Sarumi

Sarumi: Testing Nigerian Democracy

Thank God for little mercies! Were it not for democracy, the death of Victor and Naomi Umoren would not have merited more than a few lines in the News In Brief sections of the newspapers. Yet, the way this controversy over the role of the Minister of Cooperation and Integration in Africa is handled and settled would tell the sort of man Sarumi is: Also it would say much about how responsible Obasanjo's government is to public opinion.

Beyond all else, the conclusion of this matter involving the loss of the lives of two Nigerian citizens under scandalous circumstances would be a test of the real health of Nigerian democracy.

There are only very few places left in the world where a Minister of the Central Government would be in such a mess and still be clutching to his position as if his life depended on his being a minister.

First, it is a safe sight that democracy is alive and well in Nigeria when Nigerian newspapers again and again punched holes in what the police have termed its report on the accident. Please, forget that the Nigeria police was shameless enough to say that the only investigation it conducted on the matter was the discussion with members of the Sarumi entourage. Nothing was said about answers from eye-witnesses.

Yet, the not guilty verdict over the issue of who and what caused the road accident could be overlooked easily except it shows that Nigeria still has an ocean to cross to arrive at the point where the police would be independent of the executive.

The real point here is whether the late Mrs. Umoren was still alive and pleading for help when the Sarumi train sent off its wounded to the hospital and drove off.

That really is the issue. That dead woman was part of the demos whose crazy Sarumi is a high official of. For what really is democracy if not a state governed under the principles of social equality?

Social equality presupposes the equality of all persons. Thus, those members of Sarumi's entourage who were evacuated from the accident scene to hospitals should have been given equal treatment with then injured Mrs. Naomi Umoren.

For weeks now, Sarumi has attempted to make Nigerians believe that he had done nothing wrong. For weeks, Abuja has behaved as though nothing went wrong.

It just might be that soon the electorate will forget when next Sarumi presents himself for an elective office or the case might dog him like the Chippaquidick scandal which has ensured that the only surviving one of the original Kennedy brothers, will never be President of the United States.

A car he was driving ran into a lake killing his female passenger and Edward the US senator often called just "Ted" initially kept quiet about the lady's death.

This Sarumi incident has become a serious test for the health of the Nigerian democracy. The placard waving picketers who have been condemning Sarumi, Naomi's ex-fellow workers at an internet outfit who have internationalised the case; the journalists who have refused to let the matter die, etc, are all telling analysts how healthy Nigerian democracy is.

How? As Bergei Kovalyou, the Human Rights activist and Yeltsin adviser turned critic said after a Russian election: "The quality of democracy depends heavily on the quality of the democrats. We have to wait for a critical mass to accumulate - a critical mass of people with democratic principles. Without this, everything will be like now, always in bits and starts".

Is this not mere wolf-crying? Are real democratic issues actually involved here. So well, may we list a few of them please. Take the rule of law for instance. Has the police exhibited real independence and seriousness in this matter?

A car accident is a car accident; often none may be in the wrong, especially taking the allegation that Sarumi's car lost a tyre into consideration.

The concept of the centrality of law to civilized existence came from the Romans. Medical thinkers exposed and consecrated the idea. The rule of law concept laid the basis of constitutionalism and the protection of human rights.

Under here comes the issue of who was over-speeding. It is a bit comic for the police to charge the late Umorens with over-speeding when every Nigerian knows that our top government officials cars go faster than the wind - even within towns.

Stretch the matter further and you will ask what the stand of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) etc. have been? Social pluralism and civil society shot up persistent and diverse autonomous groups not based on blood relationship or marriage. Poverty of civil society strengthens centralised bureaucracies which is the bane of the Third World.

Now, this is most important; Where Pastor Shingle Wigwe your average Nigerian, he would have shrugged off the matter and prayed to get a few naira notes from Sarumi. But he was a Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Director-General. So, he decided to do what he could; by bringing the matter to the general public.

There is the power of individualism. Individualism developed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Europe, the acceptance of the rights of individual choice which Dr. Karl Deutsch calls "the Romeo and Juliet revolution" prevailed on the West by the 7th century. Since then, argues Deutsch, emphasis is "On Nationalism, World Regions and the Nature of the West". That is: "the poorest he in England has a life to live as much as the richest he".

Thanks to the internet, the Russian government, owing to Victor's mother being Russian as well as people from all over the globe have got involved in the matter.

Here is ample proof that modern technology which has increased authorities' ability to keep citizens under surveillance and pry into their private lives, is also weathering George Orwell's Big Brother.

Since the third wave of democratization started in the mid 1970s with the demise of right-wing dictatorship in Portugal, Spain and Greece and gathering momentum ran in the 80s, it has always been pushed on by technology; radio, T.V. fax machines and E-mail.

In the long run, democracy means much more than letting people vote freely. To transform a country requires structural reforms which demand a corresponding change in public attitudes or what is often termed political culture.

Yale University' Donald Kagan, a Professor of Classics, says that democracy depends on three conditions. One; a set of good intentions, two, a body of citizens who have a good understanding of the principles of democracy or who have developed a characteristic constant with the democratic way of life and three, a high quality of leadership, at least at critical moments. In his 1991 book: "Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy" Kegan shows that since 2,500 years ago, democratic societies have always had those three traits.

In certain societies, the Sarumi affair would be a major scandal. The Obasanjo administration may treat it as Sarumi's personal affair but it sure goes beyond that.

The major question here is whether our ministers regard and treat other Nigerians as human beings. If they fail to do so, could they be held accountable?

Unless the public's notion of how Sarumi's entourage killed the Umoren's is changed, Sarumi remains a political roadkill just like any rabbit run over by a minister's entourage. Or please just like Victor and Naomi.

Something else, the earlier he sent in his resignation letter, the more he would be helping Obasanjo's reflection bid and the growth of Nigerian democracy.

Let us not forget that just last year, the Belgian Internal Affairs Minister resigned over the death of a Nigerian illegal immigrant while being repatriated.

That is democracy in action. Belgian citizens and not Nigerians spearheaded the public demonstrations that forced the minister out.

May the blood of Victor and his wife Naomi and their dead unborn baby so water the tree of Nigerian democracy.

The writer is based in Lagos, Nigeria