I have read with considerable interest the columns by both Waziri Adio and Simon Kolawole on a phenomenon called the Third Force, that is, the possibility for another way that could liberate Nigerians from the miseries of now, in disrupting the status quo which is seemingly dominated by two Political Parties, the PDP and APC.
Decades of familiarity with the fecundity of the intellect of both of these talented writers I was not much disposed to questioning the veracity of the conclusions arrived at by their analysis. I would have just passed on the questions of Waziri’s pessimism about possibilities of redemption and Simon’s cautious optimism. The good thing is they both capture the desperate yearning of the people for a clean sweep from and out of the power of the dominant actors that have made our fourth Republic the years the locust have visited.
What I found most interesting in the columns was that the considerations in both excursions into the frustrations of the Nigerian condition was that they forgot aspects of our history,, on one hand, and the extraordinary existential crisis of now, on the other hand. Can we be both ahistorical and ignoring of the forces of the moment at the same time? Awkward but possible. Waziri and Simon seem to have managed both.
The trouble is basing analysis on a collection of stereotypes about how things seem to work.
Let us begin with history. Has Nigeria’s politics ever been about two dominant parties? Not true at all.
From Nationalist times in colonial Nigeria we had a contestation for the North by NPC of Ahmadu Bello, Aminu Kano’s NEPU, and Joseph Tarka’s MBC.
At the National level, we had the forces of the alliances from the big three of NPC, NCNC, and Action Group.
In the second republic, from Waziri Ibrahim’s GNPP and NPP through UPN and NPN we had modified reincarnations of the First Republic order. We clearly did not have a two Party Structure. The sociopolitical engineers of military rule tried to paper over the cleavages by creating the two party view of a little to the right and a little to the left. Whatever the ambitions of these engineering efforts, the biggest effect of Buhari era nepotism is a fracturing of those efforts, including the explosion of the myth of a monolithic Hausa-Fulani people.
These effects of the Buhari legacy call for a new reflection on Larry Diamond’s thesis in his journey through ethnicity Class and Political Parties in Nigeria. I have raised this ahistorical dimension of the dominant two-party system presumed in the analysis offered, to show that the myth of people being stuck with a two Party view of live is fundamentally inaccurate.
Why did a personality clash between Agbalajobi and Sarunmi in Machine politics Lagos allow Sir Michael Otedola to emerge as Governor of Lagos? He did it with hardly any money, against the moneybags.
I first ran for President in 2007, when some of us Concerned Professionals, who challenged the military rule, realized we had erred in choosing to leave the space, in 1998 when the Military beat a hasty retreat, in hope traditional politicians would return. But the politicians were not sure they could trust the withdrawal motives of the soldiers and only a few stepped up. The bagmen of the soldiers moved in and seized the space. By 2001 it was clear we had found a new way of spelling disaster through the kind of people in power. So we decided to redeem our misjudgment by my being prodded to run. Our strategy was to take advantage of the fractures to reset course.
In our calculations, none of the main parties could win the 2007 elections. If we had elections in 2007 no one could have won. Parts of the country would have gone to Atiku Abubakar, significant parts would have gone to Umaru Yar’Adua , and other parts would have gone to Mohammadu Buhari. With endorsements from Professors Wole Soyinka, Sam Aluko, and others I expected to take the votes of the intellectuals, professionals, and youth.
A deadlocked election in which we would have been the thinking candidate offering clear directions would lead to our setting the agenda in the deal-making process. Unfortunately, those elections were hopelessly manipulated to produce the Yar’Adua presidency. President Yaradua was fully aware of that and was pricked, in conscience, to move to reform the process.
A number of changes have taken place since 2007. The electoral laws have grown up a little. Popular consciousness has evolved some, and people have witnessed enough atrocious government to begin to desire something different.
We lost the opportunity to be a swing factor as we had hoped in 2007 by the wholesale manipulation of 2007 as the eminent international elections observers stated clearly. The point here is that the myth of Nigeria as a two dominant party political culture is just that, a myth. In ways, both analyses offered by Simon and Waziri continue the process of the reflection of that myth. They pay much more respect than is deserved by two machine politics tools at different stages of a process of implosion, APC and PDP.
The real story to tell here is that suggesting Nigerians will continue to tolerate a political class that unrepentantly uses state capture to suck life out of the Leviathan; to dehumanize the people, misgovern them and steal from the state to a point of public penury with no effort to seek change, beyond reshuffling themselves, is to underestimate the possibilities of the human spirit.
