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This article came through after I had written two other ones meant to grace this space today. The first write up that would have appeared here was inspired by the post-swearing in reactions of President Bola Tinubu’s ministers. Talking to the media after the event, each promised to run an agenda personal to them. Call it personal vision and you won’t be wrong. Things they think ought to be done.
Critical observers with vast experience in the history of development of nations, put those utterances together and they came to nothing. The utterances showed no pathway that can lead to anything meaningful. They lack a soul. Virtually no linkage. Monstrous in nature. This is what you get when a society lacks a vision. Definitely, it could not have been a national vision that at this time the federal government would give so much priority to destruction of people’s property because they built in wrong places as Minister of Federal Capital Territory began to do, even displacing the vulnerable without sparing a thought for their rehabilitation.
No sane government will start the era of a new regime on such a sad note. The one still serving her national youth service got appointed very much against the letter and spirit of the law. This terrible choice showed that our leadership selection process has nosedived. In a country of over 200 million people we still find it very difficult to get human capital resources. This speaks volumes about what nepotism is doing to our quest for proper development. That is not the issue here. Rather, what is, is that our Minister in-charge of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy pushed out her own eight-point agenda about same time the president who called her up for national duty released his own vague eight-point agenda also.
You can see why things don’t work in the right way in our country and indeed the whole of the Black world. This phenomenon which has become like a reccurring decimal is at the root why democracy is being made to look or appear as a very ineffective tool for societal development whereas it has been an instrument for sustainable transformation elsewhere and has remained so. The plausible deduction one can make from the Tinubu example just explained, even though not peculiar to the administration, would be the fact that our political leaders over time, if not since independence, run like the bat would do in the afternoon.
Bat has eyes and there is sunshine but the beast can’t see, yet its naughty mindset tells it and in fact propels it to take a flight often to its hurt. It keeps flying and hitting its frame against hard objects until it meets an ugly end. Our leaders run without vision. Unfortunately, the situation is such that the country has no national vision. Our politicians struggle for power. While engaged in doing so they mumble all kinds of platitudes along, they confuse the population using primordial sentiments and money. This enables them get into power and when they get there, the search for solutions begins, this is the funniest aspect: at this point it becomes extremely difficult to put their hands on something tangible and relevant to the needs of the time and the citizens basic needs. Why? The hawks have descended, scrambling for partitions. It can be the most troubling season for anybody including the most serious.
This period ignites the failure point of most of the administrations that beat the odds to get into offices. This is why the fear of military coups remains real and potent, irrespective of what some sections of the leadership vanguards may say and want to see. It is difficult to keep pushing contradictions and never expect to reap a backlash. This is not possible. When a man ordinarily is pushed against a high wall and then pressed and it becomes clear death is the only thing remaining, trust him to use the last strength to fight back. African people have their backs against the wall, the fight back is beginning afresh. Somebody described it as “African Democratic Revolution”. Who knows!
We come to the main point of today’s discourse which is about growing military coups in Africa taking the latest development which unraveled in Gabon. Our leaders, especially those in the West Africa region, have been dealing with similar situations in their area for sometime with the height being the threat to go to war with Niger Republic in the bid to restore constitutional governance to the country. What has been the main point of the Economic Community of West African States? They want democratic rule to prevail in the region. Africa Union (AU) began the new crusade which gained traction with the ECOWAS leaders.
Democracy is great, no one should make any mistake about this. Many have tried to run with the idea of visionary benevolent dictatorship. We have seen that in Russia, China, Libya, Rwanda and a few other places, yes there could be results sometimes but the cause in terms of human lives and dislocations is something that is not attractive at all. Democracy may be slow but its process is sure and sustainable when the structures are in place and there is agreement by all to make them strong institutions. Without question it is the best system of governance available to man presently.
So, when our leaders admit this fact they have done anything extraordinary, they only defer to what is known and imperative. Their major challenge has had to do with them adjusting from their often dynastic and oligarchic culture to taking in finer details of democratic principles in their journey to and through power. Their inability to so do is the missing link that hinders democratic growth. It stunts or even regresses development and in turn provokes fall-outs everyone, including our so called rulers, won’t like.
Democracy insists there must be mass participation of the populace in politics and management of their entity and particularly its governance. Our leaders hear that but bluntly refuse to take it in, rather they would prefer to create the odd alternative which requires them to fight their way to power, effect a state capture, then commence a crafty but systematic plunder of public patrimony, after which they put in place a process without which the pauperised people can’t find a space to do anything except they submit to subservient relationships. Even as a professional, successful entrepreneurship is dependent on how close and the extent one subscribes to the shenanigans of the very reckless tiny ruling class. Citizens progression in public service hasn’t the impremateur of merit, except one gains the approval and promotion of one member of the oligarchy he remains stucked if not totally out. Babylon system some describe.
This is at the rudimentary level, at the commanding height African rulers never believe in succession politics in the real sense of it. They have a sit tight mentality that is in conflict with classical democratic practice. Hallmark of democracy is ability to change non performing government and their group from power without acrimony and bloodshed. Typical African rulers don’t like this;for them politics is not Service to father it is a serious business from which participants must reap material benefits at all cost, it doesn’t if their people are emasculated in the process , many meet their untimely death and their country come to ruins. For them, it is about the end justifying the means. But truth is process justify means, subverted anarchy follows.
