Ademola Araoye

Ademola Araoye

Why should the youth entrust their future in the hands of a corps of miserably failed leaders? It is acknowledged, whether tacitly or explicitly, in more rigorous analytical domains outside the mainstream of conservative discursive space, Nigeria is fast sinking into a quagmire. State and society are caught between the horns of an Ata Aidooian dilemma. In that rather obscure universe of rational intellectual interlocutors characterized by uninhibited candor, the Nigerian state is recognized to be in dire existential crisis. At the heart of the failing pulse of the state is a double jeopardy that is traceable to the abundant resources of the state trapped in a complex structural construction that has defied intermittent attention. The tinkering to attain structural equilibrium in irregular periodicity are often instigated by crass convenient immediacies within a constantly evolving context of the partisan struggle for hegemonic control of the totality of political and socio-economic and cultural space. Meanwhile, the unending structural equilibration process is always tied to the calculus of partisan fiscal advantage. The challenges of resource allocation has seemingly become unresolvable given the character of a rentier state that is steeped in entrenched prebendal arrangement among the vital forces.

Accordingly, Nigeria’s resource curse is defined in the holistic mismanagement of the predominant oil sector and everything else in the state that is a derivative of that sector. And that means everything and every process of the Nigerian state. The struggle for exclusive partisan control of the oil industry is the overarching driver of a systemic illogic that is reflected in an ever contentious political structure, the alternating power cycles between the irresponsible political class and a military institution constantly struggling to break from a history of provocations by its civilian overseers and thus with a constant eye on political engagement, affliction of monoculture in a potentially robust diversified economy. More tellingly, oil has inflicted on the Nigerian state the evolution (or is it devolution to) of a most irrational rentier political system in a complex sociological mosaic operated by a debased illicit petro-dollar soaked national elite criminal syndicate that goes for a political class. Moving into the future, it is a class that is determined to deploy all means at its disposal to protect the national rot for the benefit of the few privileged persons and their families constituting the national criminal syndicate.

To attain this objective, the Judiciary, ideally the last hope to adjudicate and stabilize the system, has been pocketed. In this, civil society despite strident resistance, is emasculated, notwithstanding its appreciable capacity for noise making. The sad reality is that Nigeria is a country held hostage by uncontrollably wild human agencies who exploit the fear-of-god-induced passivity of the population to institutionalize dare the devil brigandage as the national normative. The expressions of institutional brigandage range from the imposition of a blatantly partisan constitution by a military clique to the operation of that contested foundational treaties of a fictional nation by a stream of equally unconscionable civilian criminal syndicate whose membership is spread across the whole expanse of the defiled national territory. As recent events across the nation has demonstrated, it is in that context that only the most daring jump into the cauldron of the Nigerian public space. Witness the unfolding shame that goes for elections in Edo state this past weekend. Though often relatively microscopic, replications of Nigeria’s evolved incomprehensible dynamic are expressed in different hues across a number of climes. The scenario is familiar to the people of horribly broken states like the defunct regimes of “infallible leaders” as they are often presumably touted by fawning sycophants motivated by mere interest-induced convenience, as “indispensables”. These one and only interim sages carved out of very soft wood include the likes of Yayyah Jammeh in the Gambia, “wiser-than-God” Mobutu, Sese Seko of Zaire, eternal Paul Biya in neighboring Cameroun, strong stud Bernandino Vierra in Guinea Bissau, “le Vieux” Houphouet Boigny in Cote d’Ivoire, iron fisted Pierre Nkunrunziza of Burundi, “unaging and bleaching” Sassou Nguesso of Congo (Brazzaville)(he was president when I served in that country 41 years ago and still so), France’s diminutive senior errand boy Omar Bongo, among many others.

