Nigeria›s politics defies categorization. No scholar in the world can place it within a straitjacketed definition. Not at all. Some have called it monarchical democracy. Those who should know have said it is right. What points do they have? The President and Governors are Emperors. It has been said severally that our President is the most powerful in the world.
There is a unitary system which we erroneously have designed as federalism. The President in far away Abuja can decide with utmost finality what should happen in my village in Umuiku over 800 kilometers away from the federal capital and that would be it. A street in Aba belongs to the federal government, we call it federal road while the rest belong to the state. One outcome of this misnomer is that the very street as it is to the people of the city can remain in dilapidated state for more than 20 years and it won’t matter.
People, yes, supposed Nigerians put this kind of arrangement in place. They were shouting Nigeria unity is non-negotiable while undertaking political exercises that were antithetical to the position they chorused. Others say it prependal politics, known in street parlance as “you chop I chop”. Those who hold this view aren’t wrong at all. Last weekend at the funeral of late Herbert Nwigwe, Governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara in his speech said he couldn’t understand why politicians would kill just to enter public office. The Senate President said if you can’t understand why we have to fight and kill over offices, “why we must struggle”, then resign and go, don’t struggle.” This alone is confirmatory or not so?
We have crude oil same as Qatar, we started ahead of Qatar but today Qatar is the one telling our President when to visit and not to visit. They know the purpose of our visit is to come to beg. There is something everyone of us ought to have known – it is far easier to work any kind of work than to beg. In the first place no one loves a beggar. He has no relations. The art of begging demeans and dehumanizes. Our President went for a two day visit? To do what? And he was taken to museums for sight seeing.
Yet there is a section that believes we run a «democrazy”, a system of uncodified rules. Our electoral processes tell the story better. One man sitting in his bedroom can produce all candidates in the local government, state or nation as the case may be. See Rivers State, where one man produced all the members of the state legislature and local government chairmen. Vice President Kassim Shettima told us penultimate week how he singlehandedly produced the incumbent governor of Borno State, Prof. Umaru Zulum. “I discovered him by accident, I gave him money and he didn’t divert any. I told him you will succeed me and he said he had no ambition because he had no money.”
Unusual political arrangement. It became so because those who styled themselves “messiah” ended up becoming the architect of a problematic Nigeria. It is good many of them are alive to see the outcome of their political engineering – that is if current chaos and journey through the precipice would mean anything to them. Often those who maintain preeminence through crisis don’t care and many political players are in this class.
But we the majority should worry at the outcome of their nasty antics. The bonds that hold us together is almost finally torn. There is system collapse whether we like to admit it or not. We have become a poor and hungry people to the point that war devastated Ukraine is giving us food support. Soon it will be the turn of Benin Republic to help out a brother.
Now what should worry us most is instead of objective analysis of how we got into this mess, many of us have chosen to act like the untrained boxer, who in the heat of a crucial fight occupies himself with throwing wide jabs in the air. We see groups priming the atmosphere for ultimate destabilization. The first in the act of perfidy is to assess a President who has only spent eight months in office. The mischief in this could be seen from the perspective that those who all along have been reticent even while the country took the worst of blows have recovered their strength and lost voices. They are everywhere dressing down the President and passing conclusive statements.
Miyetti Allah, an association of cattle rearers, became very prominent in the Muhammadu Buhari era, not for modern ways of cattle rearing but to discover old cattle settlements and cattle routes across the entire country. They even told us, “accept this idea or lose your peace.” Of course the country went on to lose her peace and with it food security. So what did the promoters and sponsors of Miyetti Allah do when farmers couldn’t farm because of safety concerns? Now even Cameroon would have to supply us food.
The Sultan was here and saw Buhari dismantle everything great about the country, replacing them with crass nepotism, ethnicity and religious bigotry, he kept quiet. He wasn’t quick to call a meeting of Northern Traditional Rulers so they could call President Buhari to order. He has been fast to call one to berate President Tinubu in the most despicable style. “Our people are angry, we have calmed them down but we don’t know how much longer we can hold them”. Killers of a Christian girl killed by enemies of our country on a religious charge are yet to be found yet we dream of a very peaceful country where everyone would be brothers and sisters to each other.
Northern governors are meeting very frequently and talking about the state of the country. Now there is also the Northern Senators Forum, one of them last week alluded to two versions of the passed budget and expressly said the Tinubu government was marginalising the North. Many wish he had expanded heart so he could say what he said about the South East that has been on receiving end since the Civil War ended more than 53 years ago.
President Tinubu didn’t waste the nation’s funds, he is just coming into office. This is a fact. Tinubu didn’t remove fuel subsidy, Buhari regime did. From the look of things given the same nature of politics we play his hands may have been tied. Buhari’s spokesperson Garba Shehu told us, “we wanted to remove subsidy but if we did before the elections our party would lose the polls”. Tinubu’s offense is jumping without looking. He ought to have given himself time to do a thorough review. Take the pros and cons before.
Excuse of no money holds no water after we still sell crude. Subsidy wasn›t a bad idea, they problem was the corruption embedded in it. A President can change personnel and get results. Men of very high integrity and efficiency still abound. Very quick repair of the refineries ought to be on the cards. Even today why is this not an urgent option? Why is it that the political class doesn›t look at that direction?
Today the cost of doing very few kilometers of roads has become very astronomical yet finding money to up wages and salaries remains a big challenge. Doesn›t this tell of a negative, no progress mindset? There is a truth we must know, even with best solutions the task of sound nation building is not even a four year affair. It will take years of consistent good governance to get us out.
Great political engineering, economic turnaround carried out by citizens, not foreign investors and deliberate social renaissance is what we need. I don›t know the extent President Tinubu would go but even at that we owe him total support. We have made our choice and the natural thing would be to stay it out. There is no place for military intervention. It won’t work. Anybody or group harbouring the thought is on their own. The other thing very vital would be that in 2027, it would still be the turn of the South of Nigeria to produce the President. So those beating the drum of sectional interest should better beware. This is the time all hands should be on the deck. Next time we will look at what President Tinubu should be doing which he is not doing.