As I write, Lagos state officials are clamping down on an event Centre where jerrycans of petrol were given as Party pack gifts. The desperation for petrol with long queues at stations has made it attractive to give petrol as a gift. Electric power announces its importance with its non-availability even as diesel that helps the relatively better off spell relief, has been priced out of reach. Inflation is torturing those lucky enough to have a job that fetched income. The people risk much because the Armed Robbers and bandits own the highways, so the people turn to the trains and planes, but they may need to take their jerrycans of Diesel in case the train runs out of fuel on route or they spend the day in delays at the Airport as the Airlines scavenge for Aviation kerosene even in the face of ticket prices that have gone through the roof.
As the misery index chases those so inclined to flee where Visa Barriers will allow them, the streets are are hotbeds of anger but the lifestyle of those in power, living at the expense of the state, are showcased in newspapers with their Dubai and London mansions and hopping on the Aeroplane anytime a headache is suspected.
In all of this, the people hear that there is no bothering at the top because Nigerians are used to suffering. Even with being used to suffering, they do not know how to navigate bandits, insurgents, unknown gunmen and herdsmen in this harvest of anarchy and insecurity that now define us as another AASU strike pushes back on learning and makes living in our country a true Hobbesian state of nature. Live is truly brutish and short around our climes.
For citizens to live in this and not organize to take back their country seems like a condescending view of human nature. We must avoid that trap.
I was myself purged of this underestimating of the will of Nigerians and the construction of reality from stereotypes by an experience from the 2007 campaigns.
On the Campaign rounds the candidate typically calls on the Governor and Traditional Ruler in the State Capitals they visit. We did this in Gombe expecting the usual polite courtesies of a few nice words. But I was taken aback by the remarks of the Emir of Gombe.
He said to me: I am not suggesting you will not win this election. It would be great for Nigeria if you win But just in case you do not win promise me you will keep running because Nigeria will not make progress until you or someone like you becomes President.
The Emir then went on to describe how our traditional professional politicians act in the office which makes progress unlikely.
I was still reeling from the comments of the Emir when we arrived at the home of the former MD of Afribank and Chairman of the Emirate’s Elders Council, Alhaji Yerima Abdulahi. When I told him what I was still trying to recover from, he said the Emir knew what he was talking about because he had been a Permanent Secretary
The point is that the crisis of political class replacement in Nigeria is an existential one. I truly cannot imagine eight more years with a class in which character is so suspect at the helm. I doubt that Nigeria will survive it. As the motto of Government Secondary School, Owerri, teaches: when wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost. When character is lost, all is lost. The absence of character in many of those who determine how things run in the big two Parties has run us into a collapse of culture.
To save Nigeria there is a citizen’s imperative of working for a new order to emerge in a Joseph Schumpeter type creative destruction. Exciting Nigerians to save themselves and save their country will create new voters that are many more than those who currently vote because they are part of the current order, profit from the mercantile buying and selling of votes or are positioned to make blood money from incumbents and so feign neutrality when a combination of incompetence, nonchalance and greed makes misery the shadow of our way. We learnt long ago from Dante’s Inferno that the hottest part of hell is reserved for those who in the face of a moral crisis take refuge in neutrality.
The current Nigerian condition is a grave moral crisis and the complicit middle, which include some of our business elite and Newspaper columnists do not have to read Archbishop Fulton Sheen to recognize that the refusal to take sides on a great moral issue is a decision and that it is a ‘better silent acquiescence to evil. The tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction’
The naked truth to me is that given the performance of the Parties in question it should be evident that democratically the extinction of the current order should be as simple as calling people out to vote.
We do not need Fulton Sheen reminding us of what Machiavelli wrote 500 years earlier about the challenge of bringing about a new order of things because those who profit from the old order will do everything to prevent a new order from coming about, and the majority who should profit from the coming order do not do enough to make it come about.
The year 2023 is a defining one for Nigeria. The options are between a Democratic revolution and Robert Kaplan’s projection of coming anarchy.
Patrick Okedinachi Utomi, Political Economist, and Professor of Entrepreneurship is Chairman of NCFront, member of the Steering committee of RNP and Convener of the New Fabian Society of the Concerned Professionals
