A few months ago, about the last quarter of 2011,I had published in some national dailies an article appraising Dr. Jonathan and his government. I had hinted on the direction that his government was taking Nigeria and I had outlined some of the indicators that in essence were negative. After the Great Strike of Jan 2012 things have come into sharper focus and it is now possible more than before to be more explicit about the direction the administration is going and the urgent imperatives that Nigeria needs to address itself to move forward.
The events of early to mid-January set one thinking. It inevitably forced one to take another hard look at the Nigerian condition. When it became known on first January that the administration has hiked the pump price of petrol many questions came up in one’s mind. Why did they do it? Why did Dr. Jonathan and his aides, notably Dr Okonjo Iweala, Mrs. Diezani Allison Madueke and Sanusi Lamido Sanusi do it? Why did they even consider calling Nigerians bluff? The answer to these questions is the stuff of which revolutions are made. I recall that in November 1995, when Major General Victor Malu announced after an Armed Forces Ruling Council meeting that Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine had been executed, despite pleadings for mercy from almost everybody that mattered in the world including The Pope, Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton, the American president, it was the same sinking feeling that one had and it was the same questions that crossed one’s mind. After the hubris of the fuel subsidy withdrawal should things remain the same as if nothing had happened? Nobody could have imagined a few months ago, after all the nation had been through in the Obasanjo and Yar’dua governments, the level of fatuousness and vacuity that persists in nation’s corridors of power.
Now that we know, I think there is a need to put things in perspective. But first let the obvious facts be stated. There is instability and insecurity, politically, socially and economically. There remains of course a lot of corruption particularly in the public sector. And the 64 dollar question: Has the administration learnt any lessons from what happened? In the following paragraphs I will try to expatiate a bit more on these burning issues.
I think the best place to start is whether the administration has learnt any lessons from The Strike. The evidence is strong against the possibility that Dr. Jonathan and his government has learnt any such lessons. Before January first the general public was not even aware that the removal of oil subsidy issues had reached a point of no return for the government. Even the negotiations reportedly going on between the government and Labour seemed low key and very much below the public’s radar. It was only when The Strike began and took effect that the Government seemed to become awake to the need to engage the public on the issue. That engagement came in the form or profuse pro-government advertorials in the media, notably newspapers and television by such shadowy groups as Neighbour to Neighbour (N2N)Initiative, Mass Interest Project (MIP),Friends of National Transformation Agenda(FRONTA) and Office of the First Lady in collaboration with Women Development Initiative. There were also such ethnocentric groups such as the Bayelsa Sate Elders Consultative Council and the Ijaw Youth Council. Yet another was a group that styled itself the South-South Elders and Leaders.
Although the South –South Elders and Leaders were not as acutely ethnocentric as the Bayelsa State Elders Consultative Council and the Ijaw Youth Council, their publication did betray apparent sectionalism and an abbreviated understanding of the issue and it must be said that this constituted an attitude not expected and unbecoming of retired senior federal public officers from the military, diplomatic corps, the National Assembly etc who constituted its membership.
However these pro-government groups are not such a surprise. Any executive president or prime minister anywhere in the world, particularly one as powerful as Nigeria’s will always spawn a growth industry of courtiers, loyalist, lobbyists, hero worshippers, charlatans and crooks, who will readily seize any opportunity to curry favour or be noticed. This should not even be more unexpected considering that a large proportion of the population are not literate or sophisticated enough to have more than a simplistic understanding of the issue. What is remarkable all the same is the amount of sophistry employed in these advertisements. If they do have the backing of the government as is most likely, then it must be on record in the history of the country as the administration that made the highest investment with public funds and other resources(NTA for instance) in sophistry to defend a snafu policy initiative. Sophistry and dissemblance as is well known is the hallmark of dictatorships and authoritarian systems when dealing with the public and so this resort to sophism to defend a monumental indiscretion by government is not good for the country’s omens.
