Authoritarian Mentality

By Fred Igbeare

Remember the injunction ‘convert or die’?  Well, that seems to be the unwitting human mantra.  In Nigeria it is a veritable art form, a way of life.  Many people say they want democracy, but at heart they are budding despots.  If you agree with them, they smile at you and wish you well.  If you disagree with them, they ride your back roughshod like Josef Stalin, wishing you dead.  This duplicity is the essence of the authoritarian mentality.

In a land of laws, democracy is strengthened by due process.  To put it simply, due process means playing by the rules to safeguard the rights of all individuals regardless of whether you agree with them or not.  The challenge for us humans is how to resist trampling on due process when we are in a hurry.  Reportedly ratified under duress by the National Assembly, the Ekiti State of Emergency (SOE) doesn’t really comply with due process.  That is because duly elected officials still remain suspended from office without regard for their rights or that of the electorate.

The SOE was approved sadly even by those who were supposed to be in the pro-democracy movement. It would seem expediency has contrived to rob these people of much outrage over a clever descent into dictatorship. That approval reveals a terrible truth: many Nigerians unfortunately are yet to overcome a diseased mentality that made possible years of brutish military rule. 

The moral of the Ekiti story: despotic actions are okay when applied against ‘bad’ and not ‘good’ people. ‘Good’ people, of course, being those who agree with us. This contradiction is fuelled by an authoritarian mentality that pervades Nigerian life.  It is a mentality that demonizes those we are opposed to, requiring that they be denied of their legal rights just because they don’t comply with our imperfect will.  The message here is: join the bandwagon or be crushed underneath.

This mentality has restricted creativity and hindered our overall growth because if its suppression of the less powerful and perversion of the powerful.  At the low end of this food chain are the ‘lesser’ men, the harassed women and the frightened children whose contributions to society have become stunted hence.  The debilitating effects of this suppression may have facilitated the easy colonization of Africa and the enslavement of its people, the after effects of which still resound today.

Here is a warning to all budding despots.  And I am talking to all types.  It doesn’t matter if your political leaning is a little or a lot to the left, the right or even dead center!  Hear this: stop playing with fire or it will consume you!  The Russians tried it.  The Germans did it.  Tyranny does not pay!

You cannot trust imperfect human beings with absolute power.  There have to be checks and balances, based on the rule of law which depends on due process.  Those entrusted with special roles in the system, especially judges, have to perform creditably.  A great example would be the judges at the Court of Appeal in Ibadan.  By nullifying Oyo State Governor Rashidi Ladoja’s impeachment, they are fulfilling their roles aptly.  What is left now is for others to promptly enforce their decision or get the Supreme Court to rule otherwise.  Anything else corrupts due process.

For those with the authoritarian mentality, bowing to judicial authority is like pulling teeth. The generals and others who now run our polity are used to operating under military regimes that have historically curtailed judicial powers.  They seem to be struggling to make the transition from the rule of men to the rule of laws.  And many Nigerians appear to be struggling right along with them because of the persistent need for ‘strong’ leaders who invariable turn out to be despots.

The authoritarian mindset in Nigeria today is not unlike that in Hitler’s Germany where it provided fertile grounds for a fiery orator with a ‘strong’ personality.  That budding despot later circumvented the democratic process in Germany.  He went on to set the world afire in a monumental spiral of deaths and destructions.  The momentum for that spiral began with small steps of convenience to deny due process to ‘bad’ people. Ask the Jews and others who suffered gravely! If the Ekiti fiasco doesn’t alert us to the dangers of the authoritarian mindset in Nigeria today, we are in much bigger trouble than I imagined.

The signs for that mindset are everywhere. It drives one person to kill another for political office. It pushes a ‘big’ man to jump the queue ahead of ‘small’ people. It prompts government officials to disobey court orders or trash the constitution to impeach someone.  It compels a president to argue for separation of powers in one breath and to contradict that argument in another breath.  It may one day push a president to use the Ekiti bad precedent as an excuse for further dictatorial acts.

Self-centeredness is a distinguishing mark of the authoritarian mentality: the common good doesn’t count.  Tell me, who has really gained from all these years of tyranny and the current semi-dictatorship in Nigeria?  The rulers live like stars while the people are more or less beggars.  And who really benefited from Stalin’s tyranny in Russia?  The millions he murdered?  Stalin was a serial killer who used the cover of Socialist despotism to justify oppressing his own people. We are asking for similar troubles in Nigeria if we keep playing with this fire.  And it doesn’t matter if the authoritarian flavor we adopt is disguised as capitalism!

To brighten the dreary picture here, let me offer a ray of hope.  Over the years, the pro-democracy movement has grown stronger as more Nigerians have come to recognize the dangers of despotism.  Including ex-military officers, many of them barely survived the Abacha and Babangida schools of hard knocks.  Because human memory is short, there are those who would have us back in those times again since we don’t seem to have learnt the intended lesson.

The lesson to learn is that restraints must be placed on political powers.  Human beings tend to commit atrocities if those powers are unchecked. That is why there is a judiciary, a legislature and an executive.  That is why there is separation of powers for all these and provisions made for freedom of expression, including freedom of the press.  That is why you cannot impose a military dictatorship in one part of a country and not expect that cancer to spread.

