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Pat Utomi (Image source: youtube.com)
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It may sound naïve, especially for a
person who is obviously a partisan, but my concern and alarm have little to do
with who won or lost in the National Assembly leadership elections palaver.
Easy as this can be lost on the gladiators, we could be collectively sabotaging
the poor ordinary people of Nigeria desperate for change. Could this elite
which has consistently failed to find its mission and do for its people what
their old classmates in schools in the United States and the United Kingdom and
elsewhere in the West, have done for their people in Asia and Latin America,
unwittingly miss this window built on a change mantra, and betray another
generation? It was with this spirit of wondering how easily we chase power,
unmindful of purpose that I exclaimed on seeing the political bloodletting in
the National Assembly leadership selection. My reaction was, Oh my God, not
again! With the process and outcome clearly signalling disunity, lack of
discipline and weak goal-setting, and severe goal displacement, the least
impact would be challenged implementation of what the people voted for.
Oh
no! It’s not happening again. Not again in my life time! But it was happening.
The sense of déjà vu was not just troubling, and evidently palpable, it had a
puzzling force that left you feeling and wondering how this is possible; the
way you feel when a 747 or an A380 is tossed around by mere wind in clear air
turbulence. The vote for change had run into turbulence at the inauguration of
the National Assembly. It was not about who won or who the battle was against.
It was about a public brawl and the change agenda.
It
was about the ordinary people who had persevered so much in the face of
underperforming and uncaring governments beholden to special interests and so
seemingly unable, or unwilling, to go where less endowed rivals in other parts
of the world have gone, and dramatically improved the lot of the people. To
drive a change agenda for which the people voted in April, legislative common
purpose was a clear imperative. To go to legislative inauguration without party
discipline and with a fractious mode and the old ways, of, money and
personality politics in top flight, was to betray the voters of this country,
and that is what June 9 means to me. Hope has again been annulled and for the
third time in my life a costly battle for change has again been hijacked. As
1993 and 1999, so seems to have gone 2015, if the people do not fight back.
I
was lamenting these things when someone called my attention to an advertised
full page opinion by some concerned APC members in the Daily Trust Newspaper of
June 9. That advert was so reminiscent of the kinds of advertisements published
in 1993/94 by the Concerned Professionals that I did exactly the same thing I
did in 1993.
In
that year, many of us had canvassed a change agenda. The Social Democratic
Party and its torch- bearer, Chief M.K.O. Abiola, had come to symbolize that
change. Two days after that historic vote, I journeyed to the US to attend a
convention. It was at that convention that a Ugandan delegate came up to me,
very angry, saying: “You Nigerians, you Nigerians, whenever Africa is set for
progress, you drag us back.” I was not sure what he was talking about, but that
was how I learnt of the annulment of the June 12 election. I immediately packed
my stuff and went up to my room and began writing an OPED piece that would
appear under the title, “We Must Say Never Again.” That piece resulted in the
founding of the Concerned Professionals. That body acquitted itself well in the
struggle against military rule. It was a principle-based struggle. They may
have sent policemen to beat us up as we protested and sent assassins after a
few like myself but the principle was not lost on them.
When
Sani Abacha passed and they withdrew under pressure, we erred in thinking our
work was done. The politics of the last 16 years that followed left Nigerians
so exasperated that they jumped on the Change mantra. So uplifted were they
with the outcome that they assumed their world would change dramatically come
May 29. Such was the expectations that analysts worried the expectations were
unrealistic and bordered on expecting miracles.
Then
comes June 9. For days before the votes for the National Assembly leaders, I
kept saying that for me, it was not about a particular candidate but about a
process that shows party discipline and national consensus around an agenda for
change. If the process gets fractured, I had warned what will happen will
include a return to the old ways of vote buying in which goals of the common
good are traded off in the old goal displacement ways, for money and
self-interest. Then there is the loss of speed on consensus critical for change
legislation. My song was clearly a borrowed verse from the US President, Lyndon
Baines Johnson, and Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammed: It is better for all to be
inside the house pissing out, than for some to be outside the house pissing in.
It
is easy to see it as a simple political game if you miss the cost of these
simple games for why Nigeria is poor and our society is marked by much
disharmony. You may then analyze the New PDP vs other groups in the All
Progressives Congress, or checking certain power blocs. Even many of the actors
who presume to be acting in self-interest have embraced a narcissism that has
blinded them to their own long term self-interest, as they embrace short term personal
gain. Because of this the “only business in town”, politics, manages to do
continuous damage to the real sector businesses which give life to a majority
of the people. But to the short sighted, it does not matter, this is politics.
So, my view was, sort these things out, whether in smoke filled rooms, or in a
sanctuary of truth and love for the suffering poor of this endowed society. The
signalling from a public brawl that will bruise egos and carve cleavages into
the polity and etch animosities into the relationships even in intra-party
affairs may create momentary victories but they have a sad way of amounting to
pyrrhic victories and delaying the reclaiming of the promise of Nigeria.
With
mountain high challenges in the economy, trailed by an unemployment time bomb,
security problems that go beyond the Boko Haram and kidnappings, and
electricity and petroleum sectors, in much need for reforms, even as
corruption, failing education and health care make us a tribe of refugees
around the planet, now was not the time for politics as usual.
I
have tired of worrying about raw political power, quest for possessions and
quick inclination to predation (The 3Ps) muzzling Purpose, to prevent progress,
in Nigeria. June 9 brought it home again. There could be merit in the pocket
wars and persons that were the target of breaching the consensus for change on
that day, but the consequence will no doubt be progress deferred. The big
losers, the people, the small mechanic who needs electric power for a job to
earn the next meal, the farmer who remains in subsistence because poor
infrastructure locks him out while public officials live like Lords off a
wobbly state, to the truth and prescription the citizen typically go away
forlorn for they swallow the lies of politics as usual. The only solution for
me is people power. The people must say to a political class riding roughshod
on their well-being: Enough is enough. People power must come to save the
people recovering from the euphoria of a promise of change that seems deferred
again.
What
was the purpose of the vote for change? The purpose is an elite that for one
generation failed a people and denied them the progress they deserve and
desire, should change their way and bring progress to the greatest number of
people. The patience had worn thin. Now, it is the people who must now take
back their country anyway they see fit. They cannot watch as Singapore escapes
Third World status, South Korea becomes one of the most knowledge-driven high
income societies on earth and Brazil goes from potential to a top 10 economy in
the world. These countries found a patriotic elite at some point that
sacrificed for progress. Since Nigeria has been repeatedly denied such by its
elite, the people may have no choice but to rise up and save themselves. There
were enough blame for June 9 to go around, from the APC hierarchy whose
complicit role was put forward in the advert I referred to in the Daily Trust by
some concerned APC members, to the PDP leadership whose business, no doubt, is
to make the party in government uncomfortable but which must know that in
decent societies a government must be allowed to settle in and not for
legislators to collaborate with those across the Isle in ways that can be
disruptive. Fortunately, it’s never too late to begin again.
Utomi, a political economist and Professor of Entrepreneurship, is
founder of the Centre for Values in Leadership
Originally published The Punch
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