It may sound naïve, especially for a
person who is obviously a partisan, but
my concern and alarm have little to do
with who won or lost in the National
Assembly leadership elections palaver.
Easy as this can be lost on the gladiators,
we could be collectively sabotaging the
poor ordinary people of Nigeria
desperate for change. Could this elite
which has consistently failed to find its
mission and do for its people what their
old classmates in schools in the United
States and the United Kingdom and
elsewhere in the West, have done for
their people in Asia and Latin America,
unwittingly miss this window built on a
change mantra, and betray another
generation? It was with this spirit of
wondering how easily we chase power,
unmindful of purpose that I exclaimed
on seeing the political bloodletting in the
National Assembly leadership selection.
My reaction was, Oh my God, not again!
With the process and outcome clearly
signalling disunity, lack of discipline and
weak goal-setting, and severe goal
displacement, the least impact would be
challenged implementation of what the
people voted for.
Oh no! It’s not happening again. Not
again in my life time! But it was
happening. The sense of déjà vu was not
just troubling, and evidently palpable, it
had a puzzling force that left you feeling
and wondering how this is possible; the
way you feel when a 747 or an A380 is
tossed around by mere wind in clear air
turbulence. The vote for change had run
into turbulence at the inauguration of
the National Assembly. It was not about
who won or who the battle was against.
It was about a public brawl and the
change agenda.
It was about the ordinary people who
had persevered so much in the face of
underperforming and uncaring
governments beholden to special
interests and so seemingly unable, or
unwilling, to go where less endowed
rivals in other parts of the world have
gone, and dramatically improved the lot
of the people. To drive a change agenda
for which the people voted in April,
legislative common purpose was a clear
imperative. To go to legislative
inauguration without party discipline
and with a fractious mode and the old
ways, of, money and personality politics
in top flight, was to betray the voters of
this country, and that is what June 9
means to me. Hope has again been
annulled and for the third time in my
life a costly battle for change has again
been hijacked. As 1993 and 1999, so
seems to have gone 2015, if the people do
not fight back.
I was lamenting these things when
someone called my attention to an
advertised full page opinion by some
concerned APC members in the Daily
Trust Newspaper of June 9. That advert
was so reminiscent of the kinds of
advertisements published in 1993/94 by
the Concerned Professionals that I did
exactly the same thing I did in 1993.
In that year, many of us had canvassed a
change agenda. The Social Democratic
Party and its torch- bearer, Chief M.K.O.
Abiola, had come to symbolise that
change. Two days after that historic vote,
I journeyed to the US to attend a
convention. It was at that convention
that a Ugandan delegate came up to me,
very angry, saying: “You Nigerians, you
Nigerians, whenever Africa is set for
progress, you drag us back.” I was not
sure what he was talking about, but that
was how I learnt of the annulment of the
June 12 election. I immediately packed
my stuff and went up to my room and
began writing an OPED piece that would
appear under the title, “We Must Say
Never Again.” That piece resulted in the
founding of the Concerned Professionals.
That body acquitted itself well in the
struggle against military rule. It was a
principle-based struggle. They may have
sent policemen to beat us up as we
protested and sent assassins after a few
like myself but the principle was not lost
on them.
When Sani Abacha passed and they
withdrew under pressure, we erred in
thinking our work was done. The politics
of the last 16 years that followed left
Nigerians so exasperated that they
jumped on the Change mantra. So
uplifted were they with the outcome that
they assumed their world would change
dramatically come May 29. Such was the
expectations that analysts worried the
expectations were unrealistic and
bordered on expecting miracles.
Then comes June 9. For days before the
votes for the National Assembly leaders,
I kept saying that for me, it was not
about a particular candidate but about a
process that shows party discipline and
national consensus around an agenda
for change. If the process gets fractured,
I had warned what will happen will
include a return to the old ways of vote
buying in which goals of the common
good are traded off in the old goal
displacement ways, for money and self-
interest. Then there is the loss of speed
on consensus critical for change
legislation. My song was clearly a
borrowed verse from the US President,
Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Malaysia’s
Mahathir Mohammed: It is better for all
to be inside the house pissing out, than
for some to be outside the house pissing
in.
It is easy to see it as a simple political
game if you miss the cost of these simple
games for why Nigeria is poor and our
society is marked by much disharmony.
You may then analyse the New PDP vs
other groups in the All Progressives
Congress, or checking certain power
blocs. Even many of the actors who
presume to be acting in self-interest
have embraced a narcissism that has
blinded them to their own long term
self-interest, as they embrace short term
personal gain. Because of this the “only
business in town”, politics, manages to
do continuous damage to the real sector
businesses which give life to a majority
of the people. But to the short sighted, it
does not matter, this is politics. So, my
view was, sort these things out, whether
in smoke filled rooms, or in a sanctuary
of truth and love for the suffering poor
of this endowed society. The signalling
from a public brawl that will bruise egos
and carve cleavages into the polity and
etch animosities into the relationships
even in intra-party affairs may create
momentary victories but they have a sad
way of amounting to pyrrhic victories
and delaying the reclaiming of the
promise of Nigeria.
