The Insanity of Nigerian Political Class
On the 19th day of the month of May 2011, I was coming from the bank in Wuse 2 Abuja the capital of Nigeria, I saw a woman sitting down under the sun with two children, one sucking her breast and the other sitting down and watching the mother as the mother was crying calling on anybody who care to listen to her. She was begging for arms from anybody that pass by. When I was about passing she said brother if you do not want to help me please in the name of God give me something for the sake of these children they are your children. On hearing that, I turned and looked at her and I gave her some money despite the fact that I was not having enough money that day.
What came into my mind was what the Nigerian political class thinking is about? The answer is simple; the insanity in their heads cannot allow them think well because an insane person is an insane person and cannot think beyond the capacity of an insane person.
The insanity in the head of the Nigerian political class do not allow them to think well, the Nigeria political class has one thing in common, their own concern is on how to get elected into the office and keep remaining in the office. They amend the law, kill the citizens they have made the Nigeria people face and kill each other just because they want to remain in the office. They have created big class inequality and do not see anything bad in taking up the whole resources that belong to the whole masses.
Nigeria of today is a country where nothing works. The failure of our leaders is over whelming. The leaders are not ready to put in their best, the aftermath effect is that the state and its people are at quake and political eclipse has taken over the state and its people. The prevailing situation in Nigeria where the richest people seem to be those who cannot be described as really hard working people but those who have looted money in public office or have connection with government, people's perception of hard work is that it does not pay since one does not need hard work to succeed but needs to succeed only when one loots. It is believed in Nigeria that career advancement and subsequent economic and social elevation do not depend on how hard you work but on whom you know, where you come from and the amount you loot in office. A country like Nigeria where mediocrity, nepotism, quota system, ethnicity, religious bigotry, have taken over the state cannot be identified as a country in the league of Nations that practice DEMOCRACY.
The looting of public funds and the wasteful spending among our leaders has made them to do anything to stay in office unless the constitution makes it impossible for them to run. The leaders who had enjoyed the looting of public funds had made several attempts to manipulate the constitution and to contest election again and continue stay in office. Politicians in Nigeria are mostly concerned in pursuing their political career instead of giving good governance to the people.
How often have we smiled at our leaders, while in our minds we wept for ourselves, reviewing all vagaries of life and broken pledges and faithlessness galore our leaders are known for? How can we believe government, DEMOCRACY and GOOD GOVERNACE in Nigeria when our leaders have denied us the right to exist as members of the society, without apologizing to us? One of the unfortunate things about DEMOCRACY in Nigeria and GOOD GOVERNANCE is not that the leaders and the politicians do not know what is right, but they always choose to do wrong thing.
Nigerian leaders and politicians should know that to regard politics as a demonic zone, free from God's influence is a distorted vision of a divine providence, an unwarranted infringement of divine sovereignty.
Democratic government which the ruling class oligarchy pretends to produce, claim that their legitimacy stems from the authority of the people and their rule is based on the consent of the masses. The political system benefits the ruling class oligarchy who is the microscopic few at the expense of larger population. The application of force by the ruling class oligarchy on the masses to gain support (legitimacy) has become inevitable since they know they have failed the masses, and on the free will of the masses they will not be in the office and be regulating the government and the state.
If Nigeria is so democratic and the ruling class enjoys their support from the masses as they claim, why do they maintain fearsome crack units of the police and the armed forces for their protection? Why is the larger proportion of the national wealth expended on bullets than bread? Why are the enemies which the security forces are paid to ferret out located among the people, within the civilian population? Why are the security forces devouring the society which created them? Why has it become imperative that military personnel in mufti must melt as much as they can in the crowd, forming the inner corps of a cordon between leaders and the led? Why are the leaders scared of those whom they govern, preferring the comfort of bullet proof vests to the pleasure of living among the people? Does a democratic leader need a long motorcade of dispatched riders in his movement from home to office and vice-versa?
The answer to these questions lies in what Professor Chinua Achebe says about power. Power does not only entice, intimidate, and subdue, it may also incite to resentment and rebellion. It is not the repression, torture, and brutality, which a government unleashes on the people that are democratic. It is the mass incitement to anger and rebellion against the savage administration of government by violence that enacts the first face of democratic development.
Nigeria is not a democratic society partly because the people themselves have not yet reciprocated elitist violence against the leaders. The false image of our nation which we in the darkness hour of our tribulations appropriate unimaginatively from outside sources, does not abort the reality of our existence as a nation where power is directed by miscreants, pirates and adventurers to the accumulation of private fortunes. Nigeria is at present neither democratic nor great. It is one of the most disorderly nations in the world; she is one of the most corrupt, insensitive, inefficient places under the sun. She is one of the most expensive countries and one of those that give least value for money.
