Democracy Day is today, May 29. When the then President Olusegun Obasanjo created the day, there was euphoria in the air. Nigerians were glad to have civil rule in place. Quite understandably, expectations were high. After a long continuum of military rule, they hoped to have a say in who governed them - and how. With the people's representatives in executive positions and in the various parliaments, they looked forward to a better society, a better life. So Obasanjo's order that May 29 should be commemorated every year as the day on which Nigerians should ruminate solemnly on the civil governance couldn't have been faulted.
Ten years down the line, however, the question that arises is whether we have had our hope, our aspiration, our expectations realised. Your guess is as good as mine. A few days ago, the government advised us to mark this milestone in quietude and not to shout it on the rooftops. The government's spokesman added, probably for those who wish to exercise their democratic right in any extent possible, that if you still wish to scream about this day, you may well do so. It is your constitutional right. But he did not give reason why the "celebration" should be low-key. Yes, the nation has lost its leader recently. For many, the mourning is still ongoing, and for many others it is forever. But that is not the real reason for the government's saying that Democracy Day should be witnessed with a solemn restraint. There is really nothing to celebrate.
In answering the question whether we have harvested our dreams of democracy, we should begin by asking ourselves the purpose of democracy. For me, the whole purpose of democracy is that leaders should deliver on the promises they made when they begged us for votes. We did not give them power so that they could become more comfortable through lining their pockets or buying landed property. They are there in order to make us more comfortable.
But the reverse is the case in this country. As poverty and want increase manifold among the mass of the people, those in executive positions and in the parliaments become increasingly more comfortable. There is not much to show in terms of improvement in the life of the common man. The state of infrastructure in the country is appalling in spite of the mouth-watering contracts governments at local, state and federal levels dish out all the time. Unemployment has become the byword for school graduation. Health facilities are nearly absent as public hospitals continue to play their old role of consulting clinics. Any Nigerian who wants qualitative medical care has to seek it abroad. But how many Nigerians have the wherewithal to embark on medical tourism in Egypt, India, Europe or the United States?
Insecurity has more than doubled since 1999. Thousands of Nigerians have died in the hands of brigands and assassins, as well as in sectarian violence. Electricity supply is still a far cry from the promised goal. Promises made by our leaders to tackle other issues requisite for qualitative living - food, education, good roads, housing, human rights, etc. - are yet to be delivered. Why? Because the leaders would rather make themselves more comfortable than discharge their responsibilities to the electorate. Just this week a debate broke out over an alleged attempt by members of the House of Representatives to have their quarterly allowances upped from N27.2 million to N42 million each. Though the increase would have been illegal, one wouldn't be surprised if the idea was mooted by the honourables in order to test its acceptability by the public. A House that is yet to prove its positive impact on the lives of the people that made it possible for each member to be there is more interested, as many instances in the past showed, in mining more funds for personal aggrandisement. In Nigeria, nothing is impossible.
Up there in the executive rooms, the story is quite similar. Their excellencies have immersed themselves in the task of playing the power game. Consequently, the fabled 7-Point Agenda has remained a mirage, a refrain that political appointees chant anytime they have an opportunity to do so, which is all the time. The game of power, which involves playing the chess of who becomes what, where and how, appears to have more attraction to the leaders. Playing this game has ensured that not a single item on the 7-Point Agenda has been achieved in three years. Even the one that some apologists cited in the wake of President Yar'Adua's death, i.e., amnesty for militants in the Niger Delta, is neither here nor there. What Yar'Adua promised on his agenda was not an amnesty but a frontal solution to the problems of the oil-producing region, which included the environmental impacts of oil exploration and improvement in the life of the Niger Deltans. Nothing of the sort has been done. Exploration and pollution, which are twinned in the hapless region, continue unabated.
What we are seeing is the politics of appeasement for criminal elements who took arms against their fatherland. As long as the boys are kept quiet through the monetary inducement called rehabilitation, the main problems would subsist. At the end of the day, the gargantuan failure of 7-Point Agenda in relation to the Niger Delta would manifest in renewed militancy, kidnapping, robbery and other atrocities.
President Goodluck Jonathan has the onerous task of redeeming the image of the Yar'Adua/Jonathan regime. Sticking to the 7-Point Agenda as initiated in 2007 is a bad idea that should be jettisoned immediately. A piece of advice given by Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi last year, on the verge of his appointment as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, should be revisited with all seriousness. What Sanusi said was that the government had better concentrate on just two or three points of the agenda. Seven points were unwieldy, he argued.
