Now the speaker has resigned her position there can be calm once again in the polity and Nigeria and Nigerians can move to other important issues. There is a need to review the lessons learned during the fifty six day duration from the release of the Idoko report and the resignation of the former speaker to help in our learning process and for posterity. During the whole process Nigerian politicians acted true to their multi-faced character, the analysis of their motives is not within the purview of this article but more disturbing and the core of this article was the behavior of our so called democrats or defenders of democracy, those I wish to label “Neo-Democrats”- professing democrats who do not mind if the end is achieved through undemocratic means, during the whole Etteh saga.   

During the political logjam created by the former speaker’s refusal to resign it was strange listening to Afenifere, the Pan-Yoruba group, different political parties and other Neo-Democrats call for the president to intervene in the crisis in the House concerning Speaker Etteh.  One does not readily follow the logic of those who were seeking the intervention of Aso-rock in an issue that was purely a house of representative issue but Levi Obijiofor articulated the thinking of the Neo-Democrats in his article Yar Adua’s silence Etteh’s strength (Guardian, October 26, 2007). Levi Obijiofor writes “..No one has asked Yar'Adua to use his executive powers to intervene in a bullish way to end the riotous situation in the House of Representatives. To do so would imply a violation of the principle of separation of powers and a breach of the Constitution. What the nation expects Yar'Adua to do is for him to use his high office and his influence as leader of the PDP to advise Etteh and her partners in crime to step aside in the interest of transparency in political leadership and as a mark of respect for other honourable House members…… at another level, Yar'Adua's silence over Etteh's intransigence constitutes his official and unofficial endorsement of corruption in high places..”, reading through the entire article along with comments of other Neo-Democrats made at different times one has to marvel as the gospel of expediency is masked in believable common sense.

What the “Neo-Democrats” were in short doing was extending an invitation for dictatorship masked under moral obligation, they are in effect feeding Yar-Adua the same diet they fed Obasanjo. More dangerous than the sycophants in  the corridors of power are Neo-Democrats for their actions are subversive to the democracy they claim to defend and even more disturbing is the fact that they think they are right and they sneak such illogical reasoning as commonsense as seen in the Levi Obijiofor’s article. Since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999, Neo-Democrats have been a major factor in the erosion of a stable democracy and a major hindrance in attaining separation of powers as they refuse to follow disciplined institutional building steps to articulate legitimate democratic aspirations and rather use “short-cuts” to reach their aims. They find the arm of the executive an easily pliable tool in attaining their ambitions and in courting the executive they are surreptitiously tilting the balance in favor of the executive arm, in every major issue such as the Sharia issue, Neo-Democrats unashamedly call for “presidential intervention” to make things right and when the executive arm starts overreaching its boundaries as seen in the Obasanjo years they immediately wear the toga of democracy screaming dictatorship at the top of their lungs!

The aborted third term plot is an example of sustainable gains achieved when democratic ideals are followed to the letter and expediency is given a backseat. During Obasanjo’s hide and seek game to get a third term all the Neo-Democrats initially invested copious energy in naively calling the president to come out and deny he wanted a third term, they hinged so much hope in the fact that once the man denied the allegation it would be put to rest, but they failed to ask how long till another politician seeks the same thing?  What we saw after it became clear Obasanjo would not dissociate himself with tenure extension was the aligning into interest groups of those pro and against tenure extension, the mobilization of public interest against and for tenure extension and the satiation of the issue in the public. We saw democracy in action and saw the people (where the real power lies) participating actively and raising the stakes, with so much public interest generated and the overwhelming opposition to tenure elongation, the senate was forced to allow the public into the sanctuary of the chambers, and the eventual outcome was the dumping of the “Mantu constitution” and the triumph of the majority.

 One benefactor of aborted third term plot was the senate, the senate was invigorated, the democratic process in its finest form had achieved what it was sent out to do in ensuring the good of the populace at all times and the leadership of Ken Nnamani got a boost from this victory. The senate also gained legitimacy in the eyes of the people, the people had partnered with the senate to give a deadly blow to tyranny in repudiating the notion that individuals not institutions mattered and people began to understand that the senate actually had useful purposes aside from being a corrupt house where people give themselves lavish furniture allowances. The record is set as death now concerning tenure elongation, generations of Nigerians would have it on record that we had defeated tyranny a luxury we would not have had assuming the issue had been resolved had the former president come out to “denounce” his ambition.

