The Department of State Services (DSS), a public institution created by law to maintain the internal security of the country, has gone to court over what is, at best, the loud thoughts of one man. Prof. Pat Utomi, politician and public intellectual, recently gave notice that he was going to put in place a shadow government that would put the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on its toes. Utomi felt that the government was getting away with a lot of excesses and misdeeds because Nigerians are too permissive to recognize or notice when a government that is supposed to serve them is veering off the track. Since Nigerians are not alert enough in this regard, Utomi reasoned that a shadow government would fill the gap.
But no sooner had he given this notice than the DSS stepped forward with aggressive disavowal. The agency said Utomi did not mean well; that he was trying to create chaos, the type that could destabilize the country. It packaged Utomi’s proposition as an attack on the Constitution and a threat to Tinubu’s government. Consequently, it has gone to court to stop Utomi in his tracks.
The action of the DSS speaks volumes about the time we live in. We are living in an unusual time when a public institution whose job is to maintain national security erroneously thinks or believes that it exists for the purpose of serving the interest of the president rather than that of the country. It probably thinks that a government in power is the same thing as the state itself. It hardly recognizes that its job is to secure the country rather than run a ring of defence around the government. It is this error of perception of what its responsibility truly is that led to the trepidation it displayed over Utomi’s proposition. In the frenzy that followed, the agency, probably without knowing it, has shrunk its sphere of operation to the point of making one man an issue of grave concern.
Utomi, in a way, must have led the DSS into the error it is involved in. He didn’t have to announce that he was planning to form a shadow government. There was no need for the public notice. He should simply and quietly have swung into action. In that case, what the government and the rest of Nigeria will see or hear is a voice crying why over the ugly state of affairs that the government of the day has created. The voice will be strident. It will be clear.
It will be unrelenting. It will work with facts and figures, the type that would have made the government to think through its plans properly before going public with them. Such an arrangement or creation is supposed to be a corrective mechanism that could, possibly, lead to good governance. It will not be in place for purposes of insurrection or anarchy as the DSS has come to perceive what Utomi set out to do.
But then, what Utomi has made a public show of is not anything new in a democracy. It is the norm, yet the DSS sees it as an aberration. But it is not. Rather, it is what a proper and strong opposition does in a democratic setting. The All Progressives Congress (APC), in its days of opposition, did it. It had its voice in the air at all times. Its arrowhead, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, was issuing press releases almost on a daily basis. All was aimed at tearing the government of the day apart. The media and publicity wing of the party was busier than that of the government it was opposing. The APC media machinery took a position on every policy or programme of the government of President Goodluck Jonathan. It criticized and lampooned the government ceaselessly. Jonathan’s government did not get away with anything, good or bad. The APC was always there, gnawing at the feet of the Presidency. What the APC had in place then was a shadow government. But it did not call it by that name.
As an opposition party, the APC meant business. It was so because its promoters knew what they were aiming at. They wanted political power and they were focused on that pursuit. But their job was made a lot easier by the cavalier disposition of the government of the day. It gave the opposition forces a free reign.
There was no talkback from government. It had no strong position on any issue. Its policies and programmes were not exactly bad, but the government did not feel that it should ward off attacks trailing them. Complacency was its mode of operation. Overall, the government ended up looking timid in the eyes of the public, or so it seemed. It just could not rein in the exuberant opposition.
Now, a group that specializes in opposition politics has grabbed power. Surprisingly, however, it is getting most of its actions wrong. The expectation was that the group that was always there, lashing out at what it packaged and sold as the missteps of a government in power, would do better if it switches roles with the opposite camp. But that is not the case.
The opposition turned ruling party has proved to be worse than the government it described as incompetent. But there is no structured institution to talk about its failures. What is supposed to be the opposition is looking away morosely. What you have instead is a miscellany of individual voices picking holes with government’s actions and inactions. Most often, government tries to intimidate or harass them into quietude.
If there were a strong and virile opposition, there would have been no need for what Utomi planned to do. A structured opposition would have filled that gap. But then, what is happening now shows that the government of President Tinubu is afraid of its own shadow. Otherwise, why did it feel so perturbed over Utomi’s plan to the point that it has to recruit the DSS to intervene?
The government, from all indications, does not want to be put on the spot. It wants Nigerians to continue on their path of moroseness and inaction.
Again, the intrusion of the DSS over what is supposed to be the right and prerogative of opposition politicians says a lot about the level of desperation of the Tinubu administration.
It is strange that less than two years into its tenure, the Tinubu government has been campaigning vociferously about 2027. It does not want to create any dull moment that opposition forces can cash in on. The government has, in its desperation, messed up the phenomenon called defection in politics. It has put in place stratagems that could get every Nigerian to defect to the ruling party. Now the scheme is beginning to look absurd. People are wondering where Nigeria will be in 2027 if the political scene is already polluted by farcical defections more than two years before the next election.