Thursday with Abimbola Adelakun aadelakun@punchng.com
There is a growing category of Nigerian writing that is quite illuminating of contemporary ethical character. The writings are largely the works of elite Nigerians who ventured into the political terrain, got burned by the unpleasant realities of Nigerian electoral processes and returned to share their experiences. These writers are relatively new entrants into the jungle of the nation’s politics. One of the things that mark them is their idealism and hope that Nigeria can be upturned for the better if the right people vie for office. They went into politics with high ideals of their messianic mission and returned with a dejecting rejection by their constituencies. Their post-mortem analyses of the Nigerian condition, often undertaken with clarity of thought, make one despair that this country is salvageable.
The latest that I read was written by a former footballer, Segun Odegbami, who contested the governor of Ogun State on the platform of Zenith Labour Party. Before his, I had read Ayisha Osori’s Love Does Not Win Elections; Dr. Reuben Abati’s chronicles of his experiences contesting as deputy governor in Ogun State; and presidential candidate, Tope Fasua, who contested on the platform of his newly formed political party, Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party. There are also several accounts by many others who contested elections at various levels of governance, and lost. While losing an election is simply an outcome of the electoral process, their chronicles are also a sad reflection of the Nigerian reality.
All of these stories are colourful and unique. After consuming enough of them, one begins to wonder if it is not futile to even try to save Nigeria. The Nigerian masses, the ones who cast most of the votes that decide the common destiny, have grown deeply cynical and their approach to these elections is mercantilist. The only tropism people seem to respond to is money and they seem to have made peace with the fact that the only dividend of democracy they will ever receive is whatever they get from monetising their PVCs. They are aware that elections in Nigeria are mostly funded through public funds and they demand their share.
None of the candidates who lamented this attitude could penetrate the wall of distrust and detachment that stood between Nigerians and the good governance they offered them. They could not break through the impregnable grassroots structures constructed on identity politics nor could they outspend their rivals in the dominant parties. As these writers registered their disappointment with the electorate choices, one gets the impression that they were the ones that needed the education they had received. The voting masses have long concluded that the political structure we run was never designed to work and that there is nothing that any candidate can do that can change their lives for the better. They are unconvinced that there is more to political ambitions than everyone getting their own share.
One cannot blame them; they have seen agents of civil societies and other progressives, who once fought the military to a virtual standstill, become the same monsters they hunted. Right before their eyes, those that shouted “our mumu don do” joined the party. The messianic intent of these new entrants is therefore not accorded enough consideration. They may be the masses, but they understand that Nigerian governance is a predatory machine and they do not consider it their responsibility to live up to a level of integrity that is demanded of virtually no one else.
After one gets over the drama that combusts when elitism and messianism run against the cold hard wall of masses’ pessimism, one reaches the point of paralysing despair. How do we break through the conundrum and set Nigeria on the road to redemption? We can expect that in another four years, we are going to have another wave of these laments. While the particulars of the tales will be unique to each of them, the issues will remain the same. By the time we go through that in different election cycles, even the people who still hold out hopes that things might change for the better, if a different breed of citizens goes into politics, will bail out on Nigeria entirely.
While I do not think people should totally give up on contesting elections, those who jump into politics in Nigeria to save the country from itself need to look beyond occupying a political office. There are other means of rescuing Nigeria from imminent collapse without necessarily taking the road that goes through political offices, whether by election or appointment. We need to acknowledge that what constitutes the Nigerian political structure is too corrupt and chaotic for anyone to make an impact, even if they run and eventually win. How long ago was Ben Murray-Bruce spouting ideas and “common sense” nuggets of wisdom? Both his idealism and radicalism were eventually muted, and he became another Nigerian politician. The story will not be different for most of us because what we call governance in Nigeria is a vast bureaucratic machine of ineptitude that, ironically, reproduces inefficiency with utmost efficiency.
What we run in Nigeria is not democracy in the real sense of it and those who really wield the power to make the changes we need are content to have the aberration remain the way it is. There are, therefore, no radical reforms possible and the idea of going into the system to change it from the inside remains, at least for now, a mere delusion. As some of these writers observed, what we run is designed to elevate the most mediocre among us and elections are just a formal process devised to legitimate fraud. We are many times defeated before we even cast the first vote. While one thing, which almost all of us can agree on, is that Nigeria is worth saving, achieving that requires changing strategies.
The vast amount of human and material resources people put into running for offices only to receive votes that cannot even fill a bowl need to be repurposed towards more productive ventures. Rather than trying to get into the system to reform the seemingly unreformable, we should perhaps start with the project of re-organising the terrain and having a semblance of coherent democratic order. The Nigerian system needs sanitisation, organisation and transparency, yet none of those are about to come from those who are currently “inside.” It almost seems that once people get into government, they trade their insights for the banal tasks and that is why they are never effective. The counter-force to the Nigerian situation will have to come from outside. For this, we need genuine progressive groups who will facilitate the interaction between the people and our present set of leaders who manage to get into office without either a vision or an ambition.
These progressive groups, who will function as lobbyists, pressure groups, social advocates, think tanks, and social mobilisers will take control of the raucous agitations of Nigerians and synthesise them into clear and coherent demands. They will also bridge the gap between what resources already exist to solve some problems and what we need to do to achieve other ends. The thing is the Nigerian Government seems to function marginally better when people pile pressure on them through the media as we see in the examples of the #ENDSARS campaign, and the response of the government to the murder of Kolade Johnson. While the efforts of ordinary Nigerians themselves are commendable in this regard, it is necessary that all of these efforts are synchronised so that we can build the critical mass required to push these issues to the point of institutionalised reforms.
Tackling Nigeria’s problems with one outrage at a time is unsustainable in the long run and we need people with progressive ideas and the resources to put organising initiatives together. Such an agenda is definitely a collective responsibility, and I am only putting the burden of organisation on those who have run for office and lost because they have at least demonstrated the desire to rescue Nigeria through meaningful leadership. The similarities between all the stories they narrate of their experience should tell us that the efforts might no longer be worth it. Rather than more people trying their luck in a saturated field of indistinguishable aspirants and ending up dejected, they should re-purpose their energies towards projects that might truly save Nigeria.
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