By Pat Utomi
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 symbolise 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 analyse 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.
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