And these “undemocratic short cuts” lay at the center of the dysfunction of the Obasanjo years, the political actors both in the ruling political parties, the non-existent opposition and our Neo-Democrats still define democracy as an extension of dictatorship thus defining everything in the “Strongman mould”, institution building chances are reduced to petty personalization and this weakens every institution that is created to check executive excess strengthening or favoring the emergence of a dictator. It was so ridiculous during the Obasanjo years that whenever there was a change in guard of the leadership of the senate one realized the leadership had fallen out of favor with the emerging dictator and in fairness to Obasanjo he never really understood the difference between democracy and his previous stint in power as the landscape was still the same and all the actors behaved the same way as in a military regime. This personalization would affect legitimate social changing institutions such as the EFCC as it was viewed as the extension of the dictator’s oppression of his opposition.

Though the intentions of our Neo-Democrats are noble, they must be schooled in the discipline of adhering to democratic ideals even in the face of a changing landscape. Neo-Democrats must understand that more important than getting the results they want, no matter how noble, is the process of attaining the end as the process is vital to capacity building to grow an institution. One cannot dye democratic principles with every changing situation, more importantly than ensuring that Etteh resigned and we have a semblance of sanity is to allow the house devoid of either explicit or implicit executive interference build its organizational capacity to internally deal with corruption. The underlying tenet in Democracy 101 is that the in multitude of voices, the voice of reason would emerge victorious because the voices are expressed and not necessarily because one voice is loudest, this tenet distinguishes democracy from communism and dictatorship. Neo-Democrats must learn that true democratic processes would of their own grow their strength and such specious reasoning for external intervention to its working is simply subversive no matter the moral justification.

By calling the president to intervene Neo-Democrats also expose their impotence in the arena of influence as most of our Neo-Democrats are just armchair analysts and not actual participants in building our democracy. When Levi Obijiofor speaks of the “president’s influence”, he makes is sound as if that influence is backed solely by executive fiat or that influence is in the sole custody of the president, the NLC teaches a lesson in influence as it can back its position with rallies and mass mobilization, the NLC possess influence that matches presidential influence and in the last two duels with the president has bent the president’s will. In abstaining from a core tenet of democracy- grass root participation, Neo-Democrats only boast of influence on the pages of newspapers and thus their penchant to effect change by riding on the influence of others through moral pontification, this remains the underlying reason why no viable opposition has been built in Nigerian politics after Awolowo, the norm in democracies should be that of competing influence and not the permanent emergence of a dominant influence.

It is not for us to decide what the purpose of the president’s silence during the crisis meant but to describe as Levi does in his article saying “..Yar'Adua's silence is a double-edged sword. By his silence, he has set a benchmark on which his future performance would be evaluated” is not only pretentious but is typical of the blackmail that forces tryants to be made of simple men, for every tyrant is pushed by the glory for an immortal name as a great leader and hideous treachery are committed in attaining that glory! What Levi and other Neo-Democrats are in effect saying is that a backdoor to breaking the separation of powers should exist whenever it is expedient, one only wonders what the president would do when situations arise that he can exploit such back-door to further his ascendancy? Arguments and reasoning as advanced by Levi Obijiofor entrench dictators pure and simple and this was what Obasanjo was fed and now they are starting to feed Yar-Adua. Separation of powers should be a jealously guided notion in principle and practice, not a notion subject to the vicissitudes of Neo-democrats and their moral platitudes  especially in nascent democracies where foundational defects could be cast forever, what should be resisted is the “doctrine of expediency” especially by those that claim to be apostles of democracy and a free society.  

Thus, rather than call the president to intervene in issues that must be thrashed out in public discourse or through duly elected representatives Neo-Democrats should mobilize their influence base to be active in achieving their democratic interests. Neo-Democrats should learn to use democratic channels to achieve democratic ideals rather than calling the president to intervene as if we were still under a military regime. Obasanjo’s tyrannical regime was created and aided by Nigerians, created and fed by those who made the office of the president the only vehicle for change, such attitude has strengthened the dictatorial tendencies in those that occupy executive office and emasculated alternative arms of government and institutions. Today, the activism we see in the judiciary is an attestation of the boldness institutions develop when allowed to build on itself, democracy still remains our best vehicle for a better Nigeria and all efforts should be geared at strengthening it and the separation of powers is an alienable tenet of democracy that must be guided fanatically.

Robot  # 1 | 01.11.2007 21:20

Now the speaker has resigned her position there can be calm once again in the pol...Read the full article.

bob  # 2 | 02.11.2007 00:10

silence is the best answer to a ...