Recently, I was in a forum where a top federal government official said that the then Acting President Jonathan had elected to address just three problems bedevilling the nation: the Niger Delta question, power and security. It was a few weeks before Yar'Adua died. With the demise of Yar'Adua, Jonathan, with a bigger mandate as president, has an opportunity to commit himself to those three items. Disappointingly, however, on Wednesday this week the Federal Executive Council came up with the funny disclaimer that it was going to do away with the 7-Point Agenda. We should, therefore, expect to see no change in government policy in the next one year. Our ears are going to continue to receive the annoying cacophony of the unwieldy agenda that has since become a quasi religion under Yar'Adua and Jonathan. Remember that it is the failure of this agenda that questions the faith of Nigerians in the ability of government to deliver the dividends of democracy. And remember that Jonathan has "not enough time," as his defenders now tell us, to do much before the general elections. As such, it is quite plausible that the gains of democracy will continue to elude us, just as we are required to observe Democracy Day year after year.
* Published on the back page of LEADERSHIP, on Saturday, May 29, 2010
Showing posts with label Nigeria Presidency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nigeria Presidency. Show all posts
Sunday, 30 May 2010
Saturday, 22 May 2010
Sambo: The New Northern Leader
Sambo: The New Northern Leader
Written by Ibrahim Sheme
Published in LEADERSHIP
Friday, 21 May 2010
In his congratulatory message to Alhaji Mohammed Namadi Sambo, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu advised the new vice-president to henceforth regard himself as a national leader and not somebody from this or that part of the country. “Vice-president Sambo should see the whole country as his constitiuency. This is an entirely different ball game,” the former governor of Abia State argued in an interview with LEADERSHIP published Thursday.
Well, it is indeed a different ball game. Sambo is no longer the governor of Kaduna State. His sudden elevation has catapulted him to the centre, at once making him the number two citizen of this country. It is henceforth a different theatre, and the dramatis personae are different. As deputy to the president, he has automatically become a few metres taller than his former colleagues, the state governors who, it should be pointed out, scarcely played a role in making him what he is today. It was his predecessor in Kaduna State, Senator Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, they had worked hard to get into the coveted office. Sambo is entirely the making of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and, of course, the almighty God.
Kalu has also advised Sambo to forget about the politics that nearly denied him the vice-presidency. He said, “Whatever transpired on his way to Aso Villa is past tense. For now, he is neither from Kaduna nor from the North-West.”
The truth, however, is that it would be foolhardy for the vice-president to disregard where he comes from. In fact, his political future rests squarely on his capacity to work in the centre while minding the periphery. Being the vice-president, he is expected to help Jonathan work for the whole of Nigeria, but his primary constituency, this time the whole North and not just a section of it, is equally important. Besides, there are great benefits to derive from being a regional leader in present-day Nigeria.
Clearly, providence has thrust the weight of Northern leadership on his shoulders. This section of the country will regard him as its political head from now till the next general elections when a new crop of leaders will be had. And it is not the first time such happened. Way back in 1999 when Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo was made president, he picked the newly elected governor of Adamawa State, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, as his deputy. That single act transformed Atiku into the North’s leader overnight. At a grand reception organised for him in Kaduna to commemorate the development, not everyone doubted his elevation as the region’s new leader. While the romance with Obasanjo lasted, Atiku enjoyed a firm grip on the various sectors of Northern leadership. State governors, especially those of the PDP stock, rallied round him.
Atiku only began to lose grip when his romance with Obasanjo soured. His ambition to succeed the latter as president was thwarted by Obasanjo, who wanted to succeed himself instead. Their bitter rivalry, culminating into the loss of the third term bid, is one of the tantalising stories in the history of politics in Nigeria.
Atiku has since made frantic attempts to regain his leadership role in the region – from floating an opposition party to his recent bid to return to his former party, the PDP. Regrettably, just when the Action Congress looked set to present a real challenge to the ruling party, Atiku jumped ship, abandoned his captainship of the AC and made a hilarious move to rejoin the PDP, a move that was resisted and scuttled by the party’s leaders in his home state with the active connivance of the party’s national leadership. As things stand, Atiku is now in political wilderness, oscillating between being an opposition figure and someone trying to romance those in power. His naked quest for power is repugnant to many an observer; it is doubtful if he will ever regain his former hold on power, both at the regional and national levels.
