The wages of political rascality

In January 1966, Nigerians witnessed the first ever
military intervention in the politics of their nation. To
the applause of many of us, they sacked the first
republic and instituted military rule. Some 30 years
later when democracy returned to the polity, the
earlier ovation to the men in uniform had waned as
they too were found guilty of the same vices that
informed their sacking of the civilian government.
Against this backdrop, it was imagined that perhaps
the nation would have been better off if democracy,
the acclaimed best system of government in the
world had been allowed to grow in our nation.
Nigerian politicians the argument continues would
have matured and learnt to practice democracy in
its true form. Since 1999 however, we have had no
less than 15 unbroken years of civilian rule yet we
have had nothing other than “democracy with
tears”. Why on earth is Nigeria unable to produce
“sane” politicians?
Waziri Tambuwal is the current speaker of the
House of Representatives. By the Order of
Precedence Act, he is the 4th most important
Nigerian. Four days ago, he reportedly had to scale
a fence just to get into the National Assembly to do
his job as the bonafide Speaker. Who stopped him?
If it was law enforcement operatives, what law were
they enforcing? Any person’s guess is as good as
that they were directed by another set of politicians.
It was not the first time the chief law maker was
meeting with lawlessness. The other day, the
Speaker had his security aides withdrawn because
he decamped from our main political party to its
twin affiliate. We were not able to wait for those
who elected the man as Speaker to remove him
before he could be said to have ceased to hold the
office and before his perquisites of office could be
withdrawn. Instead the police were goaded to
interpreter the law on decamping because their
organization has been bastardized, just as every
other institution of society has lost its soul.
If as we hear, there are two people claiming to be
the current Speaker of the Ekiti State House of
Assembly, the matter is likely to be resolved in
favour of the governor’s preferences;
notwithstanding that the governor himself is not a
member of the majority party in the House. Again,
although we are yet to introduce state police, the
office of the “outgoing” Speaker has been reportedly
sealed by the police in our on-going posture of
political impunity- a feature which has helped
Nigeria’s political situation to progressively move
from bad to worse since 1999. Indeed, exactly 10
years ago, when I had the privilege of delivering the
18th Convocation lecture of the University of
Maiduguri, I had prophetically opined that our
political class was developing a tendency to behave
like “a child born drunk”. Those who attacked me
then for being too hard on our politicians may have
since had a re-think, because it is only a man who
was drunk from birth that could continuously
malfunction the way our politicians play politics. For
instance, whereas our electoral law bans
electioneering campaigns earlier than 90 days to
elections; our politicians begin campaigns for a
second term from the first day of the first term.
The smart strategy these days is for the would-be-
candidate to feign ignorance of the breach or to
pretend that such premature campaigns are not at
his instance. Meanwhile that does not cure the
flagrant abuse of the electoral law. In addition a
breach of one provision has implications for other
segments of politics. A good example is the way our
politicians have rubbished the time-honoured
principle of separation of powers. Now, the
executive arm rules everyone including the judiciary
which now habours conflicting judgments to the
chagrin of the new Chief Justice. In one State, Ondo,
everyone became a labour party politician because
the state governor was elected under the platform of
the labour party. His recent return to his old party,
the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has witnessed
the massive movement of all hitherto known
“comrades” from labour to the governor’s new
party.
The principle of majority rule is similarly breached
now and again. The last time the governors’ forum
attempted to elect a new chairman, the candidate
with 16 votes defeated the one with 19. We are
indeed back to our old ways where some party
caucuses would meet in the bedroom of a powerful
money-bag to impose a particular aspirant as the
candidate of a party. State governors have turned
out to be most powerful politicians in the land. They
impeach their deputies at will and even determine
who should lead the legislature. Because they have
suddenly become richer than everyone else, those
of them who have completed their maximum two
terms as governors have decided that any Senator
from their constituencies must give way for his
governor to take over. That is not all; the governors
want to decide which of their cronies shall occupy
the other 2 senatorial positions of the state.
The catch word for all of this is called consensus-a
word that is defined differently from its real meaning
in the advanced learner’s political dictionary of
Nigeria.
A friend told me the other day that Governor Dickson
of Bayelsa State may not get a second term. It
sounded ridiculous because he belongs to a party
which says everyone is entitled to a second chance.
We can only hope that such a move would not
produce more doses of political rascality because
the way our polity has been so heated up these
days, something would give way soon if care is not
taken . The famous social scientist, Professor
McKenzie probably had Nigeria in mind when he
warned several years ago that “if the rules limiting
the struggle for power are not observed more or
less faithfully, the game will disappear amid the
wreckage of the whole system”. That we are getting
near there is easy to see and when that happens, let
no politician exculpate himself from blame.