With mountain high challenges in the
economy, trailed by an unemployment
time bomb, security problems that go
beyond the Boko Haram and
kidnappings, and electricity and
petroleum sectors, in much need for
reforms, even as corruption, failing
education and health care make us a
tribe of refugees around the planet, now
was not the time for politics as usual.
I have tired of worrying about raw
political power, quest for possessions
and quick inclination to predation (The
3Ps) muzzling Purpose, to prevent
progress, in Nigeria. June 9 brought it
home again. There could be merit in the
pocket wars and persons that were the
target of breaching the consensus for
change on that day, but the consequence
will no doubt be progress deferred. The
big losers, the people, the small
mechanic who needs electric power for a
job to earn the next meal, the farmer
who remains in subsistence because poor
infrastructure locks him out while public
officials live like Lords off a wobbly
state, to the truth and prescription the
citizen typically go away forlorn for they
swallow the lies of politics as usual. The
only solution for me is people power.
The people must say to a political class
riding roughshod on their well-being:
Enough is enough. People power must
come to save the people recovering from
the euphoria of a promise of change that
seems deferred again.
What was the purpose of the vote for
change? The purpose is an elite that for
one generation failed a people and
denied them the progress they deserve
and desire, should change their way and
bring progress to the greatest number of
people. The patience had worn thin.
Now, it is the people who must now take
back their country anyway they see fit.
They cannot watch as Singapore escapes
Third World status, South Korea
becomes one of the most knowledge-
driven high income societies on earth
and Brazil goes from potential to a top
10 economy in the world. These
countries found a patriotic elite at some
point that sacrificed for progress. Since
Nigeria has been repeatedly denied such
by its elite, the people may have no
choice but to rise up and save
themselves. There were enough blame
for June 9 to go around, from the APC
hierarchy whose complicit role was put
forward in the advert I referred to in
the Daily Trust by some concerned APC
members, to the PDP leadership whose
business, no doubt, is to make the party
in government uncomfortable but which
must know that in decent societies a
government must be allowed to settle in
and not for legislators to collaborate
with those across the Isle in ways that
can be disruptive. Fortunately, it’s never
too late to begin again.
person who is obviously a partisan, but
my concern and alarm have little to do
with who won or lost in the National
Assembly leadership elections palaver.
Easy as this can be lost on the gladiators,
we could be collectively sabotaging the
poor ordinary people of Nigeria
desperate for change. Could this elite
which has consistently failed to find its
mission and do for its people what their
old classmates in schools in the United
States and the United Kingdom and
elsewhere in the West, have done for
their people in Asia and Latin America,
unwittingly miss this window built on a
change mantra, and betray another
generation? It was with this spirit of
wondering how easily we chase power,
unmindful of purpose that I exclaimed
on seeing the political bloodletting in the
National Assembly leadership selection.
My reaction was, Oh my God, not again!
With the process and outcome clearly
signalling disunity, lack of discipline and
weak goal-setting, and severe goal
displacement, the least impact would be
challenged implementation of what the
people voted for.
Oh no! It’s not happening again. Not
again in my life time! But it was
happening. The sense of déjà vu was not
just troubling, and evidently palpable, it
had a puzzling force that left you feeling
and wondering how this is possible; the
way you feel when a 747 or an A380 is
tossed around by mere wind in clear air
turbulence. The vote for change had run
into turbulence at the inauguration of
the National Assembly. It was not about
who won or who the battle was against.
It was about a public brawl and the
change agenda.
It was about the ordinary people who
had persevered so much in the face of
underperforming and uncaring
governments beholden to special
interests and so seemingly unable, or
unwilling, to go where less endowed
rivals in other parts of the world have
gone, and dramatically improved the lot
of the people. To drive a change agenda
for which the people voted in April,
legislative common purpose was a clear
imperative. To go to legislative
inauguration without party discipline
and with a fractious mode and the old
ways, of, money and personality politics
in top flight, was to betray the voters of
this country, and that is what June 9
means to me. Hope has again been
annulled and for the third time in my
life a costly battle for change has again
been hijacked. As 1993 and 1999, so
seems to have gone 2015, if the people do
not fight back.
I was lamenting these things when
someone called my attention to an
advertised full page opinion by some
concerned APC members in the Daily
Trust Newspaper of June 9. That advert
was so reminiscent of the kinds of
advertisements published in 1993/94 by
the Concerned Professionals that I did
exactly the same thing I did in 1993.
In that year, many of us had canvassed a
change agenda. The Social Democratic
Party and its torch- bearer, Chief M.K.O.