For the ethnocentric groups such as the Ijaw Youth Council and the Bayelsa State Elders Consultative Council, the willingness to see the protest as an unjustified attack and an ethnic agenda against Dr. Jonathan is so myopic as not to deserve any further comments bit it does remind one that it was this type of topple-the –applecart politics that killed the First Republic. Does anyone need to be reminded that Dr Jonathan was voted to power, not by the minor votes of the Ijaws and Bayelsans but by the plural votes from the country’s four cardinal points. That they should now use the opportunity of The Strike to try to possess him as their own smacks of unbridled opportunism. It is highly regrettable that nearly half-a-century after the First Republic went up in flames and after what Nigeria’s been through since then the country still strives on such undemocratic indiscretions. Is it any wonder then that the nation’s political and social development has perennially remained Lilliputian.
Recently Dr. Jonathan took a broadside at some of those he thought were behind The Strike and called them election losers seeking power by other means. His minister of petroleum Mrs. Alison Madueke told the Farouk Lawan committee that the country should expect fuel scarcity in the coming months because of the partial failure of the fuel price hike. These statements and the magnitude of the sophistry invested to defend the hike betrays a far right mindset at the Presidency and in the cabinet. It shows that despite the nationwide disagreement with the policy the administration remains adamant and unrepentant. In other words the government does not still believe that there might be a better alternative way to go about the issues. In all my life watching NTA no government has used that outfit more than this government to misinform the people about its intentions.
Lagos state is one of the best governed states in the country. This is something acknowledged both nationally and internationally. In terms of policing Lagos State has shown in so many ways that it is capable of policing itself. I have been in Lagos during elections and during a census not long ago and I know this. In any case Lagos is the most federally under-policed state in the country but that does not matter because the state does not really need the federal police anyway. The party in power in Lagos has shown itself far more responsible and moderate than the opposition. It is a left-of-centre party, an Awoist party that respects and provides for minorities and the disadvantaged. The ODUA Peoples Congress, with its home in Lagos started as a spontaneous uprising against the violent repression of the Abacha government in 1993. Today it is a benign, leftist, cultural youth association of the Yoruba. It promotes Yoruba self determination peacefully. It is law abiding and self respecting. Its methods are nowhere near as militant as its counterparts in other parts of the country such as Niger Delta or in the North. In view of the above the militarization of Lagos state during and after the strike by Jonathan’s administration smacks of extreme political crassness. It was an attempt to destabilize the state again after General Obasanjo’s failed attempt when he withheld the state’s federal allocation for several years as president in the Fourth Republic. Both actions were meant to destabilize the state and distract its leadership. One of the fastest ways to destroy the professionalism of the Nigerian Army is to use it for partisan agenda. The Nigerian Army is a disciplined, well regimented force, a legacy of the best of British military tradition. Whenever such an army is used for partisan agenda there is a risk of turning it into a partisan militia with all the imponderables, that entails The army must always be used only in the public interest. For every military deployment there is a mission handed over to the deployment commander. The mission statement by regulation must be simple, concise, explicit and unambiguous. The accepted practice is that it should not be more than one sentence. The shorter, the better. It is from this statement that the commander derives the tasks he gives to his subunits. As a military professional I could not help wondering what the mission statement given to the commander of the Lagos deployment would look like. The deployment shows that Dr. Jonathan is a far right activist at heart. Having DR Jonathan in ASO Rock is like having Sarah Palin or Joseph Raymond McCarthy in American’s White House, which raises questions of whether Nigeria can really survive with a far-right government in power.
