OPINION

The Folly of the Nigerian politician

By Tony Ogbetere 

There is no doubt that the Nigerian politician is a character worthy of analyses. It was therefore with keen interest that I read Dr. Reuben Abati's "The Portrait of the Nigerian Politician" which was published in The Guardian of Friday, March 23, 2001. Since the return of civil rule in May 1999, the political class has been treacherous vis-a-vis the Nigerian civil society. The common man has been reduced to a mere pawn in the dangerous political game that has characterised our national life in the last two years. This has not only reduced the act of governance to a hurley-burly affair, it has also undoubtedly, led to the existence of a precarious polarity between the needs of the common man and the means for actualising them.

Obasanjo

Unlike Abati, I am not too surprised at what is happening today. Abati's surprise and disappointment, I presume, stems out of the fact that he expected much from the crop of people who today enjoy the undeserved privilege of being referred to as the political class. When the present "democratic crew" came on board I told everyone that cared to listen, that the whole thing was another jamboree that will eventually revert to what my erstwhile erudite lecturer O.B.C. Nwolise of Nigeria's premier university, had called Contractocracy: a government of contractors for contractors by contractors. The treachery of our politicians has enmeshed the polity into a quagmire of false values, deceit, false hopes, uncertainty illusions and human delusions. This brings us to the questions raised by Abati in his piece.: "In two years, do we have enough evidence, that they (the politicians) are appreciative of the legacy that they hold, the symbol that they represent, the hopes that have been invested in them as the representatives of the people? "Can we point to these characters as products of a long learning process?"

Like Abati, I do not think so. First the Nigerian politician, ab initio, has never acted like a true representative of the people. The political class has always pursued interests that are antithetical to those of the citizenry. Such parochial interests are often pursued without prior consultation of the electorate who are supposed to wield the ultimate determinate power to decide who gets what, when, and how. A case in point is the celebrated decision by our legislators to appropriate outrageous furniture allowances to themselves. One would have expected that the feeling of disenchantment which greeted the furniture allowance issue would have prompted the legislators to beat a retreat, but this was not so.

The insensibility and sheer personal aggrandisement, displayed by the legislative and executive arms of government on the furniture allowance issue and other issues that have come to the fore since then, demonstrate the inordinate ambition of our politicians to indulge in primitive accumulation of wealth and undue profligacy at the expense of the masses. Our politicians are poised to do everything within their means to appear successful in the eyes of society and thereby jettison their actual role of achieving success. Pages of newspapers are rife with paid adverts, usually placed by sycophants and hired opportunists, extolling the "virtues and achievements" of political office holders all in a bid to secure re-election for them. A successful office holder does not need all of this media hype to sell himself to the electorate for re-election. A good politician should seek re-election by virtue of the extent to which he has added meaning to the lives of the citizenry.

Also, majority of the politicians, seem to view power as an immutable end in itself rather than as a means to an end. To the few that see it differently it is a means to actualise their whims and caprices. These perceptions have turned the average Nigerian politician to a die-hard desperado who is ready to wrest power either by hook or crook. Experience has also shown that the Nigerian politician is ready to compromise any thing to remain relevant in the national scheme. It was this desperation and propensity to compromise anything that led to the fraudulent acceptance of the annulment and tacit complicity in the ill-fated Interim National enterprise of 1993.

This phenomenon also explains the willful acceptance of and participation in the inglorious Abacha interregnum, which marks the darkest part of our national history. The way the five political parties adopted the late dark goggled general clearly indicates the extent to which our politicians can go to compromise the wishes of the masses in order to remain relevant. This is why I neither voted for any of them nor expected too much from them. The political class, as it were, would most likely elect to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven.

Furthermore, our politicians do not understand the essence of governance. Politics is the authoritative allocation of resources and the determination of who gets what, when, and how. The executive is expected to allocate resources to promote the public good. What constitutes the public good is supposed to be determined by the legislators who are the representatives of the people. The legislature is expected to function on the basis of inputs got from the electorate through wide consultations. In Nigeria it is the interests of an oligarchic cabal that have consistently held sway. This cabal sponsor hungry politicians into both the executive and legislative arms of government and get them to churn out policies which promote interests of the oligarchy as against the common good.

To these "vagabonds in power," to borrow Fela Anikulapo-Kuti's aphorism, the provision of the basic necessities of life is secondary to the corrupt enrichment of the cabal and its cohorts. This has been the dilemma of the masses in Nigeria who have been caught in the web of the politics of allocation and domination. Over 40 years after independence the Nigerian polity is still writhing in the throes of internal colonisation, perpetrated by a wealthy few who do not care what happens to their fellow compatriots who are not as financially endowed as they are. To these usurpers the country's performance should be assessed by how much wealth they steal from government rather than the Human Development Index.

It is also obvious that the present actors in the political arena do not understand the tenets of democracy. There has been several cases of gross violation of the constitution by both the executive and the legislature. The Senate single handedly amended section 84(5) of the 1999 Constitution, without meeting the requirements specified by the constitution for an amendment to be affected. This is diametrically inconsistent with the principle of constitutional supremacy. The way the Executive has consistently meddled with the legislature has undermined the principle of separation of powers in no small way. Also, the flagrant disobedience of court orders by government officials has not only undermined the effective interpretation of the law by the judiciary but also made a sham of the principle of equality before the law.

The activities of the politicians since May 1999, has been an indefinite study in a Combined Honours of comedies and tragedies. Comedies because sometimes one cannot help but be amused at the conduct of the so called political class, and tragedies so far as the future of our dear country is being sacrificed on the altar of sheer political expediency and crass opportunism. The long and short of it is that the politicians have not learnt their lessons, hence the display of megalomania that we witness today. The same concerns identified by the military to justify their incursion into the murky waters of our national politics are still evident today. The Obasanjo administration has demonstrated a culpable inability to proffer solutions to the nations problems.

The same administration has refused to institute a sovereign national dialogue that would give all of the segmental cleavages an opportunity to discuss these seemingly insurmountable problems and agree on far reaching solutions. In the ensuing confusion there is strong agitation for a generation power shift. The federal government is embroiled in a war with labour unions over deregulation of the oil sector. In another front it is at loggerheads with states over resource control. The provision of social amenities is at its lowest ebb, while our major towns and cities have become breeding grounds for criminals and people who indulge in ritual killings. Things seem to be falling apart and very soon it looks like the centre will not be able to hold for the government of the day, which is obviously going through a crisis of allegiance with the citizenry.

Our leaders need to be de-philosophisised and re-philosophisised. They need to realise that the essence of governance is the pursuit and actualisation of happiness for majority of the people. They must understand that they are public officers because of us, but we are not Nigerians because of them. To this extent they must always confer with the electorate before reaching decisions that affect the generality of the collectivity. They should uphold the tenets of democracy at all times, unless they want to run the democratic train aground. A time is coming when every one of them will account for his or her deeds and misdeeds. To whom much is given, much is expected. What we desire is a democratic milieu that is free from the ambitions of the rich and the pettiness of the poor.

Published on Thursday, April 19, 2001 in Guardian Newspaper Nigeria. Has anything changed since then? Be the judge!