According to Achebe, tourists who intend to enjoy peace and leisure by visiting Nigeria must reconsider their decision for their own interest. Only a person seeking to know punishment and suffering at the first hand should choose Nigeria a tourist state. No, Nigeria may be a paradise for adventures and pirates, not for tourists.
The real explosive potential of social injustice in Nigeria does not reside in narrow jostling among the elites but in the gargantuan disparity of privilege they have created between their tiny class and the multitude of ordinary Nigerians.
Democracy scarcely exists in a situation where a minority of unproductive parasites in government and business enjoy subsidized housing, free access to official cars, free shopping frees abroad and illegitimate perquisites such as uncontrolled acquisition of state land, procurement of market stores under a fictious names for rental to genuine traders, procurement for the resale of government subsidized commodities. These invisible emoluments consolidate the institutionalized robbery of the common people of Nigeria by their ruling class.
Dele Giwa showed how the Nigeria situation of institutionalized robbery of the nation, by a tiny class of powerful elites, has degenerated to such anarchic proportions that nobody cares any more. To him, people seem to accept the unacceptable revelations of politicians sharing billions of naira belonging to the nation. The newspapers report them and the televisions speak about them, but people just laugh, they laugh because they have been shocked to the state of unshocability.
Nigerians in the main now regard themselves as passing sojourners on the geographical amalgam call Nigeria. It is like standing away at a distance and looking as spectators at the greatest inferno in the world. Nigeria is on fire and the citizens are amused. One hundred billion naira was shared and so what? Nigeria is perhaps the only country in the world where such revelation has lost the power to shock because the leaders do that often and on and the masses are no longer surprise hearing that.
Mass political apathy is not an inherent feature of human society, especially the democratic setting we are claiming. It is rather the outcome of prolonged effect of the destructive forces of socio-economic alienation, which has attained its peak in the militarized environment in the society. In Nigeria, militarism has transformed the citizens into obedience and docile Philistines who are not only apathetic but are arrogant of their difference and subservience. What else do we expect from the people, especially when it is remembered that those of them who dare to expose the secret channels and hidden connections with which those who govern guarantee their persistence of their pilfering culture, stand a good chance of being eliminated.
At this point, the issue is what is to be done to get the political elites and the ruling class to care, to show some little care to fatherland, to get a National consensus on what to do to those who pillage the fatherland. What is to be done to get Nigerians to the terms with the country and not feel like passing sojourners who have other countries to turn to? How do we create a democratic society? Or how long can we remain infinitely patient in the face of unbearable conditions in Nigeria.
It is difficult to tell Nigerians that the ordinary novelty of the 1999 Constitution, the Democratic dummy of the Fourth Republic or American forceful bid to keep the world safe for DEMOCRACY will beat the ruling class into democratic shape, and transforms the people's quality of life. We must believe that Nigeria is not a democratic society as the political class has in so many occasions claimed we are. Though we are on a democratic journey, the only automobile that will take us to the promise land are the visionary leaders who will assume office through the help of the electorates who will choose the right leaders by power of their votes, especially this period some politicians have seen the need to change the society and the masses have woken up from their sleep and are agitating for another independence, which will give equal right and justice to all. Governance is not opportunity for primitive capitalist accumulation of wealth; governance is for the purpose of service to people. Those who vote you into office have the conviction that when you get into office, their lives will be transformed through the good things you promised them during your campaign. State politics is not a business enterprise where politicians invest money and expect returns. Those who do business with state resources in the disguise of playing politics cannot give dividends of democracy to the people of the state. Hence those who call themselves stake holders share the state allocation, contracts awards are nothing more than political patronage, those that could not get contract through the aid of political patronage to compensate the errand boys must pay huge sums of money to bribe their way to get the contract.
The major contradiction is that the state has privatized many of its public enterprises as a result of the reasons of corruption, inefficient, ineptitude, poor performance from the Nigerian BUREAUCRATS as claimed by the ruling class. But if these were the reasons given by the state for its privatization of some public enterprises, then the government and the political class should also be privatized because they have also failed and they are corrupt and inefficient too.
How many people have ever paused to consider what Nigerian politicians think DEMOCRACY is? They believe DEMOCRACY is the untold harm which is done to the art of government by the endless and continual speech making on the part of public office holders and government functionaries. This is political malaise and political pathology.
It is amazing when one comes to think of it, the amount of time, energy and human resources by Nigerian leaders, politicians and public functionaries on addressing audience. Showmanship appears to be a strong trait in Nigerian leaders. There appears to be an irresistible urge to impress and show everyone around the power and authority vested in the office held by every political functionary.
