The late Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim, the Second Republican presidential candidate of the defunct Great Nigerian Peoples’ Party, GNPP, singularly owned the credit for coining the tranquilising campaign slogan of “Politics Without Bitterness” which is so apt and catchy in our turbulent polity that it could, both in its circumstantial significance and rhythm, give the Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can!” 2008 campaign chant a run for its money. Unfortunately, Ibrahim’s noble slogan, “Politics without bitterness”, remained just what it was, a mere slogan, as it did not gain traction amongst his fellow politicians. Instead, umbrages and acrimonious partisanship prominently dominated the politics of that era. Regrettably, politics polluted by extreme bitterness has indeed escalated astronomically in recent times.
It is, no doubt, foolhardy for anyone to expect partisan politics to be anything but contentious because politics by nature is an expansive and, sometimes, treacherous arena where diametrically antagonistic and conflicting ideas, ideologies and policy viewpoints often duel themselves to their deaths (almost the same way ancient Roman Gladiators viciously killed themselves inside amphitheaters while supposedly entertaining the city Nobles), in the self-aggrandising efforts to sell their ideological and policy differences to voters with the expectation of swaying them with the comparative strength or side-by-side superiority of their contending positions.
That is why politics is often derided as “dirty”, “belligerent” and “indecent” against its being a noble calling that is geared towards finding common grounds by utilising refined and intelligible debate processes based on the logical interplay of contending theses and counter-theses leading to an agreeable synthesis (consensus) about the way forward. Unfortunately, for Nigeria, she is unusually saddled with a horde of directionless and boisterously rowdy political class devoid of focus, intelligible operational parameters or rational doctrinal compass beyond the banal and raw instincts for grabbing power for power’s sake.
Whereas politics in modern times is essentially about service and the improvement of society though certain commonly agreed pathways to national development, exceptionally in Nigeria, it is still the uninformed case of “our man” is ascending to power for our selfish and egoistic ends and nothing about the wellbeing of the larger Republic and that is why, so far, outside of their ethnicity, religion and material affluence, no serious emphasis is paid to their intellectual capacity, ideological consistency, personal integrity and moral standings.
It is true that the provenance of politics as a social discipline is replete with cloak and dagger intrigues, frauds, brutality and conquests from where leadership typically emerges, irrespective of the moral impotency of the “King”. It was possible, in those acrimonious circumstances, for impatient power-hungry children to occasionally undo their parents in regicides, palace coups plotted by relatives, wives overthrowing their husbands like the Russian’s Elizabeth the Great, etc., an endless contestations for power and dominion within a Machiavellian template where the end justifies the means. The evolution of constitutional democracy within the philosophical context of a superseding “Social Contract” was intended to curb the unregulated excesses of political bickering and related mischiefs by ambitious power-seekers. Modern power politics follows almost the same old Brutus-like backstabbing adversarial pattern but is largely moderated by certain normative set of doctrines such as the Separation of Powers and the Rule of Law that now define the operational boundaries for participants.
It is these institutional checks and balances in the modern theatres of political powerplay, i.e., constitutionalism, which we have not yet internalised in Nigeria which incidentally tempts politicians to resort to the antediluvian stratagems of malicious vilifications and contrived acrimonies. This Trumpian trend has been aggravated recently by the anarchic underground Social Media which is actively pushing for a Post-Truth (Alternative Facts) World Order, a development which has given contemporary politics a bloody nose globally. The traditional Mass Media has regrettably failed to withstand the forces of the ubiquitous Internet troopers and have, instead, sheepishly surrendered to their reckless propagation of incredulously biased and subjective junk stories (Fake News) while promoting editorial prejudices that are subservient to their proprietors’ preferences, a development that has further weakened their institutional capacity for fulfilling the enormous constitutional responsibilities of holding governments accountable.
The indiscriminate harlotry ways that Nigerian politicians switch parties, opponents or alliances, for example, tend to give the obscene picture of a landscape where there are no rules: They will attack anyone whose interest conflicts with theirs in the morning and if their interests suddenly re-align later in the afternoon, they again become allies and that alliance could further break down before the evening, an extremely primitive directionless warfare in which interests and objectives keep fluctuating and intermingling by the minute – bizarre and irrational displays at a level that is much lower than what is instinctively not permissible even amongst animals – sub-homo sapiens.
Such unedifying scenarios give the regrettable impression that the Nigerian variant of party politics is still stuck deeply in an extremely primitive time-frame where rules and guidelines are yet to evolve. How clearer can one explain the abnormality of Nigeria’s politics than in the shocking reality that politicians now buy voters cards, PVC, (the official certification of citizens’ franchise) from ignorant and impoverished voters? Both the buyers and the sellers are directly putting our democracy into the gutter. People fought and died for the democratic right to vote, the same right that we are now undeservedly hawking in the political market.
Refreshingly, the Vice-Presidential TV debates of last week in which both VP Prof Yemi Osinbajo and Mr. Peter Obi clearly distinguished themselves from the lot as truly educated and self-assured individuals positively confirm the fact that there is no substitute for quality education. Their sterling performances give great optimism that Nigerians are, after all, not wholly educationally half-baked. Unfortunately, when searching for national leaders, we always seem to prefer people of little learning and noticeable flaws. Yet, we complain bitterly that they are not performing well in office, forgetting that it is always: “garbage in, garbage out”.
I used to cringe in utter discomfiture whenever former President Jonathan, in spite of a touted PhD, found it difficult to eloquently express himself. A well-educated man does not need to be bombastically oratorical but he should, at least, be unequivocally eloquent, analytical and convincing – another cogent reason why we must invest more in education.
Until we start to hear serious debates on how to return the groundnut pyramids back to Kano, restore the dilapidating Cocoa and Palm Oil farms back to a level at which we can out-perform our international competitors; pay genuine attention to quality education at all levels; restore the dignity of labour and miminise the prevalent get-rich-quick (419) mentality; refine all our crude oil; degrade corruption, etc., we are only deceiving ourselves by thinking that there is a Messiah lurking somewhere.
Realistically, given our ever-growing population (Malthusian scale) and the increasingly declining national productivity profile, even in areas like agriculture and minerals where we traditionally enjoyed some comparative advantage, Nigeria can only degenerate poorer and poorer and, accordingly, 2019 will inescapably be worse than this year unless we radically alter the current policy trajectory but, sadly, that challenge is not being addressed by the leading parties. Given the dire straightjacket that Nigeria is in presently, she certainly does not require a National Cake-sharing leadership, a pseudonym for State Capture, but one that creatively bakes larger National Cakes with an inclusiveness-oriented nation-building outlook in the mold of a Lee Kwan Yew. He or she must not be bogged down by the shackles and moral encumbrances of past leadership misdemeanors. Sadly, there are not many yet on the national stage.
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