. Within the context of military dictatorships and our quasi-militarized illiberal democracy, and in the absence of regulatory inhibitions, these measures amount to simply vandalizing the state, cannibalizing federal assets and sharing them among cronies. The contradictions inherent in effecting a radical shift in socio-economic priorities under a totalitarian regime was glossed over by architects of SAP. In effect, even though, it affected a consistency with capitalism, what emerged can only be called a kleptocracy or more charitably, crony capitalism or predatory capitalism.

To be sure, Nigeria’s economic woes predated Babangida, but his socio-economic engineering deepened the consumerist maladies of the society, accentuated social injustice and corruption, and destroyed civic trust in government. The perverse neo-liberalism that generated these dysfunctions remains the dominant philosophy of government. The state has lost its meaning as a provider of public goods – social infrastructure, roads, bridges, education and healthcare etc. Government’s responsibilities have shrunk dramatically, while it has tightened its grip on national resources and redefined itself as a profit machine for its operators. For the vast majority of our compatriots, governance is denoted by its absence except for the nuisance value of sirened motorcades and allied formats of reprobate pageantry. It is this culture of predation for which a progressive alternative must be found.

In the quest for a progressive alternative today, it is sensible to look back and to reclaim the vision of the progressive patriarchs of yore. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and Aminu Kano were the leading luminaries of the progressive tradition in the fifties and sixties. It may be argued that their inability to win power, due to British colonial intrigues, internecine squabbling and ethnic mistrust, was the most significant political mishap in the early stages of the Nigerian project. For without a doubt, the course of Nigerian history would have turned out very differently if they had directed it. Zik, Awo, Aminu and their cohorts were not doctrinaire socialists despite their left-leaning rhetoric. British colonialists saw them through the blinkers of the cold war and deemed them to be a “red danger” but they were nothing of the sort. Rather they were “third way progressives” who envisioned a synthesis of an enterprise economy and a welfare state.

Their ardent advocacy of universal public education reflected their belief in the moral purpose of the state as an enabler of human potential and national prosperity. They were welfarists who were as interested in wealth creation as they were in social justice. The philosopher, Chinweizu has characterized their ideology as “communalism” rooted less in Marx than in the communal ethos of African society which emphasizes inclusion and collectivity. It is a vision of the responsible society that leaves no one behind in the quest for moral and material progress. The state is thus necessary to underwrite the mutual wellbeing of the citizenry while reining in the inequities and inequalities that result from unbridled capitalism. Certainly, surrendering society to the caprices of market forces would have been anathema to the patriarchs.

Nigerian progressives today are suffering from a number of plagues. The ascendancy of right wing military regimes throughout our history severely limited progressive fortunes. It also meant that right wing politicians were the favoured parties in military-sponsored transition programmes. Babangida’s particular persecution of so-called “radicals” nearly destroyed the progressives and left them too exhausted to mount a feasible challenge for power in 1999. Thirdly, the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of communism in 1989, unleashed a sense of ideological bankruptcy which buffeted the Nigerian left. The left has long supplied the moral energy of progressivism and with their weakening the progressive community also atrophied.

But the progressives are also reeling from self-inflicted woes, chiefly, their congenital inability to build a truly national movement. Progressive forces have been undermined by factional infighting, bigotry and sectarian prejudices. Progressivism is not synonymous with any ethnic nationality even though some politicians and commentators of the south west persist in making this unfortunate assertion. Their potential for a national victory has been nullified often enough by the irredentist reduction of progressivism to an ethnic enclave. In his seminal book, Africa in Ebullition, Adegoke Adelabu argued that the Action Group was limited by its “self-imposed provincialism and its petticoat of shabby parochialism.” The same criticism is valid today against those who deem themselves heirs of the A.G., and its later incarnation, the U.P.N. For years, an odious narrative has made the rounds casting the south (and the southwest in particular) as the bastion of progressivism and the north as the seat of feudal conservatism. This bogus narrative assisted by bigoted and ignorant commentators has long prevented progressives on both sides of the Niger from linking hands and rising to the defence of their constituency – poor, disillusioned Nigerians who are in the majority.

