Democracy Comes To Nigeria ( published by: Dabo Euclid)

By Osuolale Alalade
The struggle of the Goodluck Jonathan administration to
entrench itself in power or engineer the takeover of an
interim administration has a historical context.
Notwithstanding the many paradoxes thrown up by the
sad state of affairs, the dilemma that Nigerians face
represent an encouraging turn of democratic
advancement of the country. In 1993, the Nigeria Army,
as the guarantor of northern hegemonic pretension with
a very deceptive “maradona” General Ibrahim
Babaginda at the helm of affairs, nullified what remain
the fairest and most transparent democratic elections in
the country. By this treasonable act, the northern
dominated military brought the country close to the very
edge of the precipice. Accordingly, 12 June, the
anniversary of those elections, in the minds of the true
progressive nationalists, has since remained the
watershed for democratic entry into the Nigerian
political firmament.
The final outcome of June 12 saga was the emergence
of a most brutal northern hegemonic military oppression
that sought to finally pacify the Yoruba of the West and
extinguish its legendary robust democratic credentials.
The dark goggled maximum ruler, Sani Abacha, failed
woefully as he was fought to a standstill, with the
arsenal of the unassailable and conscientious moral
violence, until his handlers did the needful. Every
president since then has been a product of political
shenanigans masked in an “arrangeedemocracy.”
Under this hollowed out phenomenon of political
contestation, General Olusegun Obasanjo was schemed
into office by the post Abacha vanguard of the northern
hegemony. He was understood to be a willing vassal of
the North and thus preferred. The empty tank
democracy that brought him into office had its unique
underpinnings that seemingly became entrenched as the
normative anchor for the elite circle of political
opportunists and poll rogues and poll robbers that held
Nigerian in a stranglehold. General Obasanjo, a self-
perceived wisest man on the surface of the planet,
heading the political class, has since imagined that as a
product of this brand of democracy, authentic
democracy itself was a convenient abstraction to be
exploited to advance parochial and his personal
objectives. That had been the logic of Nigeria’s
democracy since June 12. On this basis, under the
peculiar tenets of this obnoxious democracy, Obasanjo
arranged for the consummation of an Umar Yar’adua
and GoodluckEbele Jonathan presidency. This ticket
was ushered into office on the platform of a most
formidable coalition of the most despicable political
marauders any country could be saddled with.
At all levels true democratic contestation across the
country was derailed. Politics under this travesty
revolved around the activities of ubiquitous political
godfathers. They had emerged at the various sub-
national levels as part of the culture of counterfeit
democracy now personified in Obasanjo at the national
level. The god father was the political dynamic. Intra-
party primaries were just to go through the motions of
the anointing the god son into the gubernatorial,
senatorial or House race. The choice of the people did
not matter and the elections were expected to be rigged.
Brigandage was the norm. The democratic space was
cluttered with unrepentant and famous rogues, recycled
treasury looters, brigands, opportunists of various hues
and outright social renegades.
This was odious democracy that operated on its own
peculiar Nigerian axioms. These foundations deviated
from the conventional principles and tenets associated
with real democracy. The outcome was predictable.
Obasanjo’s brand of democracy was not designed to
deliver the dividends of democratic openings. Its internal
procedures were a modified or civilianized version of a
command hierarchy. Every one called him not Mr.
President but “Baba”, reminiscent of the era of
omniscient Mobutu Sese Seko Zaire. It was scandal
filled and led to the complete disaffect from the
population who had no voice. Jonathan was a product
of this sham political business deal and operated under
its principles.In these elections, he has sought to
perpetuate this sham political legacy.
There was no primary in his party for a candidate to be
nominated to contest for re-election. Jonathan had
coopted every criminal he thought would be useful to
elongate his regime. The Abacha family was not only
rehabilitated, it was caressed and transformed into a
potent political force in Kano with his scion potentially
transformed into a governor. Major Hamzat Al-
Mustapha is feted in government houses. Ex convict
DiepreyeAlamieyeseigha has presidential pardon and
adorned as a hero in Bayelsa State. No value was
sacrosanct any more. The only value that mattered was
the electability of Jonathan. So under Jonathan with a
broken national moral compass, Justice Salami gate,
Stella Oduagate, Deziani gate, Femi FaniKayode gate,
Oristsajofor gate, NNPC gate, Central Bank gate all
came in quick succession. All these were against the
background of a raging mindlessly violent Boko Haram
insurgency.