Sambo’s ascension appears to have sealed Atiku’s fate. The ongoing drama is like a rewind to the events of 1999, with a few differences. Once again we have a president from the South and a VP from the North. We are coasting towards another general election. Sambo is expected to remain loyal to Jonathan as they plot to run together in 2011 after the PDP might have jettisoned its zoning formula in order to accommodate Jonathan’s yet-to-be-divulged ambition. While this is going on, Sambo will be consolidating his position as the leader of the North in the emerging arrangement. As he does so, Atiku, who once played that role, would become increasingly isolated, unless he helps build a formidable opposition to the PDP. And it looks like it is too late for him to do that between now and the next elections, especially with his flippant, nay chameleonic, histrionics in opposition activities.
I do not see the PDP not giving its all to both Jonathan and Sambo as the elections loom closer. Besides, the party is being rebuilt, with a redoubtable Prince Vincent Ogbulafor out in the cold and a pro-Jonathan national chairman coming on board. It is quite reasonable to expect the whole National Working Committee of the party to be changed very soon, giving way to apparatchiks that are willing to do the president’s bidding. Now with this renewal of the party leadership, both Jonathan and Sambo would become stronger leaders, much stronger than we have seen since 2007. At least, none of them suffers from any debilitating illness that would limit their capacity for action.
Reading the lips of Jonathan lately, one can safely say that the dice has already been cast. During the swearing-in of Sambo on Wednesday, the president took time to emphasise that he and Sambo were going to have a very chummy relationship. “The stories of crisis between the president and vice-president will not arise,” he promised. “I will make sure that we work together as a team.” Sambo himself said quite the same. By this, they were reminding us about the bitter relationship between President Obasanjo and Vice-president Atiku. And they were telling us that theirs was going to be different. Jonathan says that he knew the areas of disagreement that made governance difficult in our recent past. So we should expect to see a new era in which the two most powerful men in the country will not be fighting each other.
Jonathan says he wants Sambo to cooperate fully with him, and he will do the same for him. Scratch my back, I will scratch yours. If that plan works, we expect both to reap its dividends. Jonathan will hope to get elected next year in order to rule the country for another four years. And if everything goes according to plan, he may be forced by circumstances not to run again, and then he will scratch Sambo’s back. That means Sambo, unless he bungles it the way Atiku did, and unless the opposition elements erect a wall more formidable than the one we are seeing, is on the road to becoming Nigeria’s future president. And assuming that Jonathan decides not to run next year, as many want him to do, the PDP can present only one candidate – Namadi Sambo. This explains the recent frenzy over who Jonathan should nominate as vice-president. And that is certainly the biggest dividend of being the leader of a region as vast as the North.
Written by Ibrahim Sheme
Published in LEADERSHIP
Friday, 21 May 2010
In his congratulatory message to Alhaji Mohammed Namadi Sambo, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu advised the new vice-president to henceforth regard himself as a national leader and not somebody from this or that part of the country. “Vice-president Sambo should see the whole country as his constitiuency. This is an entirely different ball game,” the former governor of Abia State argued in an interview with LEADERSHIP published Thursday.
Well, it is indeed a different ball game. Sambo is no longer the governor of Kaduna State. His sudden elevation has catapulted him to the centre, at once making him the number two citizen of this country. It is henceforth a different theatre, and the dramatis personae are different. As deputy to the president, he has automatically become a few metres taller than his former colleagues, the state governors who, it should be pointed out, scarcely played a role in making him what he is today. It was his predecessor in Kaduna State, Senator Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, they had worked hard to get into the coveted office. Sambo is entirely the making of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and, of course, the almighty God.
Kalu has also advised Sambo to forget about the politics that nearly denied him the vice-presidency. He said, “Whatever transpired on his way to Aso Villa is past tense. For now, he is neither from Kaduna nor from the North-West.”
The truth, however, is that it would be foolhardy for the vice-president to disregard where he comes from. In fact, his political future rests squarely on his capacity to work in the centre while minding the periphery. Being the vice-president, he is expected to help Jonathan work for the whole of Nigeria, but his primary constituency, this time the whole North and not just a section of it, is equally important. Besides, there are great benefits to derive from being a regional leader in present-day Nigeria.