Secondly, progressives seem incapable of subsuming ego and personal ambition in the quest for greater collective victories. Internecine dogfights splintered the Peoples Redemption Party and reduced a potential national progressive movement to a skeletal organization located entirely in Kano. Too often, progressives prefer to operate as lone-rangers so convinced in the justice of their own cause that they wind up in a cul de sac of their self-righteousness, high on puritanical fervor but electorally impotent. This is a shame because when they make their case rightly, the progressives have the most compelling vision for Nigeria; one which should enjoy greater mass appeal but which for these reasons does not.

Of late, progressive ideals have disappeared from the public square. We live in an age of intellectual famine and ideas are rarely given space to manifest. Militarized politics ensures that public debate is frequently “won” by the hecklers and those who make the loudest noise. Reasoned, sober voices are drowned out. The triumph of cash and carry politics has sapped progressives of their confidence. There is presently no recognizable progressive party. Creating a national movement calls for progressives to rediscover their political identity and re-establish their pavilion in the marketplace of ideas. If they can regain their faith in themselves and in their values, overcome expired prejudices and provincialisms and find new young and energetic leaders, Nigeria could very well experience a national renaissance. 

Naija is not Enemy Territory

I read the report online at first with bemusement and then with a growing sense of grief. It was of the Minister of Information and Communication, Professor Dora Akunyili condemning the usage of “Naija” in place of Nigeria as “very uncharitable and unpatriotic.” Speaking to participants of a reality show, she said, “It is very offensive to call Nigeria 'Naija'. We are making plans to write companies to stop using the word Naija. I have heard that name Naija in adverts. I want them to go back and remove that word. If anybody says this is Naija, ask the person, 'Where is Naija?' We have to stop this word because it is catching up with the young. If we don't put a stop to its usage now, it will continue to project us wrongly,” she said. (Thisday, November 15, 2010)

At first, I was tempted to dismiss it as another instance of official logorrhea but was driven to put pen to paper because such gaffes delivered with undue zest from high government officials often somehow wind up informing policy. And also because such cant should not go unchallenged or be allowed to frame public perception of the issues. The minister’s response demonstrates almost everything that ails our government. The planned censorship of the term ‘Naija’ is an example of a typical misappropriation of energy in the service of petty ill-conceived goals. The obvious misplacement of priorities at a time when so much is going wrong exhibits the devotion to frivolity that defines high office in Nigeria. The incident also verifies the lingering presence of a ghastly bequest of military rule – the refusal to engage intellectually with popular phenomena and instead to reflexively “ban” whatever is not understood. Instead of seeking first to understand, we move immediately to undermine and to antagonize. It is the knee-jerk reaction to whatever does not emanate from the narrow and squalid precincts of a dysfunctional state bureaucracy.

The question that should engage us as thinking beings is this: What is “Naija”? The term is increasingly pervasive and has found near ubiquitous expression on the platforms of popular culture, media, advertizing and in the corporate world. Among the younger generation, it is a slang of popular usage. Yet, young Nigerians do not turn up at airports describing themselves as nationals of Naija nor do they brandish passports issued by the Federal Republic of Naija. The term is simply a colloquial diminutive of “Nigeria” with roots in the idiomatic treasury of urban Lagos. This is why its most common expression is in the vibrant popular culture of which Lagos is the trend-setting capital.

But Naija has come to mean more than a casual slang. In a profound sense, in the generational consciousness of its proponents, there are figuratively two countries – Nigeria and Naija. Nigeria is what it is: a complex, unfair and unequal post-colonial travail for a meaningful human existence occurring in a pungent paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty. Naija represents what the emergent generation of Nigerians born between 1975 and 1995 are making of their beleaguered nation. It expresses the vitality and the resiliency of youth in a realm where dreams die first. It is the parallel universe that young Nigerians are constructing with their sweat, creative toil and irrepressible dreams channeled principally through popular culture – songs, art, films – but also through the entrepreneurial dynamism that enables them to make an honest living against incredible odds. Naija is the labour of love of an orphaned generation. 