The lame response of the military to the Boko Haram
insurgency is consistent with the final general collapse
of the structures and institutions of democratic
governance of the Nigerian state. The Nigerian
education system went kaput. Medical tourism
continued with this Nigerian president. Infrastructure
broke down. Power supply became elusive. Every
Nigerian household is an entity that must provide its
own clinic, water, power and arrange for the education
of the children. As for the military, the new set of
unfortunate generals has been denied the opportunities
of stealing directly from state coffers as governors and
military administrators.
So they feed fat on the budget for the welfare of their
men, for arms and ammunition, training and everything
else. But his is not unprecedented like Tafa Balogun of
the Nigeria Police Force, the generals appropriated the
budget of their institutions for personal use and sent the
soldiers literally barehanded to confront a determined
and well heeled insurgency. The consequences have
been catastrophic. Our daughters were abducted and
are being used as human arsenals of war. The lucky
returnees would never be the same girls that were taken
away. The consequences include the phenomenon of
Sambisa forest. We see the implications in a humbled
Nigeria running from pillar to post haranguing America
about not doing enough to fight Boko Haram, crawling
to the United Nations, prostrating before the African
Union that has created the Multinational Joint Task
Force for the Lake Chad Basin plus One (MJFF) to
deploy in Nigeria-a euphemistic acronym that seeks to
soften the blow of the humiliating descent of Nigeria.
The consequences of arrangee democracy ushered in by
the north to protect its god given right to lead Nigeria
from behind had altered the underlying principles of the
governance of the Nigerian state. But while they were at
it, Nigerian society was being transformed in spite of
the state.
What has changed in today’s Nigeria is the cumulative
impact of the incremental sensitization of the pro-
democracy movements such as Save Nigeria group, the
Bring back our girls campaign, and the efforts the many
well-meaning civil society and their unending
mobilization initiatives throughout the country. An
important first factor is the national character of these
social movements. By this character they have helped
to undermine the solidity of the hitherto entrenched
parochial worldview of all Nigerian constituencies and
stakeholders. Although, Nigeria has yet to witness the
massive pro-democracy mobilization associated with
spontaneous public upheavals of Tunisia, Egypt and
Libya, a critical mass of people across the country that
are acutely politically and socially aware in civil society
has emerged.
What the rise in social consciousness has meant in the
emerged crisis is to narrow or constrain the choices that
the Jonathan administration, a current expression of
Nigeria’s arrangee democracy, has in wriggling out of a
very bad situation. In the past, the General
MuhammaduBuhari/ TundeIdiagbon administration
came to the rescue to relieve a confused Shehu Shagari
administration of its burden and to ensure that the
interest of the North was supreme. This same mindset
later directed the Ibrahim Babaginda truncation of the
MKO Abiola mandate that never saw the light of day.
The Abacha regime drew its legitimacy from the silence,
connivance and unhidden satisfaction of the northern
elite to the horror of its oppression of the South, and in
particular the Yoruba of the west.
The second important context is that a highly
diminished and demoralised Nigerian Armed Forces is
fighting two major wars. The first is the war against
Boko Haram that has not gone too well. A second is an
internal struggle to restore a modicum of respectability
and legitimacy within the institution itself and in the
perception of a large majority of discerning civilian
population. Without this own sense of legitimacy, its
internal cohesion is febrile, such that any attempt on its
part to seize political power would doom it into self-
destruct. A mere attempt of this throwback to past
military adventurism in politics would import grave
consequences for the longevity of the Nigerian state.
The rise of a pro-democracy movement with a largely
national outlook and the unenviable state of the military
have meant that the current crisis cannot be resolved by
President Jonathan through the rumored interim
arrangement to be led by its sympathizers-either military
or civilian. An interim arrangement, as we saw with the
marginal Shonekan interim post Babaginda
administration is very vulnerable to any ambitious
adventurer in the military.