In these situations across states in the embattled continent of one and only wizened circles of leaders, there is only a single permissible narrative. Such one story of the compressed and contained humanity is premised on the restlessness of haywire ultra-nationalism and wrong-headed puritanical patriotism as canticles of a false secular faith. The one sacrosanct narrative, peddled by deceiving false Jeroboams of nationalism, remains the uncontested system propped holy-grail and hadiths to support tragic self-delusions. This holds until the bloody implosion of the convenient hitherto holy falsehoods. Unfortunately, the outcome that is associated with these enterprises of human foibles for the hapless humanity that is roasted in the killing kilns of run-away human ego can be atrocious. In the final analysis, ultra patriotism reveals itself indeed as the last refuge of the scoundrel. The commonality in all such human mishap is that the denouement across time has never ended well.

The anarchy and dystopian dysfunction generated by the irrational culture of a status quo oriented single perspective in a complex human situation has permeated all facets of Nigeria’s national life and processes. The state establishments at different levels are in convenient denial of society’s  mirror image as a vast waste land of violent ethno-regional, ethno-religious, ethno-economic and all manner of ethnocentric contentions that have spurred unending violent conflicts across vast expanse of beleaguered territory . Violence and physical death of the many undocumented anonymous citizens to quotidian emotional assaults on the living on the fringes of sanity, threats and confrontations in unending altercations characterize the national space. To different degrees Nigerians have lived behind barricades for some time: at home, in the streets, in worship centers, in schools, in market places, everywhere and anywhere. There are no hallowed grounds. The total territory is defiled. It is the consequence of the insanity of politics.

At all levels, politics in Nigeria has descended from the lofty height of sane and positivity-oriented public service to the deepest vale where inhabit blood soaked coded felons and buccaneers explicitly displaying their inglorious bandanas of unbridled political fornication, unmediated greed, stark idiocy and shameless thievery. The stench of hatred brewed across the ethno-regional divides in the national space is as thick in the air as the odious flatulence of ill digested loot. The stark hypocritical nakedness of the Nigerian state at the highest policy levels is copiously documented by Omo Omoruyi in The Tales of June 12. The threat of Amaka Sonnberger in Toronto, Canada, to poison Yorubas and all people of the Mid-West who come her way was nothing novel. It was truly reflexive of the entrenched horrendous state of ethno-regional relations in the country. As Omoruyi aptly codifies such antagonistic sentiments is prevalent at the highest levels of statecraft in Nigeria. Prominent Nigerians have said worse things. The denunciations of Amaka Sonnberger were merely expressive of the hypocritical horror Nigeria is confronted with in its unvarnished mirror image.

Accordingly, despite the pretensions to the contrary, the fate of the country is as uncertain as the very concept of the Westphalian state in Africa. Some have rightly summed it up that Nigeria is undergoing intensive care. It is therefore understandable that a flurry of interventions, in the plain and at the subterranean level, to move the country in some direction, forward or backwards, have been instituted. In whatever direction the situation evolves though, robust interrogations of the fundamentals, logic and continued rationale of Nigeria’s statehood in a holistic fashion is imperative. Modulations of divergent ideas and recipes that are based on critical exfoliations of the layered systemic rot is inevitable. It should not matter how repugnant and repulsive the outcomes of such rational explorations may seem to the temporary tenants in powerhouses dotted across the landscape. The country is now denuded of any painless options. That such rigor is integral to direct a necessary radical alteration of the trajectory to doomsday or to reconstruct the totality of the distressed universe in whatever fashion is now incontestable.