To grasp its poignancy, we must understand the socio-economic circumstances in which this generation lives. In 2008, the Ministry of Youth Development disclosed that 80 percent of Nigerian youths, that is 64 million Nigerians, were jobless. Success rates in post-secondary school examinations have cratered at around 20 percent. According to the federal government, 71 percent of Nigerian graduates are unemployable – a living testament to the collapse of our education sector overseen by successive regimes since the 1980s. 86 percent of Nigerian graduates remain jobless for up to two years after graduating. These are a few of the demons that young Nigerians confront daily amid the absence of basic social amenities such as electricity and potable water.     

Above all, the government has shown little inclination to address these issues; to promote an agenda that gives Nigerian youths a sense of belonging, civic purpose and hope for the future. Instead, from time to time, we are treated to government officials trotting out a youth culture they barely understand to publicly flay it with the scourge of pious hypocrisy. For if anything projects us wrongly, it is surely the conduct of those in authority, whether it is the juvenile brawling in the national assembly or the grand larcenies of those entrusted with leadership. Indeed, it is the chasmal divide between state and society, between politics and public priorities that Naija represents as a conceptual community. Naija is the patriotic poetry of a generation that has been left for dead by its fathers and mothers, and yet has chosen to make this country, warts and all, its own and to convert its frustration and angst into a fuel for creative endeavour. It is, in fact, a term of endearment.

Advert companies did not invent ‘Naija’; they simply discovered a wave in the popular culture among the dominant demographic subset of the social economy and are now exploiting it with aplomb.  If intelligence instead of mind-closure was the directive principle of governance, the official response would have been to seek ways of harnessing this viral idiom and seek interface with its purveyors. Rather, what we saw was a quasi-militarist response that perceives the creative space that young Nigerians have forged for themselves as enemy territory. In ‘Naija,’ a generation has found not only a common syntax for defining its reality, but also potentially, the raw materials of a unifying political ethos, a core around which they can rally and contend for their collective destiny. It holds the basis of a patriotism far more authentic than the sterile sloganeering proffered by uninspiring politicians. 

Instructively, President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign has co-opted young artistes who are exponents of ‘Naija’ signaling an effort to tap into this phenomenon, to reach the youth vote and cast the president as a voice of youth. Since youths also demographically dominate the electorate, this is either savvy or opportunism or both. This demographic, it should be noted, also lacks genuine representation in the high councils of government that could conceivably advise on the nuances of youth culture. For these attacks on youth culture also stem from a generation gap that alienates politicians from their children and from youths in general who constitute the majority of our population.  

Nations all over the world have socio-cultural and informal appellations by which they refer to themselves (Britannia, Yankees, Kiwis, Nippon, Aussies, and Zion etc.)  There are also ontological and philosophical ramifications to a people choosing a formal or informal name for themselves instead of retaining their colonial cognomens. Names are vectors of values and identity and ‘Naija’ is an affirmation of values and an identity construct distinct from the post-colonial conundrum inherent in “Nigeria” – the name with which Flora Shaw baptized us.  Ironically, during the 1950s, Tai Solarin, the great educationist and social critic campaigned spiritedly against retaining the name ‘Nigeria’ because of its etymological kinship with the term “nigger.” He argued that preserving this name amounted to acquiescing to our national baptism with a racist epithet. Possibly, he feared that it would signal the “niggerization” of the world’s largest black nation and entrap us in a physical and metaphysical ghetto. Considering our present circumstances, Solarin might have been on to something.    

There is no telling how seriously the Ministry of Information will pursue its self-assigned censorial task but it is worth noting that words can’t be killed. They can only be buried or momentarily driven underground from where they will inevitably resurrect with greater rhetorical and intellectual potency. In view of this, we are better off allowing the positive values of Naija, chief among them the ability to coax hope and excellence from the jaws of despair and defeat, to permeate our public life. There is much to be gained from analyzing Naija and letting its essence revitalize our broken society. Nigeria is reeling from many ailments. Naija is not one of them.