Abiola, had come to symbolise that
change. Two days after that historic vote,
I journeyed to the US to attend a
convention. It was at that convention
that a Ugandan delegate came up to me,
very angry, saying: “You Nigerians, you
Nigerians, whenever Africa is set for
progress, you drag us back.” I was not
sure what he was talking about, but that
was how I learnt of the annulment of the
June 12 election. I immediately packed
my stuff and went up to my room and
began writing an OPED piece that would
appear under the title, “We Must Say
Never Again.” That piece resulted in the
founding of the Concerned Professionals.
That body acquitted itself well in the
struggle against military rule. It was a
principle-based struggle. They may have
sent policemen to beat us up as we
protested and sent assassins after a few
like myself but the principle was not lost
on them.
When Sani Abacha passed and they
withdrew under pressure, we erred in
thinking our work was done. The politics
of the last 16 years that followed left
Nigerians so exasperated that they
jumped on the Change mantra. So
uplifted were they with the outcome that
they assumed their world would change
dramatically come May 29. Such was the
expectations that analysts worried the
expectations were unrealistic and
bordered on expecting miracles.
Then comes June 9. For days before the
votes for the National Assembly leaders,
I kept saying that for me, it was not
about a particular candidate but about a
process that shows party discipline and
national consensus around an agenda
for change. If the process gets fractured,
I had warned what will happen will
include a return to the old ways of vote
buying in which goals of the common
good are traded off in the old goal
displacement ways, for money and self-
interest. Then there is the loss of speed
on consensus critical for change
legislation. My song was clearly a
borrowed verse from the US President,
Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Malaysia’s
Mahathir Mohammed: It is better for all
to be inside the house pissing out, than
for some to be outside the house pissing
in.
It is easy to see it as a simple political
game if you miss the cost of these simple
games for why Nigeria is poor and our
society is marked by much disharmony.
You may then analyse the New PDP vs
other groups in the All Progressives
Congress, or checking certain power
blocs. Even many of the actors who
presume to be acting in self-interest
have embraced a narcissism that has
blinded them to their own long term
self-interest, as they embrace short term
personal gain. Because of this the “only
business in town”, politics, manages to
do continuous damage to the real sector
businesses which give life to a majority
of the people. But to the short sighted, it
does not matter, this is politics. So, my
view was, sort these things out, whether
in smoke filled rooms, or in a sanctuary
of truth and love for the suffering poor
of this endowed society. The signalling
from a public brawl that will bruise egos
and carve cleavages into the polity and
etch animosities into the relationships
even in intra-party affairs may create
momentary victories but they have a sad
way of amounting to pyrrhic victories
and delaying the reclaiming of the
promise of Nigeria.
With mountain high challenges in the
economy, trailed by an unemployment
time bomb, security problems that go
beyond the Boko Haram and
kidnappings, and electricity and
petroleum sectors, in much need for
reforms, even as corruption, failing
education and health care make us a
tribe of refugees around the planet, now
was not the time for politics as usual.
I have tired of worrying about raw
political power, quest for possessions
and quick inclination to predation (The
3Ps) muzzling Purpose, to prevent
progress, in Nigeria. June 9 brought it
home again. There could be merit in the
pocket wars and persons that were the
target of breaching the consensus for
change on that day, but the consequence
will no doubt be progress deferred. The
big losers, the people, the small
mechanic who needs electric power for a
job to earn the next meal, the farmer
who remains in subsistence because poor
infrastructure locks him out while public
officials live like Lords off a wobbly
state, to the truth and prescription the
citizen typically go away forlorn for they
swallow the lies of politics as usual. The
only solution for me is people power.
The people must say to a political class
riding roughshod on their well-being:
Enough is enough. People power must
come to save the people recovering from
the euphoria of a promise of change that
seems deferred again.
What was the purpose of the vote for
change? The purpose is an elite that for
one generation failed a people and
denied them the progress they deserve
and desire, should change their way and
bring progress to the greatest number of
people. The patience had worn thin.
Now, it is the people who must now take
back their country anyway they see fit.
They cannot watch as Singapore escapes
Third World status, South Korea
becomes one of the most knowledge-
driven high income societies on earth
and Brazil goes from potential to a top
10 economy in the world. These
countries found a patriotic elite at some
point that sacrificed for progress. Since
Nigeria has been repeatedly denied such
by its elite, the people may have no
choice but to rise up and save
themselves. There were enough blame
for June 9 to go around, from the APC
hierarchy whose complicit role was put
forward in the advert I referred to in
the Daily Trust by some concerned APC
members, to the PDP leadership whose
business, no doubt, is to make the party
in government uncomfortable but which
must know that in decent societies a
government must be allowed to settle in
and not for legislators to collaborate
with those across the Isle in ways that
can be disruptive. Fortunately, it’s never
too late to begin again.
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