“ God is into succession. Anyone in government that does not concern themselves about succession is destroying their own legacy because the person coming after you can just mess up everything”
– Pastor Tunde Bakare, Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, The PUNCH, January 5, 2020
“Anybody talking about succession now is just very completely restless and not focused on the agenda of nation-building and development of our country”
–National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, The PUNCH, January 8, 2020
Trapped in adversity and degeneration, bereft of ideas, our politics continues to revolve around a messiah complex in which a great superhuman leader would put everything aright and Nigerians will live happily ever after. Much of our fictional creations reflect this dependence on what the ancients call Deus ex Machina conceived as the intervention of the gods suddenly appearing to create an opportune condition, punish the villains and uphold the good ones. One of the problems with this mental software is that it leaves little room for the demos, that is the people, taking their destiny into their own hands, owning the processes and structures of governance and making their own coffee as it were. Everything depends on what the leader, perceived as a heroic actor, does or fails to do. That is this columnist’s way of relating to the fresh outbreak of concerns and controversy over the matter of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), grooming his successor for the 2023 presidential election.
The way the matter is being pursued, one would be forgiven for assuming that the elections are just a year away, and that the President is an omnipotent actor in a context where the political parties, civil society, institutions of government are dormant and can easily be overridden. Hence, despite the fact that I had commented on this issue in my “Should Buhari groom a successor for 2023?” (The PUNCH, Friday, August 2, 2019), because the matter would not go away, and there are new entrants into the debate, one is forced again to revisit the topic.
Interestingly, and despite the fact that the elections are still over three years away, the political class continues to act and behave as if we are on the threshold of polling, taking little cognisance of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s observation that the pre-eminent concern of the hour should be how to rescue the majority of Nigerians from their deteriorating plight. It should also matter that the examples of successor grooming cited by Pastor Tunde Bakare, General Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, (formerly known as the Latter Rain Assembly) are mainly authoritarian polities such as China and Singapore, a latter-day convert to democracy. The point here is that it is much easier for an authoritarian leader to dictate their successor than would be the case in a democracy where the odds are formidable.
As an illustration, if the opposition party wins the election, as is often the case in a healthy democracy, then, the grooming would have been in vain, at least in the short term. Hence, the gathering controversy over Buhari’s successor can be likened to a heated discussion that generates more heat than light. Of course, related to the ongoing debate is the issue of Buhari’s own self-succession which he appeared to have put to rest in his recent New Year’s Day letter to Nigerians. Never mind the fact that some cynics are still pouring over the semiotics of that letter, for example, the use of ‘stepping aside’ to predict that nothing is set in stone and iron.
However, it is remarkable that Tinubu credits Buhari with having “the courage and the character to refuse such a temptation (self-succession) even if offered to him” Is it not itself a demonstration of how infantile our democracy remains that the entire nation is now debating Buhari’s self-succession, which by the way is not constitutional, or as an alternative, Buhari installing a proxy as president?
In point of fact, producing a successor, as opposed to merely campaigning for one, in our circumstances, tends to have a pejorative connotation, reminding one of the godfather-godson complex so prevalent in our polity, especially at the level of the states. It does not seem to matter that the assumptions undergirding godfatherism, which include securing the post-office benefits of the godfather, are exploded ever so often. Frequently, the relationship becomes sour as the godson in an oedipal affray, turns against the father. Even at the level of the Presidency, former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s efforts and modest success in curating the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s Presidency, and that of former President Goodluck Jonathan, did not seem to have worked in Obasanjo’s favour, to the extent that the ‘godsons’ soon found reasons to distance themselves from him and his advice.
The inference from these examples is that not much rewards attend to this fixing of successors, since the successors cannot be counted upon to do the bidding of their godfathers. Even in cases where the arranged succession has been carried off quite well, the connotation is of a continuing immunity of the godfather from retribution over stolen assets and a perpetuation of corruption. Why is this so? In part because our polity is not grounded on principles, ideals and ideologies but on the lowest common denominator of what a French scholar of African politics, Jean-Francois Bayart, once called the Politics of the Belly. Even though Bakare’s argument is predicated on the need to end that trend of “lootocracy”, there is no reason to believe, considering the odds against it even now, that engineered succession would be the magic wand to effect that change. In more developed democracies, the very few successful attempts at bringing about succession, such as the British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher working for John Major’s election, were based on the perpetuation of ideological legacy within the context of the Conservative Party. Hear Thatcher spell it out in her biography: “But there was one more duty I had to perform, and that was to ensure that John Major was my successor. I wanted to believe that he was the man to secure and safeguard my legacy and to take our policies forward.” This is a very different kettle of tea from the godfather-godson variety so rampant in our political system.
As an alternative to over-directed script of Buhari plotting a successor which may in fact backfire, what is suggested is a redoubling of efforts to build institutions that work on their own steam irrespective of a political leader conceived of as a messiah. If institutions work without being tampered with, they would take care of many of the concerns that the advocates of fixing a successor are voicing. In fact, if institutions do not work, that may well negate the efforts of leaders, chosen or anointed, by Buhari or anyone else. Similar results can also be achieved through a programme of raising up leaders in broad terms who buy into Buhari’s vision. In that case, we will be talking of succession in ideational and ideological terms, rather than preparing just one person for high office.
In conclusion, the current controversy is a dissipation of efforts and a reminder that politicians are paying far more attention to politics than to governance.
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