Currently the G8 meeting that just concluded in Italy and in attendance are all developed nations and the other five developing nations such as China, Brazil, India, South Africa, and Mexico. Interesting enough, Egypt is also in attendance. Prior to this meeting of the G8, a couple of months ago G20 meeting was hosted in England, and out of curtsy, South Africa was also in attendance. When President Obama left the G8 meeting, he headed to Ghana for a State visit and that will be his first African visit since assuming his Presidency. We may be wondering how and what all of these events had in common, and the answer will be the significance of the absence of Nigeria in such a world stage.

While in Ghana, President Obama on Saturday the 11^th of July, 2009, gave some chilling American Policy initiatives proposed shift in regards to Africa and Nigeria will be well advised to pay a close attention to. Obama stated that, “we must start from the simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans”, because for too long, Africa had depended on the west and blamed others for its mishaps or lack of it thereof. He recognized that, “for just as it is important to emerge from the control of other nations, it is even more important to build one’s own nation.” Why is that important to Nigeria, we have had too many examples where Nigeria is well equipped to take care of its problems but due to corruption had failed to do so. Case in point, President Obasanjo’s government budgeted Millions of Dollars in order to rehabilitate the nation’s airport, and unfortunately, after all that money spent, the World Bank is coming to the aid by granting $10M for the same project. Does that then mean that only a western institution can effect changes in Nigeria?

Obama went on to remind Africa that, “this is a new moment of great promise. Only this time, we’ve learned that it will not be giants like Nkrumah and Kenyatta who will determine Africa’s future. Instead, it will be you – the men and women in Ghana’s parliament – the people you represent. It will be the young people brimming with talent and energy and hope who can claim the future that so many in the previous generations never realized. [D]evelopment depends on good governance. This is the ingredient which has been too far missing in far too many places, for too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa’s potential. And that is a responsibility that can only be met by Africans.” Our experience in Nigeria supports the undeniable notion that development depends on good governance, and while we also understood in Nigeria passively that, “governments that respect the will of their own people, that by consent and not coercion, are more prosperous, they are more stable and more successful than governments that do not.” 

There is also a global universal appreciation of the facts that repression can take many forms, and too many nations, even those that have elections, are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty. “No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves.. or the police – if the police can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where government skims 20 percent off the top … or the head of the Port authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and even occasionally you sprinkle an election in there.” These are facts already well documented in Nigeria by international commentators and the Nigerian media over time. On October 30^th, 2007, I wrote an article that was published in the Nigerian World News, titled “Nigeria International Relations Culture and Corruption”, and in that piece, I posited that the individual realist theory on perception also transfers to the State theory of perception. I also tried to explain how the international perception of Nigeria’s corruption affects many aspects of the business climate in Nigeria.

Democracy in many ways could be summed up as a political system in which all members of the society have equal share of formal political power. In modern representative democracy, the formal equality is embodied primarily in the right to vote. The history of democracy – the history of empowering the people by giving them a say in their political entities – traces back from its origins in the ancient world to its re-emergence and rise from the 17^th Century to the present day. There are certain expectations of democracy such as right to vote, human rights protection, right to self determination, right to the expectation of good governance which usually is embodied in the expectations of democratic dividends such as the provision of basic infrastructure, security, basic healthcare system, and a just and an equitable society that is premised on the rule of law and equitable justice.

Absent those expectations of the dividends of democracy Obama also understood those who in the society are needed in order to hold democratic leaders to account by his comments, “we see that in courageous journalist like Aremeyaw Anas, who risked his life to report the truth. We see it in police like Patience Quaye, who helped prosecute the first human trafficking in Ghana. We see it in the young people who are speaking up against patronage and participating in the political process.” All of this are not new to Nigeria, but when Nigerian leadership rubbishes its’ credibility by the way that it handled Mallam Ribadu the past EFCC head, the international community could not help but notice the affront, deception, lip service and total corrupt nature of the Nigerian Leadership. It makes the Federal Governments efforts of rebranding itself a much more tedious and audacious task to achieve. Also a call from Obama on the young and the entire populace that they hold its leaders to account also takes into cognition the history of what the grassroots had done in previous eras and previous sections of the world in order to reclaim its mandate, its’ government and to help redirect the course and direction of its’ respective countries.