Governing Nigeria from one side or as have sometimes happened from one extreme of the political spectrum holds a very dangerous prospect. It is one reason for the perennial instability and insecurity that has pervaded the system for decades. Dr Jonathan has by omissions or by design put himself in the same position as the Obasanjo’s ,the IBBs, the Shagaris and the Abachas who each once or twice ruled the country and whose governments all ended in a smoky cloud. Governments are generally elected to solve problems. The common thread that links all these governments is that at some point the leadership of the government itself became the problem rather than the problem solver. In less than one year from inception it appears that DR Jonathan’s government has found itself in the same situation. The 64 dollar question is can DR Jonathan succeed where others have failed? The simple and correct answer to that question is ‘no’. He won’t even try. The reason he won’t even try is also quite simple: He doesn’t have what it takes. DR Jonathan like almost every other human being will not be able to make a 180O turn from his comfort zone. Muammar Ghadhaffi fought to the death to preserve his comfort zone. Ditto Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler. Today Bashir Assad, the reigning King of Syria is murdering thousands of his countrymen because he cannot shift from his comfort zone. In the twentieth century only two leaders were able to turn against the system that produced them for the common good: Mikhail Gorbachev and FW De Klerk and they have remained living monuments to world history. And they did it simply by yielding to pressure for positive change. The situation the country finds itself today with the Jonathan administration once again brings to prominence the need to revisit the 1999 constitution to overhaul it completely. Since 1999, the errors in that eponymous constitution have been popping out in greater numbers like phantoms and hitting us in the face if only they were not so real and persistent. It has become increasingly clear that ,that constitution entrusts too much to the vicissitudes of one man; that certain issues, those issues that critically affects the generality of Nigerians such as the pump price of petrol, the creation or merging of states, the ceding or acquiring of territory to/from another country, for instance, should go to a referendum. At a minimum such issues must be backed by an explicit enactment of the national parliament. The weaker a leader, the more he needs an articulate and strong constitution to guide him.
What the PDP calls the largest party in Africa is simply a vast patronage network that ever existed in lieu of a political party anywhere in the world. This network stretches all the way from the national level through the states and local governments to ward level and below. In states controlled by the PDP including my own state of origin, every possible opportunity, social, political or economic is controlled by this network. You have to go through a PDP big wig to have your ward admitted to state or even a federal university, a vocational center such as a nursing school especially if it is government owned or grant aided, to get employment, to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca or Israel, to get a borehole installed or to get a transformer to your neighbourhood substation, to prevent the police from arresting you lawfully or unlawfully, to be granted bail if already arrested, to keep your job if you have one, to get a promotion on the job, to be appointed to any public service position including the judiciary.
Even running for such offices as NUJ chairman, NUT president and NANS president requires the blessings of the PDP hierarchy, whether local, state or national. I am aware that authorities of the Nigerian Defence Academy and the Police Academy are under intense pressure from politicians to bend the rules to favour their wards for admissions. The same applies even more rampantly to army, navy, air force and police recruiters. Needless to say you need the blessings of someone in the PDP hierarchy to run for political office at any level. Senior members of the network can never be touched by the EFCC. Mrs. Farida Waziri invented her own brand of plea bargaining to ensure that if they must be prosecuted, they would not get more than a slap on the wrist, no matter the enormity of their felonies. The higher up the value pyramid of whatever you need, the higher up the network hierarchy sponsorship you require.
If you are a member of the network there is no limit to what you can get away with. This was particularly brazen during the Obasanjo civilian administration. I recall that during the 2003 election campaign, the deputy governor of Delta state Benjamin Elue was found with a cache of arms in his motorcade. Till date no charge has been brought against him. At that time Tafa Balogun, the IGP and an Obasanjo hatchet man, said that MR Elue had immunity from prosecution. It’s now been 5 years since he left the office. Need I say more? His boss James Ibori, a well documented ex-convict went to serve his full two terms of 8years as governor and was caught only when he went international. Even while in custody and facing charges in the UK, the Attorney General of Nigeria, Mr. Michael Andoakaa rallied to his defence. This is how the patronage system works for one of its own. One of the grossest abuses of power by the Obasanjo presidency was when he humiliated the Navy over the African Pride incident. The Navy had hesitated when the Commander-in-Chief ordered it to hand over a suspect ship in its custody to the Police who clearly had no facility to keep sea-going vessels in its custody. The order it turned out was merely a ruse to enable the ship ‘escape’ custody. The Navy naturally were unsure of the propriety of the order which ostensible purpose was to enable the ship to disappear so that the Nigerian accomplices who were obviously members of the network can evade the law. Why General Obasanjo had three Navy brass hats court marshalled to protect civilian criminals till today beats one’s imagination. Meanwhile officials shout from the roof tops about zero tolerance of corruption. I recall also that during the 2003 general elections one minister, Ojo Maduekwe was reported saying that it will be unfair for the PDP to allow itself to be out-rigged by other parties, implying that as the ruling party it intended to lead by example in the business of rigging, a pledge that the party duly redeemed beyond all expectation. The brazen electoral offences committed during the Obasanjo administration was orchestrated by the network. In an operation, apparently ordered from above in 2003 a navy helicopter was ordered to ferry suspect ballot boxes in the hours of darkness in one of the South-South states. The chopper was not designed for night flying and the crew were not trained for night operations. The plane crashed killing two young navy officers. The matter was of course hushed up. One of the welcome differences between the Jonathan government and that of Obasanjo is that in the former the Presidency has not interfered, so far, with the conduct of general elections but that is little consolation considering that not much else seems to have changed. DR Jonathan’s government has also shown a marked improvement on that of Obasanjo in terms of not interfering with the courts as is but the electorate expects more from him. The expectation is that he should use his powerful office to champion judicial reforms that will make that institution more constitutionally accountable and independent and I don’t think that is asking too much. Nigeria’s judicial; system has many salient problems, such as prison congestion (including awaiting trial prisoners) due to unaccountable delays in dispensation of justice, illegal detentions, corruption and graft, dependence on the executive for making judicial appointments and funding etc.
