I very strongly emphasize it: though change can be either positive or negative, prospective or retrogressive, the change that I have in mind in the series of reflections that begin in this column this week is change from very bleak circumstances to intimations of more hopeful portents ahead of us.
This is consistent with the spirit of the times in our post-PDP Nigeria and many other parts of our world. True enough, Boko Haram has not faded away and other secessionist insurrections in potential or virtual states of mass mobilization dot the national horizon with threats of massive and fatal disruption of the unity of the country and its peoples. But overwhelmingly, Nigerians across the length and breadth of the country are united in their demand for and expectation of positive change from the hardship, suffering, insecurity and hopelessness that were the lot of the vast majority of Nigerians during the PDP years. And as a corollary to this, Nigerians also demand and expect profound change in the country’s new political rulers.
This particular point leads directly to the central issue that I wish to explore in these reflections, an issue that can be posed in the form of a portentous question: can meaningful change in the new administration and the new ruling party take place exclusively or even primarily within the ranks of the new rulers without the intervention of powerful currents of mass action in words and deeds from below?
Anyone reading this piece who is a regular visitor to this column would immediately know that the answer that I would personally give to this question is a resounding no: without the Nigerian masses intervening in the demand for and expectation of change, nothing much or significant will start from the top and percolate down to the masses of our peoples. This is a point I have been making unrelentingly in the last five or six weeks in this column, regardless of the particular issue that each column in the period has engaged.
As a matter of fact, it is precisely because I have been harping relentlessly on this point that I now wish to reflect more carefully on its implications in the series of three essays that begins in the column this week. And as a first step in this exercise, I now wish to make a declaration that may startle many readers of this piece. What is this declaration? It is this: meaningful, significant and long lasting change can come from – and sometimes does come from – the top of the social and political order and from there percolate to the rest of the society; however, we have enough evidence now to come to the conclusion that this sort of change will almost certainly not come from the new ruling party, the APC. In other words, only if the groundswell for change comes powerfully from below, only to that extent will change of a reformative and beneficial kind take root and grow among the new rulers, the new ruling party. That is the conclusion that I have reached in carefully observing both the rulers and the ruled in post-PDP, APC-ruled Nigeria.
Since time and space in the present series that begins today will not permit me to dwell exhaustively on this conclusion that will certainly strike many ardent supporters of the new ruling party as premature or unhelpful, in the present context, I will only briefly and in a rather summative manner give my reasons for coming to this conclusion. Thus, the main reason is none other than the tremendously consequential fact that the new ruling party is yet to forge an ideological and moral identity that is consistent with and conducive to meaningful reform of the state of affairs that the APC inherited from the defeated ruling party, the PDP. Let me put this in plain, unvarnished language: there are some genuine reformers within the leadership of the new ruling party at the federal and state levels, but their weight, their influence within the effective organs and institutions of governance is pretty insignificant. A few items highlighting the performance of the new ruling party in office might help to illustrate this claim.
Item: in broad daylight and absolutely without any pretense to reform or “change”, Bukola Saraki seized the leadership of the Senate on the basis of a cynically opportunistic alliance with the defeated ruling party, the PDP; moreover, the APC was completely powerless to undo or reverse the coup. Item: the same arrant display of a blatant struggle for the spoils of office and power rather than a forthright prosecution of an agenda of reform marked theintra-party implosion of the APC in Kogi State in the recent governorship election in that state; significantly,this came after the APC had in fact become the national ruling party.In other words, the APC was not fighting the PDP in the Kogi State governorship elections; it was fighting itself. More appropriately, the APC was waging the fight within and againstitself in a war in which no principles or manifestations of reform or “change” were remotely in sight.
There are many other items pertaining to the performance of the APC in power to which one could point to buttress the claim, the assertion that I have been exploring in the present discussion. Permit me repeat the assertion: we have enough evidence now to come to the conclusion that though there are some reform-minded leaders within the APC, change – if and when it comes – will not come from the top and percolate to the masses but will be sparked and fueled from below to strengthen the few genuine but isolated, confused and marginalized reform-minded leaders of the party. One item in this regard is the perpetuation of the extravagant greed of the APC members of the National Assembly in their completely unashamed dedication to receiving and consolidating the jumbo salaries, allowances and remunerations of the PDP years. In those years of the reign of the former ruling party, the non-PDP members of the National Assembly could claim – indeed, they did claim – that they were merely following the protocols established by the PDP. That excuse, that subterfuge is gone now and the APC lawmakers and lawgivers are glad-happy to continue to eat and drink from the same gravy train, as Americans like to call what we know as ilabe in the idiom of Naija decadence.
If there is any aspect of the performance or behavior of the APC in office as a ruling party from which the winds of much needed change will blow from the rooftops of political governance to the rest of the society down below, surely it is the widely debated war on corruption, isn’t it? After all, the energy, the drive for the prosecution of the war has come mostly from the Presidency itself. Moreover, there is the far more significant fact that for the most part, the Nigerian masses have seemed to be content to be mere ringside onlookers in the war as it has been joined by a judiciary that, so far at least, has not been notably on the side of change, of justice.
In drawing attention to this point, I do not ignore the fact that as ringside onlookers in the war on corruption, the Nigerian masses have been extremely agitated and voluble; they have lionized Buhari to the high heavens just as they have cast the looters and the lawyers and judges seemingly on their side to the darkest regions of hell. However, these factors notwithstanding, it is very doubtful whether even in this particular area of the APC’s performance in office meaningful and effective change will come primarily from the administration itself, that is to say from the top to the bottom.On what basis am I making this highly debatable claim, this highly contentious assertion?
It is not my wish to embarrass him, but it was from a widely published statement credited to my comrade and former colleague at the University of Ife, Professor Itse Sagay, that it finally dawned on me that even in the war against corruption, we must not expect a one-sided flow of the winds of change from the government to the rest of the society. As everyone knows, Professor Sagay is the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Corruption that Buhari set up very early in his assumption of power.
Moreover, apart from being a celebrated legal luminary, Sagay has for long been an outspoken foe of the looters and their defenders within the top echelon of the legal profession.Imagine then the surprise and – I admit it, the sadness – with which I read the statement credited to Sagay last week in which he bitterly and rather helplessly denounced very senior and distinguished members of the legal profession and – yes! – the Supreme Court of the land itself as willful and unrepentant accomplices of the looters.
Please dear reader, don’t get me wrong: Sagay’s patriotism and his fighting spirit were both indisputably present in his statement of last week. But alas, present also in the statement was a sense of desperation, a sense of perplexity as to what to do next in the war against corruption in the face of such powerful adversaries of change and justice as the Supreme Court and SANs galore.
And indeed, where do we go from here, from this declared space of impasse and perplexity, not only in the specific warfront of the battle against corruption in the law courts but more generally in the universal yearning for meaningful and significant change in our country at the present time? Where will the momentum, the impetus for meaningful change come from? This will be our starting point in next week’s resumption of the series.
NATION
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