Not long ago, the pro-democracy folks scored a great victory when the National Assembly stopped the third-term steamer.  Even in that national debate you could see the authoritarian mentality at play with opponents predicting doomsday if they didn’t get their way.  Nevertheless, my hope was that the lawmakers would build on the third-term victory to reject the SOE in Ekiti.  Unfortunately, they didn’t.  Well, in a democracy you don’t always get your way.  That is the essence of due process.  You win some; you lose some; then you live to fight another day.  Governor Ladoja should know.

(fredlintaz@yahoo.com)

Robot  Villager

# 1 By Fred Igbeare Oyo State Governor Rash...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 04.11.2006 01:38

Shoko Loko Bangoshe  Villager

# 2 Interesting article, Fred. You're right that restraints need to be placed on those who wield power. However, I don't think that the Lockeian model of separating power between the legislature, judiciary and executive works very well. For one thing, the judiciary are usually the weakest in the arrangement - they are appointed by the executive, and are therefore either sympathetic to their goals or are more or less in their pay. The legislature can constitute a more formidable check, but at the end of the day the real wielder of power is the person who can order the troops out on the street - and in most cases, this tends to be the executive rather than the legislature. I think the real check to unbridled power is the realisation that the citizenry will revolt if the abuse of power goes too far. This means that the citizens not only need to be educated on the need to do this, but each citizen also needs to believe that if he were to go out onto the streets to demonstrate, he would meet his fellow citizens there already demonstrating. One man by himself cannot defeat a battalian of soldiers. But the problem here is that it's difficult to get a large group of individuals to act together spontaneously. (And this is why all smart dictators employ the well-known 'divide and rule' tactic.) Other more reliable checks are those exercised by civil society acting in concert. They can publicly denounce the abuse of power; they can alert and motivate the citizenry at large to demonstrate about it; and they can notify the outside world. Abuse of power may be sweet, but public embarrassment is still something that power abusers wish to avoid. But the growth of civil society organisations that are actively interested in monitoring power abuses will go hand in hand with an emerging prosperous and educated middle class, which itself is linked to the growth of the economy. It is from this middle class that the founders and staffers of such organisations will emerge. Posted by Shoko Loko Bangoshe| 04.11.2006 05:17

DeepThought  Villager

# 3 Shoko, Thanks for your analysis which seemed to mirrow my innermost thoughts. If the judiciary is appointed by the executive and if the legislature is controlled by members of the same party that produced the executive, democracy becomes a sham. It appears people often forget that Hitler was democratically elected. As good as your analysis is, I think it lacks one thing, that is the need for the citizenry to have the means be able to credibly resist or impart force. Before Civilians can challenge government force, they first need to get rid of their fear of government power, hence power of government must be thoroughly demistified. Though black African "citizens" ( I use the word citizens with reluctance) spilling out into the street to demonstrate people power against government power may work under certain circumstances work, I think the requisites for the participation of responsibile citizenry urgently includes the right to bear arms and the right of free association especially at the local level . In Africa, these requisites are largely absent, so as far as I am concerned and if I had my way, one of the first things I would mandate in Nigeria is mandatory military training for our young men and women. I am aware that this is a dangerous proposition, but I think the alternative is even more dangerous, that is what we have now; the exercise of power by mystery and exclusion. :mad: Posted by DeepThought| 04.11.2006 09:25

Onos  Villager

# 4 Hear this: stop playing with fire or it will consume you! The Russians tried it. The Germans did it. Tyranny does not pay! Well said, Fred. Interestingly, and I stand to be corrected, the developed nations of the world today were never ruled by despots or 'benevolent dictators' as some would describe it. That just goes to show that the culture which gives rise to sustainable development cannot be forced on the citizens. Force can only breed resentment and intransigence among the citizens and will be counter productive. If we must embrace democracy, then we must patiently allow it to take its course. I'll concede though that it can be excrutiatingly painful to watch a democratic president bungle several golden opportunities to make quantum democratic leaps due to stupidity, selfishness or recklessness. Do we necessarily have to make the same mistakes made centuries ago by the developed nations? Can we not just learn from their mistakes and make quantum leaps? Posted by Onos| 04.11.2006 15:34

Abraxas  Villager

# 5 Hi, folks! The prevailing overwhelming authoritarian mentality that we are observing today in Nigeria is the logical outcome of some 30 sordid years of military dictatorship, with an additional seven years of rabidly predatory autocracy, suitably garnished in impunity, under a former military despot, Zeneral Segun Aremu Okikiolakan Matiyu OBASANJO (GCFR). That is exactly why Nigerians MUST join hands to ensure that NEVER AGAIN should any other former soldier of the Nigerian armed forces be allowed to lead them, be it via an election, or via a coup d'etat, at least, for the next 50 years after OBJ, so as to dilute the embeded toxicity of institutionalised impunity among the Nigerian status quo. Muchas gracias. Don Juan Carlos ABRAXAS (III) (Director of Propaganda & Enlightenment, Global Alliance for the Total De-Militarization of Nigerian Politics, post-OBJ) Posted by Abraxas| 05.11.2006 01:59