Apparently DR Jonathan has bought hook line and sinker into the patronage network. As a matter of fact he is a bona fide product of this patronage system. Today in Bayelsa State this patronage system is being showcased as electoral politics. The ongoing gubernatorial primaries and election campaign in Bayelsa State is a showcase of that system. In Bayelsa State right now the disgraced ex-governor Dipreye Alaiyemesigha is now fully restored to political reckoning and is now a power broker-king maker, no small thanks to his one -time deputy governor who now occupies Aso Rock. The trivialization of the National Merit Awards has been going on for many years, inviting always public derision and in some cases downright rejection by nominees such as Chinua Achebe, a serial rejecter of the awards who felt insulted to be included in the list and who rejected the Jonathan government nomination with even more vehemence than before. The Jonathan Government has no doubt taken the trivialization of the Awards to a new level. Surprisingly the same government, through its minister for Education Professor Ruqayyafu Ahmed Rufai is complaining that the nation’s universities are handing out honourary degrees to the wrong people. Are the universities not supposed to follow the example of the government? Is the government one of ‘do as I say, not as I do’? Talk about leading from the rear. In the Jonathan administration the country has arrived at another moral logjam. In this administration there is a morality inflict and a great potential for moral crisis. It is simply not going to be possible to keep the network alive and at the same time move the country forward, which is what DR Jonathan is trying to do. There is a mighty conflict of interest problem there.
Although Dr Jonathan inherited the network, he is at same time a bona fide product of it. His allegiance to it will be total and eternal. Had DR Jonathan not chanced on politics he most probably today would still be teaching at University and along with his ASUU colleagues would be agitating against the government for social justice. Is it not a great irony that today he is so transformed from the left extreme of the political spectrum to the right extreme that he is now leading a government that insists that hiking the pump price of petrol is the only policy instrument that will bring social justice to Nigerians? The truth, of course, is that it is the bad governance culture that kills the productive spirit in Nigeria and it is not hiking the pump price of petrol that will solve that problem.
This patronage network system started in earnest in 1976 when General Obasanjo took power as head of a military government. It has aggravated and worsened steadily since then, through the Shagari, IBB, Abacha and the Obasanjo Fourth Republic governments. Its onset coincided, not unexpectedly with the time when the Federal Civil Service came under attack. Eventually the professionalism and accountability of the Civil Service had to be destroyed to make way for the patronage politics and culture to thrive. This much was acknowledged by the reigning Oba of Benin in his autobiography which inter alia detailed his experience as a top federal civil servant. In that autobiography he affirmed that he opted for early retirement in the late seventies because he could not live with what was happening to the civil service, which was totally inconsistent with his upright upbringing and British public education.
Those who anointed General Obasanjo to kick –start the Fourth republic thought he might be able to keep the patronage system for them which he did but to an extent well beyond their imagination. Not long after he took office as a civilian president in 1999, General Obasanjo however took steps to reconstruct the system so that he will own it. That was why he attempted with some success to reconstitute the membership of the PDP in order to make himself the undisputed king of the system by filling the party at national and state levels with his own handpicked loyalist. This is also one explanation for the General’s exaggerated sense of possession of the party till this day. This is also what gave General Obasanjo the temerity to imagine that he could change the constitution to enable him wangle a third term.
