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One pattern has since emerged in the way that Mr. Obasanjo and his increasingly tempestuous clan of leaders treat and react to public engagement with their policies: any administration outsider of note who has crossed the president has paid a price of some sort. Similarly, any administration insider who expressed dissent or sat on the fence on issues dear to the president’s heart has been shown the door, or worse. It has been said that Mr. Obasanjo demands absolute, unquestioning loyalty even on matters bordering on personal whim. Newspapers have been awash with tales of the president’s vindictiveness, his enduring capacity for inflicting retribution, and his recidivist commitment to vengeance. Fair enough. If vengeance occupies a central place in the president’s behavioral repertoire, that’s his prerogative. We are all entitled to a certain domain of personal attitudinal autonomy. Many of those who throw stones at Obasanjo’s glass house are politicians. And many of them live in glass houses themselves, eternally made vulnerable by past—and present—involvement in the national rot. So, I have very little sympathy for their plight in the hands of this administration; their past deeds and political affiliations cast a shadow of doubt on the sincerity of their criticisms. Perhaps Mr. Obasanjo and his intolerant clique are more infuriated at these critics’ effrontery in spite of their own shabby records than they are at the criticisms themselves. The expression of self-righteous anger is offensive when it is done by the politically unclean. Perhaps this explains Mr. Obasanjo’s harassment of his political rivals-turned-critics. I have no problem with this kind of mutual annihilation and exposure. I am deeply suspicious of ad-hoc and self-interested politician-critics and I believe that the powers that be hold them in especially high contempt. For administration insiders who turned coat, one may spare a thought or two for their eventual epiphany even while one wonders why it took them so long to figure out their boss, or what their actual motives are for jumping ship. One may forgive the greed, indiscretion, naivety, and bad judgment which blinded them to the multiple deceptions of this government. But the blame for their fate lies entirely with them; they were dinning with an imperial president with spoons not long enough to insulate them from the collateral smears of bad governance. Let the compromised critics who want to push their luck despite their own appalling records be ready to take on an insecure administration that is unraveling before our very eyes. They should not try to curry the public’s sympathy or support in their confrontations with their own incarnations. Nor should they seek to advance criticism as atonement. Everything has its time. Atonement must precede serious oppositional activism. The non-political critics of this administration have not necessarily fared better than the opposition politicians. These are the people with whom we should sympathize. They are the victims of Mr. Obasanjo’s visceral vindictiveness. Gbenga Aruleba and Rotimi Durojaiye have become the most recognizable victims of this inexplicable presidential anger. As deplorable as this relapse to tyranny is, it is not the only threat to our democratic institution that is intertwined and coextensive with Mr. Obasanjo’s fabled obsession with total quiescence and a corresponding disdain for dual loyalties. Equally threatening to our democratic destiny is the president’s lavish reward for loyal underlings. The president has rewarded loyalty to his person and his policies in two major ways. One way involves outright largesse in the form of appointments and elevation to positions of power. A second, perhaps more disturbing, way has been the protection of culpable loyalists and the withholding of punishment from loyal offenders. Mr. Obasanjo’s unsparing ferocity in the war against his political opposition has only been matched, on the other side of the spectrum, by his insatiable paternal instinct when it comes to taking care of his loyalists. It is this mindset that permits the elevation of former presidential attack dog, the certifiable Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, to the status of a minister. For Mr. Obasanjo, it is not how you choose to demonstrate your loyalty; it is your consistent, unthinking, and mechanical commitment to his vision that determines the size of your reward. The more unrestrained you are in your proclamation of support for Baba, the bigger your reward. The recent sale of NITEL to Transcorp, a corporate front for a deeply politicized collection of pro-Obasanjo capitalists, illustrates this deep-seated penchant on the part of Obasanjo for rewarding those who stick by him. Investors in Transcorp, it must be remembered, have played the role of excitable cheerleaders for the president’s dubious “reforms.” What better way to reward them for their faithfulness than to offer to them one of Nigeria’s last symbols of state paternalism. This method of rewarding the friends of power is simple enough to understand especially when one is dealing with an administration that is so insecure that it likes to hear its own voice. An administration that has achieved the distinction of managing to alienate all segments of the Nigerian society through its undemocratic practices and its priority of putting foreign economic validation over local problems needs affirmative local voices. Because these local praise-singers cannot naturally remain aloof to the overwhelming evidence of rot and decay that surrounds them, their continued support must be bought and their past loyalty rewarded. Because it takes a certain amount of reverse genius to mess things up as badly as this government has, the job of defending, supporting, and applauding the president’s policies and proclivities must be an uninspiring piece of work, requiring pecuniary motivation. Understandable as it is, the reward of loyalty in this brazen way insinuates a very damaging message into our lexicon of political discussion. The message is simple: personal loyalty trumps institutional continuity. This is a point that I made in a recent article but which bears repeating. It is bad enough that issues and ideologies have completely given way to the appeal of personality in our politics. It is worse that government appointments and strategic national divestment decisions now flow from this overriding principle. When spokespersons for the government’s “reform” talk about institution-building, they must be sincere enough to concede that, as far as the current government is concerned, the institution is the person of the president and vice versa. We need to open an honest national dialogue about presidential power, its abuses, and limits. Such a discussion should focus on the set of assumptions and practices which enable supporters of the Mr. Obasanjo to conflate support for the president with support for Nigeria, and to claim that a critique of the president and his policies is a critique of Nigeria. The personalization of federal power and the conflation of person and nation by those close to power are not discursive slippages to be waived aside. They are intended to criminalize criticisms of bad presidential policies and mannerisms and must be confronted. It is not only the offering of tangible advantages and instruments of power that have constituted this government’s reward culture. Even more damaging to the country is the growing culture of impunity among the friends and supporters of the president. When the president refuses to authorize a sincere investigation of key allies like Tony Anenih, Olabode George, Ibrahim Mantu, and other loyalists with a variety of damaging allegations hanging over them, it institutes a precedent of judicial selectivity, a slippery slope of impunity that will be hard to escape. When the mere act of enrolling in the president’s camp of supporters entitles one to de facto political immunity against prosecution as was the case with the heavily tainted former Governor Abubakar Audu of Kogi State, it is not hard to see that a regime of reward is being enthroned over legal principles. The president’s knee-jerk reactions to criticisms of his policies are predictable to those who know him. His violent persecution of dissent has become legendary. But these will come and go, making cameo appearances as the president’s temperament shifts along the contours of public disenchantment with his policies. These occasional dictatorial effusions have very little capacity to endure as precedents, as future presidents will exhibit their different administrative temperament in governing the country. What might endure as a precedent is the growing tendency on the part of Mr. Obasanjo to setting aside competence, ability, and national interest in order to reward political loyalty and communicate the attractions of praise-singing. Mr. Fani-Kayode and Transcorp are today the epitome of this trend. Who will be the Fani-Kayode and Transcorp of the post-Obasanjo era?
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Posted by Robot| 07.07.2006 02:32