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In due season By
This house has fallen. That is the so very appropriate title of a remarkable book by a foreigner Karl Maier, in a damming review of the Nigerian experience. The challenge to find Nehemiahs to rebuild the walls of this fallen house has revealed enough of the depth of the rot to make despair the mood of the season. As young carpetbagger politicians reveal by action that they are no more in tune than the aging power-elite they seek to replace, in the public arena, it seems like time to give up and commend to Gods mercy the increasingly desperate, underserved and aching citizen, then you see some glimpse of hope in the distant horizon and you remember that in due season this house shall stand. In due season, Nigeria will have a responsible political elite committed to the ideals of service instead of mindless self aggrandizement and instant gratification. What would lead me to such optimism in so depressing a season aptly captured by Tunji Bellos "All Politics No Vision". It could be faith and it could be a sense of the inevitable, of civil society and a weary citizenry rising in a way that the Philippines has taught us twice ñ people power. This optimistic view of the future is borne out of years of agonizing about governance in Nigeria and my engagement with the challenge of finding the right modus vivendi that delivers the most quality life to a majority, if not all the people no matter their station in life. Just the way things have changed in the period I have been active in the public arena holds up the hope I have bought into. Who would have thought a few years ago that it would not be past midnight already in Nigeria? Five years ago to this day, Rev. Fr. Matthew Hassan Kukah gave an incredible speech that brought a hall full of people, most of who were already standing because all seats were taken, to their feet, in a rapturous standing ovation. The speech was on the evil of neutrality in times of dictatorship and moral crisis. The speech was a tribute on my birthday. At that time Nigeria was a pariah state and many had a bleak view of the future. Others believed that those of us who did not embrace neutrality were either masochists; desirous of a place in a mental asylum or plain suicides. Three years later Nigeria was a democracy. Our action in those dark days included founding the Concerned Professionals and convening a broader group which met in my Victoria Island office. Among participants in those meetings in my office were Waziri Mohammed, Donald Duke and Mouftah Baba-Ahmed, some of the conveners of today's National Integration Group. It is pleasing that the tradition of re-engineering public life lives still in the alumni of our season of brave new dreams (1993-1996). Serious reflection should lead us to put the challenge of the new grouping of political actors to a performance litmus test beyond the glitter of gathering and issuing communiqués. It is interesting that as many as 27 governors are willing to identify with the NIG. This should mean that power is already in the hands of a new breed. Any claim to the pursuit of a new order will have to be tested against how those already holding public office deliver to their constituencies. There exists that temptation to hide from responsibility by laying on the lap of the Federal Government the challenge of growth and development. That would be fundamentally wrong. It bears recall here that the period of consistent growth from 1957-1967 was more regions driven than Centre initiated. With significant transfers to states and local governments they must take more responsibility for growth and development. The excuse that the smaller states of today are less viable than the regions of yesterday collapses in the face of creativity allowing City States like Singapore and Hong Kong to deliver world class quality of life to the people. If we are up to it, the new breed governors should do more than they are doing today. You have to recognize the Adamu Maazus, and Chimaroke Nnamanis of that group but we could do more. The newbreed will not be ready for prime time until we move away from this tendency in the politically active partisan elite to denominate change in the currency of 'its our turn to be big men at the expense of the people. Subscribing to a set of core values and defining the generation mission statement in terms of sacrifice of those who serve for the common good of all is imperative if change is not to be old wine in new wineskins. The attraction to a new generation of leaders is really a reaction to the fact that many of the traditional elite have had wrong habits for so long not to be amendable to change. This is why the age of the ideas of this group rather than their chronological age calls for a change. Just being young is not that change. To be credible the alternative leadership has to subscribe to and live values including the following: a sense of service; the elevation of human dignity to the level at which no excuse is acceptable for its violation; the application of creativity and diligence in the deployment of resource to get optimal results for the well being of the population; governance as an open transparent and responsive process in which communication skills are used to build consensus; and placing a premium on merit and fairness without abdicating from the imperative of protecting the weak and the disadvantaged. From our experience, it is clear that another value frame will involve abolishing the distance between those who lead and the people. Nothing speaks louder on this distance between those who lead and people than the abuse of the siren, a matter about which I have commented so many times. The recent sad event involving a ministers motorcade, no matter whose fault it may have been, was a classic opportunity to force the issue. That no legislator has come forward with a private members bill restricting the abuse of protocol privileges since the Christmas season accident further makes the point about an unresponsive system and the distance between the elected and those who elected them. Surely, it is not happenstance that I speak often about the crisis of Nigeria's under-development as a crisis of values. Can we expect these values to show up overnight in a public arena so squeezed of all things dear? May be not. But it will come in due season. That season begins not with wanting to jump into power without a re-examination of ones conscience. In the end I suspect that due season will come through quiet steady work in civil society to build an ever-growing oasis of people determined to be principle centred, value-driven and committed to the good of all. If this be done then, in due season, this house will rise again. If it not be done, in due season the people will rise against their tormenters and then the house will be built up. A Nehemiah complex is welcome here. The time is now to ask leave of the King to go to our own Judah, to the city of our ancestors tombs and rebuild it.
Dr. Pat Utomi is the Director of Diamond Bank, Lagos
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