27 Oct 2006 |
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| THE SAMSON SYNDROME Chris Ngwodo In the gallery of tragic heroes of history and legend, the odyssey of Samson stands out for its pathos. His birth is announced by an angel as the advent of a deliverer who would emancipate his people from Philistine oppression. Samson grows to become an invincible warrior and indestructible leader of his people famed for his superhuman strength. However, this gift comes with a self-inflicted curse. Samson’s apparent tendency toward self-destruction is revealed in his dalliance with his enemies. He breaks all the rules meant to govern his conduct and increasingly discards moral integrity in his dealings. Finally, Samson is betrayed as much by his own inner demons as by the seductress that is sponsored by his enemies to discover the secret of his great strength. He is captured, blinded and then condemned to servitude inside the bowels of a philistine dungeon. At the very end, Samson pleads with God to restore his strength one least time when he is paraded before philistine nobles. God answers whereupon Samson collapses a massive temple upon himself and all his enemies wiping out the philistine ruling class in one strike and vanquishing more enemies at his death than throughout his lifetime. Thus ends the saga of Samson. Like Oedipus or Achilles, Samson is a flawed hero who is ultimately unable to sustain the tension between his strengths and his weaknesses. Beyond that, he is an archetype of leadership that has been corrupted by power. The Samsonian saga also has parallels with the unfolding drama starring Nigeria’s ruling class. Nigerian politics and governance is still highly personalized. Our system has not evolved to the point where it can be operated by the autopilot mechanisms of institutional autonomy. For this reason, individuals drive politics and policy. It is also, why political engagements can often be reduced to personality contests. With this in mind, the politics of 2007 can be interpreted as a struggle between three personalities to shape the destiny of Nigeria. President Olusegun Obasanjo, as the incumbent obviously has an interest in who succeeds him. His embattled vice-president Atiku Abubakar is also in the frame given his loudly articulated intention to succeed his boss. Thirdly, there is the mercurial Ibrahim Babangida who has also expressed his intention to stage a long planned return to Aso Rock after his exit in 1993. In 1999, Obasanjo was elected as a pacifier and as a stabilizing influence to assuage the angst percolating in the south-west. He was marketed as the one man that could mend the delicate fault lines between north and south as well as between the military elite and the civilian political class. Obasanjo was chosen to maintain the status quo ante. His antecedents in his first coming as military head of state and thereafter as elder statesman apparently predisposed him for such a role. Instead, Obasanjo has turned out to be what management consultants call an agent of change, a leader with an ambitious agenda for reform. But what makes him truly dangerous is that he is neither a philosopher-King nor an idealistic reformer. Most Nigerians hinge their hopes of national redemption on the impotent idealism of angels in the public square. Obasanjo is a pragmatist who believes that the end justifies the means. In positive terms, this means that no trifles or technicalities will stand in the way of his goal. In a land of convoluted processes garrisoned by bureaucratic delays and filibustering roadblocks, the Obasanjo administration has gotten some results. Nevertheless, Obasanjo’s pragmatism is also a weakness. His belief that the end justifies the means has often rendered him susceptible to political transactions of doubtful moral quality. Disturbingly for purists, he has demonstrated a willingness to sidetrack the system in order to achieve his ends. Quite understandably, an administration committed to reform will find itself at many points having to make a choice between constitutional exactitude and results. For Obasanjo that choice has been made frequently in favour of the latter option, the course dictated by pragmatism and realism. Whenever confronted by two evils namely acquiescing to the status quo and overriding bureaucratic roadblocks of the system in order to reform it, the administration has often chosen the latter and lesser evil. The president will bring his pragmatism to bear on his mediation of the first civilian-to-civilian transition in Nigerian history. This is what makes the politics of 2007 highly unpredictable as Obasanjo moves to secure his legacy and move Nigeria away from the reach of political forces angling for domination. The recent indictment of vice president Atiku on corruption charges and the EFCC investigation of Babangida may be read as efforts by Obasanjo to redesign the playing field. Idealists may see something else_ the dangerous autocratic use of state power to hound political opponents and abbreviate the political space. In their view, the Nigerian people should decide who rules them after 2007. Only a superficial reading of Nigerian politics would place the people at the epicenter of change. The personalized nature of our politics means that typically elections are pre-decided elite contests for which the electoral process is merely a rubberstamp. There is a larger picture here that must not be lost in translation. What some see as an undemocratic abbreviation of the political space, I see as the wholly necessary long awaited sanitation of the political stage, which is something, Nigerians want. In reality, our personalized politics means that governance is about persons not people. In the peculiar logic of our system, stability is predicated on a turn by turn sequence of big men on the national stage each enjoying the honour of cutting and sharing the national cake. This turn-by-turn arrangement is cloaked under the euphemistic subtlety of “zoning.” For example, the thinking currently in some quarters is that power should return to the north after Obasanjo, which means that power should pass to those who are perceived as champions of that region namely Babangida, Atiku or Buhari. For similar reasons, there are those who want power to move to the south so that the elite of that region can have their shot at the national cake. None of these permutations factors in the people in the way that democratic purists like to think. To understand this, is to understand why the psychology of politics in Nigeria is primarily feudal. There is an implicit idea in our socio-political consciousness that some people are born to rule. We believe that all people are equal but some persons are more equal than others. Given this mindset, it was always going to take something formidable to dislodge the deeply entrenched interests in our polity. Accordingly, Obasanjo is playing the role of the unstoppable object that is steaming full throttle towards the immovable political monoliths of our land. Compromise is unlikely and a collision of implacable interests is inevitable. All three personalities believe in the justice of their causes and subscribe to a divine right to shape Nigeria’s future. Babangida’s burning desire is to rewrite history and provide a stately end to his tenure, which was cut short in 1993. Atiku is propelled by a quest for the ultimate prize after years of deputizing for Shehu Yar’adua and Obasanjo. He sees himself as the heir to Yar’adua unfulfilled aspirations to the presidency. Finally, there is Obasanjo who is driven by a vision to remake Nigeria and a sense of personal destiny as the last big man that will rule the country. The triangular contest between these men is an elite power struggle that will redefine the polity and the elite as well. Obasanjo in his seven years in power has undermined the solidarity of Nigeria’s feudal ruling class as no other person has done. The politics of 2007 revolves round the actions of these men. They are the cause; every other event is an effect. This is evidenced by the fact that politicians and observers are waiting to see the outcome of the PDP convention and Obasanjo’s decision before hedging their bets. The Samsonian dimension of this unfolding drama is that what sociologists call class suicide appears inevitable. Many of those that have hinged their hopes on Nigeria’s ruling elite will now find themselves headed for a cul de sac. There are those who say that Obasanjo’s decision to confront the forces that brought him to power amounts to political suicide. They may be right at that. However, we should not forget that Samson’s suicide was ultimately redemptive, restoring his reputation in the hall of heroes and preserving his nation’s posterity from her enemies.
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