12 Apr 2009 |
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2011: The End Of Governance? By Reuben Abati SADLY, governance in Nigeria is careering towards a cul de sac, a state of stasis. History is repeating itself and the biggest losers are the Nigerian people who are being short-changed. Check the newspapers: "Atiku's security detail withdrawn;" "2011: Yar'Adua, Govs, Senators can get automatic tickets - Senate," "Yar'Adua will determine his fate"; "I'll resist Obi's re-election - Ngige" , "PDP Senators lobby for NEC membership", "Group tackles Ogbulafor over comments on mega party"; "I'm not interested in becoming Ogun gov - Bankole"; "Ex-PDP govs, senators join mega party"; "AC can't compel Senate to remove Iwu-Senator Adeleke"; "Anambra 2010: A parade of PDP aspirants;" "Oyo commissioner prepares for 2011 Senatorial race"; "Ogun G-11 ask court to compel Speaker to reconvene session", "Bauchi lawmakers return official vehicles to Governor"; "Yuguda, Bauchi Governor defects to the PDP," "Zamfara Governor taken to court for defecting to the PDP".... These are the kind of headlines that we find in Nigerian newspapers today, indicating just how dominant the tussle over who gets what in the next general elections: 2010 in the Anambra Gubernatorial elections and 2011 in general elections across the country, has become. The television stations air endless footages about what a certain Governor or Senator purportedly said about his own politics. Much of that is paid for of course. They also inflict upon us meaningless campaign events which promote certain individuals and interest groups for the next election. Less than two years after the last general elections, Nigeria is in the throes of another election fever and the politicians jostling for place, relevance and power are sparing no thought whatsoever for the people who have been turned into spectators in their own affairs. There is nothing in all their charade about performance, service or ability. On display is raw ego, ambition and greed. We are dealing with a professional political elite that is incapable of shame or remorse or guilt. This is a dangerous development for a country that is urgently in need of growth and development. Following Obasanjo's exit and the contrived elections of 2007, Nigerians had expected that perhaps the spectre of illegitimacy that hung over the entire process would be mediated by actual performance on the part of the new set of authority figures at both federal and state levels. But that has not happened. There are a few states where real momentum has been reported, naming them is probably not so important, at this moment, but to focus on the general realisation that in most parts of the country, no real governance has taken place in the last eleven months. In many of the states where the Governors have been busy fighting in the law courts to justify their holding on to their positions, governance practically took second place. In other states, Governors have been busy either trying to ensure their re-election for a second term in 2011 or to determine their own successors in those cases where the Governors have exhausted their constitutionally-granted tenure of two terms. This has resulted in great acrimony and distraction. At the Federal level, the main story narrated by President Yar'Adua himself is that before now his government had been busy studying the terrain, and trying to figure out what needs to be done. Not too long ago, the same government began to declare its determination to begin to act. But it has also since been gripped by the 2011 fever. Thus, effectively, the Nigerian people cannot point to much that has happened in their lives, in terms of real progress made, in close to two years after Obasanjo's equally wasteful eight years. We have spent two years talking about the salaries and allowances of public officials, President Yar'Adua's state of health, the Siemens and Halliburton scandals, the appointment of persons into public offices, violence in Plateau and Bauchi states, kidnapping and terrorism in the Niger Delta, the failure of the capital market, the misfortunes of the national currency, global financial meltdown., and of course second term politics, succession politics and the ambition of politicians. We have now reached a stage where the biggest news in town is the politics of 2011. Take Ogun state: all the noisemaking in that state that is threatening everything else is all about who should succeed Governor Gbenga Daniel in 2011 and where that successor should come from. In Bauchi and Zamfara states, the Governors are re-positioning themselves for 2011. One major innovation in that part of the country is the demonstration of how one's fortunes can be enhanced by marrying the daughters of powerful men. In Osun, even an embattled Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola is said to be considering some likely successors. Mega parties are also being proposed because some people need to be well-positioned for the next elections. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is having a running battle with the Peoples Democratic Party and a faction of the Action Congress again because of 2011. All of this is perhaps deja vu. Performance and productivity were compromised under President Obasanjo for eight years in part because of second term and succession politics. Under President Yar'Adua where the level of performance is so low it is infuriating, even the presidency is talking about a second term. The Senate was quoted a few days ago as saying that President Umaru Yar'Adua will have the right of first refusal in determining whether he should go for a second term in office or not. The Senators don't see any reason why he should not enjoy this privilege. They are convinced that he has earned it with his performance in the last two years. They believe that the seven-point agenda is the best thing that ever happened in Nigerian politics. And they didn't fail to resolve that they all deserve automatic party tickets for the next elections. Well, I don't think so. And I don't think that the majority of Nigerians would agree that either the President or the Senators should be allowed automatic second term tickets by their various parties. To put an end to this kind of insult, Nigerians must begin to insist on one term tenure for Governors, the President and even the lawmakers. The Senators a few days ago were citing