Non Violent revolutions – is a revolution using mostly non violent protest against governments seen as entrenched and authoritarian to advocate democracy, liberalism, or national independence in their nation. Non violent revolution is possible despite the controlling government taking brutal measures against protesters. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, thinkers in the Soviet Union and other socialist dictatorships started strengthening the civil resistance and samizdat expanded. Two major revolutions during the 1980’s strongly influenced political movements that followed. The first was the 1986 overthrow of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, from which term [people power] became widely used especially in Hispanic and Asian nations. Three years later, the revolutions of 1989 that ousted socialist dictatorships in the Eastern Block reinforced the concept, beginning with the victory of solidarity opposition in that years’ Polish legislative elections. The Revolution of 1989 provided the template for the so-called color revolutions in mainly post communist states, which use a color or a flower as a symbol and named after the velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. The most recent of such Revolution and the use of color will be the just concluded Iranian election in which the opposition mobilized descent by use of “GREEN” in its’ movement. 

In the most recent times, United States of America reclaimed its countries direction by voting Obama into power and that in itself is a silent revolution. Democracies succeed when they allow the masses to either participate or to mobilize. Without the American establishment allowing the masses to exercise its discontent, Obama would have not been declared a winner of the past American election and the masses would have turned to a violent Revolution instead. We also can remember the French Commune, a government in Paris that briefly ruled from March 28, 1871. The Commune was as a result of an uprising in Paris after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian war. This uprising was chiefly caused by the disaster in the war and the growing discontent among French workers and the worker discontent can be traced to the first worker uprising, the Canut Revolts, in Lyon and Paris in 1830s.

In 1917 in a book written by Vladimer Lenin, it describes the role that state plays in society along with the necessity of proletarian revolution. Lenin also talks extensively about the state and its inherent nature. He States that the State, at all times, is a tool for class oppression, which is where he agrees with the anarchist. The State was a creation out of the desire of groups of people to control each other, when their disputes and desires could not be halted in any other way. The State whether it is a Dictatorship or a Democracy, will always remain a tool for the ruling class. Using dialectics, he says that even in a Democratic Capitalist Republic that the ruling class will lose power, as it will maintain a complete stranglehold on the State, using “behind the scenes” actions, as it maintains an idealistic shade of Freedom and Democracy when, it truth, such attributes do not exist. Following these conclusions, Lenin says the proletariat will naturally make its’ own communal State modeled after the Paris Commune of 1817, and then proceed slowly to suppress the bourgeois dissenters. Lenin then says, as Marx did in his younger years, that the State will “wither away”, as the institutions begin to “lose their political character” until they are gone. Lenin felt that this change would be gradual and slow so that no “power hungry person” could take over, and so the population would not allow such a thing, just as Obama had mentioned in empowering the masses to get involved with its’ own political process. 

In conclusion, Nigeria as a nation needs its’ masses especially the young to participate aggressively in its’ political process by demanding accountability from its leaders, after all, their respective society and the mess that will be left behind will be theirs’ to fix after this generation is gone. It is also equally compelling when one considers America’s future foreign policy initiative towards Africa from Obama’s speech, “[I] have directed my administration to give greater attention to corruption in our human rights report. People everywhere should have the right to start business or get an education without paying bribe. We have a responsibility to support those who act responsibly and isolate those who don’t, and that is exactly what America will do.” Violent Revolutions are no longer an acceptable norm in civilized societies but peaceful participations as witnessed from the South African struggle with Nelson Mandela, The America peaceful movement with Martin Luther King and India’s Mahatma Gandhi will be exactly the kind of a movement that will be needed in order to reshape Nigeria’s future. The international community will not effect such change for Nigeria, since it will have to come from within. Nigeria and its youth in particular can certainly rise up and demand changes from its’ leadership. Absent such change, Nigeria will further be relegated to the inconsequential oblivion in the comity of Nations.

Cecil Ibegbu

cibegbu@yahoo.com

United States of America

Robot  # 1 | 15.07.2009 08:36

Currently the G8 meeting that just concluded in Italy and in attendance are all developed nations and the other five developing nations such as China, Brazil, India, South Africa, and Mexico. Interesting enough, Egypt is also in attendance. Prior to this meeting of the G8, a couple of months ago G20 meeting was hosted in England, and out of curtsy, South Africa was also in attendance. When President Obama left the G8 meeting, he headed to Ghana for a State visit and that will be his first African visit since assuming his Presidency. We may be wondering how and what all of these events had in common, and the answer will be the significance of the absence of Nigeria in such a world stage....Read the full article.

quietswami  # 2 | 16.07.2009 17:32

Cecil, As much as I enjoyed your piece/s, I tend to struggle with generalisations - corruption, leadership, revolutions... My question is - what is the vision, the idea to get us out of our jam? That some form of change or transformation is required is understood and not in dispute - how to achieve such with the necessary steps is often missing. Change often does not happen of its own accord without the plan to make it happen. Will be keen on the steps you propose.