Every form of activity and every Programme of government provides an opportunity to assemble the populace and haranguing them at great length. The audience usually appears in their SUNDAY BEST, with drummers, acrobats and dancing girls specially arranged to thrill the audience and invoke pressure in the RULER. It is the usual practice for official invitation cards to be sent out. These are printed by several thousand by the Printing Department which often have to work round the clock in shifts to meet the deadline. It is an endless cycle of all night shifts since there is hardly a week in which the RULER or his AIDS are not out and around declaring open one thing or the other.
Let us examine the implication of these perpetual addressing of audiences. In the first place, it involves enormous use and wastage of manpower. To start with, a written speech is almost always required. This is prepared in the department by the department concerned with the subject matter of the ceremony. The initial task is passed on to an Assistant Secretary who labours on the Speech for quite some days. He then submits his handwork to a senior official who demolishes the whole piece and virtually prepares a fresh one that goes to the Head of Department. He in turn, recasts and touches up the draft before submitting it to the political master who is going to deliver the speech.
As the day draws near, elaborate arrangements have to be made to provide chairs, table and loudspeakers for the occasion. In some cases where the ceremonies are in the open air, canopies have to be erected; all these tasks are usually undertaken by the event Managers. The Minister of Information sees to the public address systems. In all an army officials are to be seen scuttling up and down at the scene of the ceremony. The department concerned must not forget to alert the police who have to send contingent of men to control the traffic, maintain law and order and ensure security. Of course the press and all public media have to be invited to cover the ceremony and they are expected to fill the air and the front pages of their newspapers with the activities of the central figures of the show.
When the day finally arrives, a long convoy of motor vehicles set out for the scene of the ceremony. The higher the status of a political functionary, the longer the convoy of vehicles, where the President, Senators and Governors are involved there will be vehicle conveying outriders, security, protocol, Ministers or state Commissioners, Government officials, political and private Secretaries Aides and Assistants, Members of Political parties and party officials, and a host of officials who think that they will incur the wrath of their master, or indeed that they will feel themselves slighted, if they were not included in the entourage. Of course a police vehicle with siren will lead the convoy, blasting out deafening noise to scatter and disperse all members of the public going about their lawful duties by foot, motor cycle or vehicle. Scattering the fowls too and astonishing the dogs, the police outriders put up the grim and hostile aspect to strike terror into the hearts of law abiding citizens, furiously charging them off the roads and often resulting to physical violence against the persons of innocent road users or passers-by. These are all parts of normal accompaniment of power and authority.
In the meanwhile, the scene of the ceremony is already filled up with invited guests who are always ordered to be on their seats at least thirty minutes before the arrival of the "BIG MAN". Sometimes, school children line the route to wave their hands and chant songs in praise of the "BIG MAN" This is regardless of the weather, and it is always pathetic to see young children sweating away in the sun, having been lined up for hours in advance, without anything to eat all day. It is also all part of normal accompaniment of power and authority.
Finally, the ruler arrives amidst the cloud of dust produced by the serpentine convoy of vehicles. The audience rise from their seats and a huge of silence pervades as the ruler "BIG MAN" matches up to take his place on the dais. The NATIONAL ANTHEM is played, during which everyone makes pretence at being serous while in fact they amuse themselves with eyeing the centre of attraction all those standing by him on the dais. Then everyone subsequently takes his seat. The ruler "BIG MAN" then scan the audience round and this is an opportunity for favor seekers and sycophants to try and catch his eyes and grin sheepishly at him in an attempt to convey their admiration of him.
A few introductory remark having been appropriately made to welcome the most august guest and to sing his praises for his most wondrous achievements, all in the attempt to please him, the speaker proceeds most humbly to invite the ruler "BIG MAN", if he will be graciously pleased to address the assembly. Thereupon the private secretary who had stationed himself at attention directly behind the ruler "BIG MAN" and holding a portfolio, produces the speech which the ruler "BIG MAN" is going to read, and hands it to him. As he makes to rise from his seat, the assembly does not need to be told that this is an applause time. Dutifully clapping therefore ensues which is terminated only by the sound of the ruler "BIG MAN" clearing his throat to commence his speech.
Then the speech opens with a long and sonorous recital in recognition of the various dignitaries present.
It is on a sad note that this is what DEMORACY AND GOVERNANCE means to Nigerian leaders, what an abuse to DEMOCRACY.
About the Author
Works in Center for Democracy and Development (CDD),Abuja,Nigeria, West Africa.
Has published books on topical issues bothering on Nigeria Democracy and Governance.
Has written many articles bothering on Nigeria politics and governance and other African states.
Is a political and social analyst.
email address libertydgreat@gmail.com
phone numbers+23408030899992/+23408076501990
ARAB DEMOCRACY Islamophobia, Glenn Beck Egypt Conspiracy Theory Colbert Show Jon Stewart
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