To say the least, the patronage system is extremely corrosive and expensive. Nothing in the system is based on merit and the rule of law is disdained or circumvented. Members of the network always scurry to get involved in any government project with the abject intention of reaping financially gains. But there is a high probability of success as long as they are certified members of the network. Every institution of state has been compromised. The civil service is the worst hit. The judiciary, the police, the legislatures have been considerably corroded. Although the military is also being affected the pace is slower there than in other agencies because of regimentation and discipline which are fundamental to its survival as a viable institution. Maintaining, sustaining and servicing the system is the major preoccupation of the large majority of officials with the result that little or no time is spared for the job for which they are statutorily paid to do in the public interest. Otherwise why should a country that have all the essential basic inputs such as labour, land and capital for growth and development remain prostrate for decades. A less endowed country would have buckled or imploded long ago under the dead weight of a flawed system. What General Obasanjo, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, General Babangida, General Abacha and DR Jonathan have succeeded in doing is to make the patronage system the mainstream politics of the country. The resilience of the country under its weight can be attributed to the steady rise of oil prices over recent decades, the steady increase in reserves and production and the occasional windfall whenever some crisis erupts in the Middle East and /or the Gulf region. An additional reason for the survival of the system is the complacency of the people, perhaps due to illiteracy and very poor numeracy situation in the country. But there is constant pressure on resources required to service the system due to steady rise in population and the wastage that results from it. Whenever the government had increased the pump price of petrol it was merely a move to find more money to service the patronage system and that also applies to the Jonathan government. When they talk of palliatives such as Abacha’s PTF or Jonathan’s SURE which in any case were after thoughts following or pre-empting public outcry, such talk is a deception and any related actions will always be cosmetic.
There is a strong correlation between the government inability to deal with the security challenges it faces and the inability to deal with corruption. Just like Boko Haram, corruption is actually a form of terrorism, perhaps even a more insidious form of terrorism. It causes poverty, indiscipline and it is the major cause of unprofessionalism in the nation’s public institutions.
Any policy initiative or action taken by the Jonathan administration must receive the blessings of the patronage network. Anyone who so much as offends a big member of the network will receive his retribution promptly. I suspect that the peremptory and inexplicable removal of Farida Waziri from the chair of EFCC has nothing to do with the quality of her work although her work is entirely a different story for another day. The illegal imprisonment of the editors of The PUNCH newspapers has to be for the appeasement of the gods of the network. The key members of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment (SURE) programme board, the hurriedly assembled team by the administration to give the disingenuous impression of good faith over the fuel price hike are all members of the old guard which produced DR Jonathan and to whom he is irrevocably wedded. They are also among the elites who have run Nigeria’s affairs up till now without anything to show for it. I don’t know why anyone could have imagined that such a legacy will inspire confidence in the people. While the USA and European states are openly and transparently making billions of dollars in fines from multinationals for ethical malpractices involving pay –offs to Nigerian officials who invariably are members of the network, the Nigerian government, the country with primary jurisdiction enters into secrecy agreements with such companies, not in the public interest but in order to protect culpable members of the network involved in such deals. Apparently the Jonathan administration is committed to giving these individuals state protection from prosecution, a kind of secret amnesty. The same government expects Nigerians to believe in it and trust it.
The Justice Oputa panel of the Obasanjo civilian government was a rare attempt to work outside the network and that is why its recommendations will never see the light of day unless a revolution destroys the network. These recommendations will no doubt hurt some big members of the patronage system. The incumbent Petroleum Minister and her husband, a former top sea dog (navy chief), an ex-minister and an ex-military governor are most probably high in the hierarchy of the patronage network and that is why she is relatively certain of her job security no matter what happens. As long as DR Jonathan is in power her job approval rating will not affect her job security.