Clearly, providence has thrust the weight of Northern leadership on his shoulders. This section of the country will regard him as its political head from now till the next general elections when a new crop of leaders will be had. And it is not the first time such happened. Way back in 1999 when Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo was made president, he picked the newly elected governor of Adamawa State, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, as his deputy. That single act transformed Atiku into the North’s leader overnight. At a grand reception organised for him in Kaduna to commemorate the development, not everyone doubted his elevation as the region’s new leader. While the romance with Obasanjo lasted, Atiku enjoyed a firm grip on the various sectors of Northern leadership. State governors, especially those of the PDP stock, rallied round him.
Atiku only began to lose grip when his romance with Obasanjo soured. His ambition to succeed the latter as president was thwarted by Obasanjo, who wanted to succeed himself instead. Their bitter rivalry, culminating into the loss of the third term bid, is one of the tantalising stories in the history of politics in Nigeria.
Atiku has since made frantic attempts to regain his leadership role in the region – from floating an opposition party to his recent bid to return to his former party, the PDP. Regrettably, just when the Action Congress looked set to present a real challenge to the ruling party, Atiku jumped ship, abandoned his captainship of the AC and made a hilarious move to rejoin the PDP, a move that was resisted and scuttled by the party’s leaders in his home state with the active connivance of the party’s national leadership. As things stand, Atiku is now in political wilderness, oscillating between being an opposition figure and someone trying to romance those in power. His naked quest for power is repugnant to many an observer; it is doubtful if he will ever regain his former hold on power, both at the regional and national levels.
Sambo’s ascension appears to have sealed Atiku’s fate. The ongoing drama is like a rewind to the events of 1999, with a few differences. Once again we have a president from the South and a VP from the North. We are coasting towards another general election. Sambo is expected to remain loyal to Jonathan as they plot to run together in 2011 after the PDP might have jettisoned its zoning formula in order to accommodate Jonathan’s yet-to-be-divulged ambition. While this is going on, Sambo will be consolidating his position as the leader of the North in the emerging arrangement. As he does so, Atiku, who once played that role, would become increasingly isolated, unless he helps build a formidable opposition to the PDP. And it looks like it is too late for him to do that between now and the next elections, especially with his flippant, nay chameleonic, histrionics in opposition activities.
I do not see the PDP not giving its all to both Jonathan and Sambo as the elections loom closer. Besides, the party is being rebuilt, with a redoubtable Prince Vincent Ogbulafor out in the cold and a pro-Jonathan national chairman coming on board. It is quite reasonable to expect the whole National Working Committee of the party to be changed very soon, giving way to apparatchiks that are willing to do the president’s bidding. Now with this renewal of the party leadership, both Jonathan and Sambo would become stronger leaders, much stronger than we have seen since 2007. At least, none of them suffers from any debilitating illness that would limit their capacity for action.
Reading the lips of Jonathan lately, one can safely say that the dice has already been cast. During the swearing-in of Sambo on Wednesday, the president took time to emphasise that he and Sambo were going to have a very chummy relationship. “The stories of crisis between the president and vice-president will not arise,” he promised. “I will make sure that we work together as a team.” Sambo himself said quite the same. By this, they were reminding us about the bitter relationship between President Obasanjo and Vice-president Atiku. And they were telling us that theirs was going to be different. Jonathan says that he knew the areas of disagreement that made governance difficult in our recent past. So we should expect to see a new era in which the two most powerful men in the country will not be fighting each other.
Jonathan says he wants Sambo to cooperate fully with him, and he will do the same for him. Scratch my back, I will scratch yours. If that plan works, we expect both to reap its dividends. Jonathan will hope to get elected next year in order to rule the country for another four years. And if everything goes according to plan, he may be forced by circumstances not to run again, and then he will scratch Sambo’s back. That means Sambo, unless he bungles it the way Atiku did, and unless the opposition elements erect a wall more formidable than the one we are seeing, is on the road to becoming Nigeria’s future president. And assuming that Jonathan decides not to run next year, as many want him to do, the PDP can present only one candidate – Namadi Sambo. This explains the recent frenzy over who Jonathan should nominate as vice-president. And that is certainly the biggest dividend of being the leader of a region as vast as the North.
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