The gathering storm
By
There is a saying in my place that when a dog is determined to get lost, it no longer hearkens to the owners call. Not even the aroma of its favourite meal will attract a wayward dog home. Those the devil wants for super, it first makes deaf. Events in recent times show that we have once more embarked on A FAMILIAR ROAD, which only a degenerate fool will fail to recognise. Those who think that these are normal times, or that the gathering storm will dissipate or drift away without breaking into a furious thunderstorm, had better peep into our recent history.
In the sixties, one of the precursors to the calamities that fully bloomed on 15th January 1966, was the Tiv riot. Today we have on our hands a festering but often forgotten war among the three Middle Belt states of Benue, Nassarawa and Taraba. Thousands of lives have been lost, including those of 19 soldiers who were killed not by an external aggressor, but by fellow citizens. Several other thousands have been made refugees in their own country. Property worth millions of naira has been destroyed in a needless war that needs urgent attention.
Last week, Nigerians and indeed the world, was shocked by the news of the military assault on some villages in Benue State. The figures of the casualties were, as usual, conflicting. But what was clear was that the military action in Benue was a verisimilitude of the action in Odi, Bayelsa State. In Odi, 12 policemen were killed by some youths. As a reprisal for that, the military was ordered to go and fish out the culprits. The soldiers entered Odi. By the time they left, the town was in rubbles. The Chief of Army Staff then was Lt. General Victor Malu, who told the nation that he had no apologies for what happened. In the Benue operation, it was reported that General Malu’s house was razed and his uncle killed.
The lesson here is that we need to urgently develop a total picture of the nation’s problems in order to deal with them decisively. We have been in the habit of taking our problems frame by frame, thus compounding the problems instead of solving them. Yesterday, it looked as if the problem was the Igbos. We dealt with the Igbos, yet it has not solved Nigeria’s problems. At a time we thought the problem was the Hausa-Fulani. the other day it was like the Yorubas were the problem. Day before yesterday, the Niger Delta youths looked like the problem. Or, is the problem sharia? Or could it be the non-indigenes as Jos tended to suggest? We need a total picture to understand what we need to deal with. That is why the call for a National Dialogue cannot be wished away by vested interests.
We have hitherto treated religious and ethnic violence in the country with kid gloves. People have, as a result, become so brazen that violent ethnic militias now challenge the authority of security agencies with impunity. Until Jos erupted in an unprecedented blood letting last month, we all behaved as if ethnic politics can lead any other way than to destruction. Who are those bestriding our political landscape today other than ethnic warlords? Have ethnic chauvinism and the attendant finger pointing not become our new definition of heroism and patriotism? The irony, really, is that most of today’s ethnic champions are leaders who were part of the ancient regimes that duped and oppressed their people, and who betrayed and failed their own people while in government, who fed fat and fed their lions while their people starved.
When governor, Alhaji Sani Yerima, breached the constitution and planted the seed of Talibanism in Zamfara State, we all thought that the seed would wither and die. It did not. It instead grew into a wild and dangerous bramble that spread, and is gradually choking the democratic space in the country. The recent senseless orgy of violence in Kano in support of Osama bin Laden, is a clear pointer to the fact that we are coming dangerously close to a national religious war of an unprecedented dimension. We may bury our heads in the sand ostrich-like and pretend that we do not notice the signs. But we will wake up one day to the ugly reality.
The signs we see nowadays were all too familiar during the demise of the First and Second Republics. Politicians simply ran amok as if there were no rules. They breached even their own rules. Inebriated by power, they reduced Nigeria to an asylum run by the inmates. The politicians took those who elected them for granted. They stole public funds as if it belonged to nobody. To retain themselves in power, they resorted to stealing the people’s votes. Opponents were attacked or assassinated by private armies of thugs. The political parties collapsed under the weight of internal indiscipline. It was a matter of time before the soldiers stepped in. Of course, the people welcomed the new saviours with drums until the saviours themselves became predators, and the drums went silent.
The behaviour of the current politicians evokes the sad memory of the sixties and eighties. It is even sadder because these politicians who behave as if Nigerians voted them into office because they owe them a living, miss the important point that they stand on a threshold to either make history or fling the nation over the precipice. This is a country that has been plagued by regime succession, yet the politicians are acting mindlessly, stupidly believing that the soldiers cannot come back if given a good reason. They have poured adulterated kerosene, the most dangerous type in town now, all over the country in a bid to satiate their personal ambitions. I foresee a match being struck as we approach 2003!
There can’t be that many Nigerians who are not concerned as a result of the unconscionable outcome of the ward congresses of the People’s Democratic Party PDP. The news, state after state, was not cheery. By the time we get to the states congresses, the cloud is likely to be overhanging dangerously. There is bound to be a thunderstorm by the time the PDP gets to its national convention in November. Instead of the convention being a carnival, it may become a fore test of the typhoon of 2003!
This is so because the PDP is the ruling party at the centre as well as in majority of the states and local governments. When the PDP sneezes with cold, the nation ought to head for the emergency room. Moreover, nothing shows that the PDP is taking its leadership responsibility seriously. The dynamics of the internal contradictions that are tearing the PDP apart is certainly going to be problematic for the nation.
The other two parties that have not gone to the conventions, the All Peoples’ Party, APP, and the Alliance for Democracy, AD, are not in any better shape. The struggle to retain the states and the local governments they currently control, will pitch them in epic battles against the PDP. The way some PDP chieftains are throwing their weight around suggests that we may not be able to avert the approaching disaster.
Already, the new electoral bill the National Assembly is proposing to enact as law has created its own problems. The major minefields in the electoral law are the proposal to extend the tenure of the local government to four years, the proposal to have the presidential election first and the clause in the proposed law, which bars some governors from running for another term. Apart from the matter of the governors, which requires a judicial interpretation, the extension for the local government and the reordering of the presidential election are simply reckless, selfish, unpatriotic and have potentials for trouble.
The question must be asked. What is in Nigerians that make them adept at inventing trouble where there is none? Why would a group of people decided to unsettle what has worked for us in the past, and which needs only to be perfected, only to saddle the nation with that which is loaded with trouble? Why must we always walk into trouble or allow some people to lead us into one with our eyes open? Are we not tired of crises? I know there are people crazy enough to want to set Aso Rock on fire just to light a cigarette, but must we allow them? I just hope that President Obasanjo would not accede to this nonsense, no matter what advantage it is contrived to confer on him. This is the time to be a statesman.
Wherever there is crisis, there is always a body of laws that has been breached. Let us begin to reduce tension and needless crises in the land by running a simple test whenever there is a problem. Let us ask: What did the law say about this issue? Has that law been followed? Who has breached the law? After all, democracy is about the unwavering rule of law. But often every body abandons the prescriptions of the law and follows the path of selfish pursuit.
Our democracy will not endure if Nigerians do not understand that every Nigerian has a right to aspire to any political office in the land, under the laid down procedure and guidelines. An ambition to contest any office in the land is not a crime under any known Nigerian law, and should not be made to look like one. The basis of contest should be what the contestant promises to do and his or her ability to persuade the electorate, while an incumbent can only retain his or her office strictly on performance. Political offices are not intended as favours to the occupants. And Nigerians must always remember that they are the employers of the political office holders, not their serfs, and stop oiling their own shackles. They should stop fighting for a poor performer to remain in office even if he or she is their son or daughter!