Honourable Farouk Lawan, the chair of the House committee now investigating the Petroleum Ministry is without doubt a high minded man of integrity. But he is operating within a flawed system. He can win small wars like successfully fighting to remove a compromised Patricia Etteh from the chair of the Speaker. The investigation he is now conducting is a big war against an entrenched system. He will need the Presidency to support him to achieve any results and I doubt that he will get it. Also the Senate, constituted by senior members of the network is unlikely to offer any help with the investigation.
Legislatures are elected primarily to hold the executive to account. In order to do that they need to ask questions and debate public policy robustly. When necessary they may make laws that the executive may not necessarily like but which must be in the interest of the people they represent. During the fuel price hike of January 2012 what did we see the Nigerian Senate do? Its leaders were paying courtesy visits to the President to discuss in the manner of “a family matter”, a cliché that was made popular during Obasanjo administration. This abdication of responsibility once again confirmed the Senate as the chamber whose members are the custodians of the patronage network and in whom Nigerians cannot entrust their affairs. On the contrary it was not surprising that the House of Representatives, with obvious generation gap from the Senate membership, being composed mainly of younger people in their early to mid -forties, and therefore relatively more idealistic, came out quickly with a resolution against the fuel price hike. But what did we see happen? One of the grandees of the network, Chief Tony Annenih was reported to have paid an unscheduled visit to the Speaker to upbraid him for allowing the House to ‘embarrass’ the President. In other words a man of such high rank in a supposed ruling political party did not know that by setting out to subvert a sovereign resolution of the House he was in fact on a mission to subvert the sovereignty of the Nigerian people. A great calamity of the network is that it is peopled in its hierarchy by men and women who are among the most ignorant of the nation’s citizens. It is a big disgrace that such a system survives and that these ignorant elements continue to exercise decisive power over the country’s national affairs. DR Jonathan is a former academic, a university lecturer; can he possibly under any circumstances hide under a claim of ignorance too?
A great many people today seems to be rallying behind DR Jonathan and portraying him as a victim of bad faith. A president, any president needs moral support to get on with the job but he must keep his own part of the bargain which essentially means that he is the one who will inspire such moral support, he must earn it. In April last year Nigerians from the four cardinal points voted decisively for Jonathan. At his inauguration it was obvious that he had the overwhelming goodwill of all Nigeria and also that of the international community. This out pouring of goodwill both nationally and internationally was also the case in 1999 when General Obasanjo was sworn in but by the time he left office in 2007 he had totally squandered the goodwill. The 2007 elections when they finally came was a great relief to Nigerians who could hardly wait for the opportunity to rein in the wild bull in a china shop. Those who are portraying Jonathan now as a victim need to pause for a moment and ask themselves what went wrong. The truth of course is that DR Jonathan is headed in the wrong direction and is too beholden to the unprogressive interest that seek to dominate the country’s affairs for their own narrow personal ends. As I write it may be already too late to ask or expect DR Jonathan to change course. Although there already exists a great deal of praying for/in Nigeria, in this administration Nigerians are going to have a whole lot more praying to do.
Recent events show rather clearly that we are at a time when Nigerians across the board can no longer be taken for granted. What Nigerians need today and now is a government that will be on message, in real time with globally acceptable standards. What we have had as governance practice since 1999 has been a travesty of democracy. There must be a total change of attitudes and style by the ruling elites at all levels. When General Obasanjo took power in 1999 he proclaimed a plenary love for his country. He said he was ready to die for Nigeria and had his civil war record and his near death incarceration during the Abacha regime to prove it. But, nonetheless, it soon turned out that there were unacceptable strings attached to his love for Nigeria. Today we hear the same jingles from the Jonathan presidency. What Nigeria needs from her leaders is unconditional love: no sacred cows, no caveats, public interest must come before any other interests. Nigerians are sick and tired of one step forward and two steps backwards governments. Nigeria must not be run under false pretenses.
This whole Presidency thing may be a learning experience for DR Jonathan. But Nigeria as a nation has learnt and re-learnt the same lessons over and over again in recent decades. Dr Jonathan must understand that there is just no point to continue to stress-test the country. There is just no more time for any leader to waste the nation’s time learning on the job.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Egbe Ulu (rtd)
Okokomaiko, Lagos.
08131940313, 07051912209