There is no guarantee that such an accursed
intervention, if it survives public agitation, would not
probe all or the most damaging of the sins and “gates”
earlier identified. Some have speculated that it is the
fear of these potential probes that is responsible for the
palpable anxiety of Jonathan and the Femi Fani
Kayodes to derail any possibility of General Buhari’s
succession to power.
It is thus the rise of this new national democraticn
ferment that ultimately has made the holding of
elections inevitable for the Goodluck Jonathan
presidency. Without the options of a contrived interim
intervention to stave off a dreaded judgment day, the
Jonathan administration and their wayfarers are left
with no other choice than to exploit the last bastions
and frontiers of irrationality in Nigeria-religious
sentiments. Sadly for the country, most of those who
seem to favor the continuity of the Jonathan presidency
are captains and purveyors of the primacy of the almost
impregnable fortress of pervasive religious madness in
the country. They thrive in a self-induced paranoi of
Islamic religious hegemony.
The compulsion to protect Christianity in their mind
should trump the national struggle to demand
accountability and good governance. It is almost as if
the horrendous lessons of Boko Haram and the Islamic
State in the Levant and Orient (ISIL) are lost on
everyone. But here too, the Jonathan administration is
losing. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is
divided along the lines of those who recognise that the
handling of the affairs of the country has been appalling
and also determined not to be victims of the parochial
manipulation of the democratic challenge by the
Jonathan presidency that is polarizing Nigerian society.
Media reports now indicate that the division in the
Pentecostal fold has assumed a new dimension as the
diverse responses to the evolution of the political
process in the country has instigated religious leaders
to publicly condemn each other. Some have castigated
those who are perceived to have turned themselves into
political errandboys overnight. Among the castigators is
Primate Elijah Ayodele, the founder and spiritual leader
of Inri Evangelical Spiritual Church who has wondered
that the the level of religious contempt by notable
religious leaders was unprecedented. Condemning their
lack of courage to confront the political class of their
mistakes, Primate Ayodele believes that the men of God
were disgracing God by relating with the people in
power.
Obasanjo god-fathered and cuddled this now serpentine
Jonathan administration, advanced the unwholesome
principles of presidential sit tightism in a constitutional
dispensation in Nigeria that he sought to destroy, he
massacred whole communities of Odi and Zaki Biam as
a democratically elected president, before then under
him as a military despot, he caused to be killed
hundreds of Nigerian students on Black Friday in 1978.
Also, under his tragic watch the assassination of a
sitting Attorney General as with many other political
actors took place. These murder are unresolved.
Most of his policies failed, including the ill-fated national
identification project. The power project remains in
darkness. The western world may be fooled in urging
him to continue to pretend that he is relevant to Africa’s
future. Nigerians may be sycophants, but they are not
fooled. This naturally leads to a word on Gbagbo.
Obasanjo cannot hold the candle beside this great
African nationalist, to whom those who are truly
educated on the events in Cote d’Ivoire pay their
respects every day. It is a shame that a Nigerian ruler is
so ignorant of the undercurrents in his own backyard. It
is known that Gbagbo rebuffed this national
embarrassment of a general. Late Arthur Mills realized
Obasanjo was taking Africa on a shameful ride to a
historic cul de sac and backtracked. It took the likes of
Thabo Mbekis and the Musevenis, Nascimento’s of
Angola and more importantly men of good conscience in
France to try to salvage the tatters created by simplistic
appreciation of Obasanjo interventions in a very
complex situation in Cote d’Icvoire. The hapless and
clueless president Jonathan inherited Obasanjo’s mess.
There are books out there to remind Obasanjo of what
truly transpired in Cote d’Ivoire.
In summation, and away from this necessary
digression, the Jonathan debacle is a good omen of the
future possibilities in a terribly abused land. Finally,
what we witness today is the whirlwind of a democracy
coming to Nigeria. Despite the paradox of being forced
to look up to a former military dictator to unravel an
odious system of renegades who have bastardized our
democracy,it is the hope that this train would arrive
safely at its destination.