The real danger posed to the process of the rational resolution of the problematique of Nigeria is the monopoly of ineffectual fire brigade of rear guard actors. Current initiatives are almost conspiratorially advanced by dyed in the wool ancient establishment forces, who clearly are delinked from the reality that the average citizen and, in particular, younger generation live and perceive. The establishment ogres, cocooned by ill gotten wealth from the realities of the times, are mainly historically high-stake opportunistic political jobbers attuned to the failed rentier state from which their false sense of legitimacy and relevance derives. These men from dead centuries pose a mortal problem. Having obviously lost critical salience across the major divides that they imagine to lead in the country from the near grave yard, they are still determined to impose the antiquated understandings of their extinguished eras to an unfolding vibrant Third millennium whose contours they are barely equipped intellectually and experientially to decipher. The real challenge is that the interlopers from the past are united by a seemingly dubious self-serving flag waving patriotism chanting constituency who, by virtue of unlimited means available to them, dominate the public discursive space. The core of the universe of this dominant slice of a small minority for saving Nigeria as is, consists of the same failed self-proclaimed redeemers in soiled khaki and jack boots who are now adorned in flowing babanriga. They are the same wounding fathers from ancient times still convinced of their infallibility and, worse still, their indispensability in the affairs of Nigeria’s future. They do this even strapped to life saving oxygen supplies from the waiting lounge. Such human delusions and catastrophic fallacy!

In the Yoruba South West, it is incontrovertible that none of the so-called leaders under their various confused warring platforms has the grass root popular appeal of Sunday Igboho. Igboho, who has come to personify the nemesis of self-serving transactional leadership in the South West, keeps many conservative minds awake at night. Igboho was not at the party in Aso Rock when those who are fond of claiming the mantle of Yoruba leadership threw MKO Abiola’s mandate under the bus. Returning the favour, many returned home with a bulging Ghana Must Go bag. Many of these male believe leaders, merely ensconced in formal political offices acquired through brigandage, are despised from Ibadan to Osogbo through Ado Ekiti, Abeokuta, Ilorin, and Ondo all the way to Lagos. Meanwhile, in the South East, despite his incarceration, the unquestioning popular appeal, as unnerving as it is to the establishment, belongs to Nnamdi Kanu. This is even as the Arewa Consultative Forum, the platform of spent indignant old horses in the North, has been denounced by emerging circuits of youth in the region, including only recently the Coalition of Nigeria Youth Organization for Peace and Stability from the 19 states of the North. The implications are that throughout the national space, formal leadership is delinked from the real grass roots leadership. It is a dangerous state of play.

The usurpation and alienation of the grass root leadership from the policy process simply undermines the integrity of policy on resolving the Nigerian debacle. Pertinent questions arise. Why push the country further to the very edge of the deep ravine, just to protect a popularly rejected rentier state that serves only to ultimately move state and society to the abyss in the predictable next day. In all this, the gladiators remain the same old warriors from over half a century ago with plausibly no shred of relevance today other than the pursuit of self-interest. As a result, beyond family members and the usual coterie of hungry sycophants, they have no discernible followership. Meanwhile, these men from ancient times are the contemporaries of Harry Truman or Jimmy Carter. The former is dead, while the latter is resting in their lounges at the hospice in dignity. Harry S. Truman was the 33rd president of the United States. He served as President from 1945 to 1953. James Earl Carter Jr. was 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Both honorably retired to allow for the infusion of a new dynamism to reinvigorate the national process. Such seamless changes in baton is natural where there has been instituted disciplined pipelines to leadership. In Africa, there is the singular example of the Madiba, Nelson Mandela, who after 27 years in jail, possessed all the moral argument for an extended stay in office till eternity. But, he gave the younger generation unfettered liberty to construct a future. And he remained popular as a true leader of the people. The practical test of a true leader and community representation: If you cannot go to the market place or walk the streets and alleys, even dark alleys, without a retinue of protectors from the population who are armed to the teeth in your constituency, then you do not represent the people. No amount of rented crowds and incentivized hungry youthful pretend comrades to populate self-deceiving state funded establishment conferences to create false impressions can deceive the people. If you are so delinked from the palpable sentiments of the people you claim to speak for, then you inhabit a world of your own. Truly and verily, the people know their authentic leaders, irrespective of their humble beginnings.

*Professor Ademola Araoye is a retired official of the United Nations and former Director of Abuja Leadership Center, a TETFUND Center of Excellence in Public Governance and Leadership at the University of Abuja. He is the author of Sources of Conflict in the Post- Colonial African State (AWP, 2012).