the example of the United States where the President and Senators are automatically put up for re-election. I thought we had long ago settled the point that Nigeria is not the United States and that although we practice US-style Presidential democracy, certain reforms needed to be carried out to ensure a domestication of the presidential system to local realities. Nigerian politicians are obsessed with the second term syndrome. For them it is a do-or-die affair. Not satisfied with what the Constitution has provided, they try to grab a third term by proxy by imposing a successor on the people. In almost every instance at the Governorship and presidential levels, half of the first term is spent trying to get a second term, the second term in office is then devoted to the politics of self-preservation, and at every turn, the people are short-changed. I propose that part of the Constitutional reform being considered should be the reduction of a Governor's and the President's tenure of office to a term of four years only. After that single term, let the Governor or the President go home forever, and let another man or woman do the job. This may well reduce the desperation and the theft that characterises Nigerian politics. Many Nigerians would have loved to see President Yar'Adua return to Katsina in 2011, but the PDP is now saying that if the man wants a second term, he is welcome to it. Of course he wants a second term! Hajia Turai wants it too. The other thing about second term is that once a Governor or the President gets it, he begins to take the people for granted. Technically, he no longer needs them for any other re-election. So, he does not feel compelled to impress them. A second thing that also needs to be considered is that old opinion about our public institutions. They need to be strengthened. Governance suddenly fails, paralysis overtakes the state, the moment politicians begin to prepare for the next elections and they fight among themselves. They get away with it and the state suffers simply because state institutions are weak. The machinery of governance is tied to the Governor's or the President's office. State Governors and Presidents are not monarchs in the United States that our politicians love to refer to when it is convenient to do so, but in Nigeria they are. Once a man becomes His Excellency (how they love that title!), all rules and regulations including the rule of law are subordinated to his whims and caprices, and his wife's preferences. The Government House becomes personal property and the President's close associates and kinsmen speak of "our turn". They cannot be advised or guided because it is "their turn". Once the institutions are further compromised, an incompetent political figure spreads his incompetence down the line and turns it into the dominant culture. Our civil servants are probably the most cynical in the world. They are quick in joining the politicians to sabotage existing institutions. They even teach them how to circumvent the system in return for cheap patronage. Public office holders in Nigeria are too powerful, there is an urgent need to separate the state from politics and locate power in the institutions not in the birds of passage brought in by flawed elections who continue to do great damage to the system. With or without politicians, the Nigerian state must be able to function and deliver service. A third thing: when will Nigeria become a country that attracts only the best and the brightest to its public sphere? At the moment, I have no quick answers. But it is clear that we run a system that is in the hands of our third eleven. Bright, competent people do not want to go near the Nigerian system, and when they do, they are either forced out or forced to become part of the system. All the bright people who have gone near Nigerian politics have ended up looking and sounding strange. A system that rejects the best and frustrates the committed, but encourages the corrupt and rewards the indolent can only bring the people untold misery. Today, Nigerians are miserable. A fourth point: who should lead Nigeria? Everyday, the over-articulate section of the middle class offers definitions of leadership, but those definitions mean nothing to the Nigerian leadership recruitment process. People become political leaders in Nigeria only in relation to the following contexts: when a privileged father puts forward his son or daughter as the best person to represent the people - in Kwara, the Sarakis can have all the positions they want in Nigeria because they have a very influential father; when the Emirs direct the people to vote for a particular man - in many Northern communities, the Emir's word is law and this has nothing to do with democracy; when a Godfather insists that his candidate must be chosen whether the people like it or not, otherwise heads will roll, so he tells the people it is a "do or die affair"; when a sitting Governor or President anoints his favourite or his girlfriend, it is now the fashion for a Governor or president to boast that he knows those that will not succeed him; when an aspiring leader is rich enough to bribe all the Godfathers, electoral officials, and a section of the electorate - the Nigerian electoral system is infernally corrupt, the elections are rigged anyway, or when an ambitious office seeker marries the President's daughter or the Godfather's daughter - it is the surest way to win a ticket these days, and to evade the EFCC and the ICPC, the Code of Conduct of Bureau and to compromise the opposition. What Nigeria needs is nothing short of an electoral revolution which will take power away from all these conspirators who have hijacked Nigerian democracy and who are already girding their loins against the people for the 2011 elections. But that revolution cannot come from an assemblage of a section of the compromised old and young brigade threatening to get rid of the PDP; the revolution must come through the empowerment of the Nigerian voter. The day the Nigerian voter is allowed to make a free choice, the day it is possible for Nigerians to elect a George Bush, and then realise their mistakes, and then subsequently vote for an Obama out of their own free will, that will be the day when there will no longer be idiots among us telling the people that a set of incompetents will get automatic second term tickets.
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