Any pundit at this critical point in time, who is not conclusively resolved that the Nigerian jinx, where a national ruling party has never lost to the Opposition, is being broken in the 2015 elections, should just go back to school. In the present circumstances, one should be preoccupied with prognostications, scenario extrapolations and anticipation of the shape of things to come post-election. Principal among these should be attempts at appreciating and interpreting the Buhari phenomenon. What are the social, political, developmental and historical auguries of a Buhari leadership of modern Nigeria?
How did it come to be that one personage has remained the arrowhead of the alternative party, of a shadow government, for 15 unbroken years of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic; pitted unrelentingly in spirited political contention with presidents and candidates of a ruling party for those long years. A character not so much reckoned with deep ideological profundity, with little gift of the garb, eons of distance from the oratorical and propagandist genius of an Azikiwe, or the demagoguery of Biafra’s General Ojukwu, yet commands fanatical, and almost cult-like following.
A character of modest disposition, who is not known to have plotted or strategized for power; never formed a political party in the like and manner of Action Group of Obafemi Awolowo, NEPU of Aminu Kano, Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson, or Lincoln’s Republican Party; never conceived and initiated a national liberation or social rights movement in the image of the African National Congress(ANC) of South Africa, the Fatah of Yasir Arafat, the Irgun of an Avraham Tenohi, Mau-Mau of Jomo Kenyatta, or the Tupac Amaru of a Victor Campos in Peru, etc. Yet he has come to emerge the preeminent political leader of this dispensation; who for certain, and shorn of the leverage of state and party structures, is the most popular political personage in today’s Nigeria. A candidate who with practically just two associates, Tony Momoh and Buba Galadima, pooled the support of 12 million voters in 2011.
General Buhari’s only intervention in Nigeria’s national history was just those twenty months, January 1984 to August 1985, but has remained more popular than any other erstwhile leader, civilian or military, Northern or Southern, including those that reigned for 8, 9 and eleven years. As a matter of fact, it is doubtful if Gowon, IBB and Obasanjo together can muster a total of twenty votes in any election, whether national or provincial.
How did it so happen that a famed “truncator of Democracy” commands incomparably greater following than the Civilian leaders he overthrew? How come that a 20-month “dictatorship”, an era of “mass arrests and detentions in the Gulags, of Military horse whipping, of public executions, of draconian Decrees, of human rights abuses” did ironically generate so much goodwill for the prime masterminder and executioner, a goodwill that has lasted 30 years thereafter, and certainly would last a lifetime and even after; quantum goodwill that has kept him politically afloat for generations, and now finally and practically launching him to break a political jinx in Nigeria, the defeat of a Ruling party by an Opposition party.
It has been posited time without number that the problem with Nigeria is one of leadership failure. But radical thinkers also insist that it is more that of failure of the intelligentsia. An intelligentsia that is so decrepit and comatose that it has failed consistently to appreciate and interpret the dynamics of change and history. Otherwise it would have come so clear that the phenomenal events of those 20 months “dictatorship” was a Revolution of historical proportions, the veritable Nigerian equivalent of the French or American Revolutions. Hence, we failed in totality to identify and latch on to its trajectory.
It is an accurate historical assertion that the first generation Military Rule, 1966 to 1979 evolved, promoted and empowered a Ruling class that was neither capitalist, communalist, nor culturalist, but one that was degenerative, predatory, kleptomaniac, rapacious and praetorian. Over this period, 1966-1979, the productive developmental base of the Regions of the 1st Republic were totally destroyed. The Agricultural, Solid Minerals, Industrial Investments of those Regions were totally extinguished as Cocoa, Groundnut, Palm, Coal, Tin, Machine Tools structures were emasculated, and we were left with a gargantuan State structure which only business became the guzzling of petrodollars.
It was a ruling class, with such rapacious disposition and propensities, elaborated by that Military era that was launched as practitioners to operate the structures of the Second Republic. The result was that from day one, what came on board was the very inversion of democracy, even under the façade of Civil rule. That Civilian Rule can be as far apart from true Democracy as the sun is from the moon is a peculiarly Nigerian contribution to world political culture.
A mercenary civilian rule where there is no respect for transparency or public accountability, despite ‘all the ‘Due-Process” chorus; where over invoicing of contracts, and official manipulation and distortion of public accounts and expenditure become the culture of governance is the very antithesis of Democratic rule. A vandal civilian regime that monopolizes the state revenue, and converts it into the private business estate of its cabal is not a Democratic regime .
A lawless civilian rule where the Constitution is breached at will, where disorder is institutionalized, and the Rule of Law is more honored in the breach than in the observance, where serving Presidents abdicate office without a handover to their Deputies, where Courts pronouncement are disregarded at will, and where the society is permanently on the brink of anarchy is a Counter Democracy.
A repressive civilian rule where human and national rights are violated with impunity, and where official terror and genocide is conducted on individuals, groups and whole populations, is the very apostasy of Democracy. An authoritarian and dictatorial civilian regime that seeks to control and manipulate every public institution, and denies social and political expression to individuals and groups, through the manipulation of the Electoral system and the Electoral body, where political candidates are disqualified in a bid to make favored candidates sole candidates in an election, is a Contra Democracy.
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