Considering the body of discourse – not to say doctrine – surrounding President Muhammadu Buhari’s possible successor, I could not but nip everything in the bud in terms of: one, identity politics; two, instability; and three, inequality.
When it comes to identity politics, of course, I mean zonal politics, which is basically the politics of division instead of cooperation. The Nigerian politics are predominantly and preponderantly fissured along ethno-religio lines, in fact.
At the moment Nigeria operates on a six-zone democratisation formulation, and power has so been necessarily circulated among these ethnically, culturally, religiously and ideologically entrenched zones for unity and peaceful coexistence, hence the zeal for zonalisation – and I believe, consitutionalisation – of ‘participatory democracy’.Identity politics is a good one if we look at it rather objectively. For historical and temperamental reasons, it behoves me to assert that this power-sharing mechanism ideally suits our political firmament.
Distributing power – by making sure every tribe and ethnic group eat their cakes and have them – is, to me, democratic if and only if it ensures equality. But how transparent and consistent can we practise and operationalise this democratic modus operandi?
I’m arguably sure that some antidemocratic diehards, namely party criminals and disrupter-reptiles of nationhood, would not be faithful and committed to the good will of identity politics. In all ramifications inequality runs deeply in the arteries and veins of Nigeria. Politically, there’s simply no woman who is potentially going to be a flag-bearer in 2023.
Most of the presidential wannabes are, in fact, men who have occupied one public-figure position or another before. It’s pathetic to see these names frequently talked about and published on media outlets.
I mean, it’s really, really shaming and abashing that this same set of political master-minders and rabble-rousers, who are being recycled back into presidency factory, are overall democratic renegades, who are overwhelmingly fond of making platitudinous promises and horrendous harangues to the ‘stupid’ and ‘ignorant’ masses.
Another thing is youth involvement in political participation. The youth have uncharacteristically been deemed ‘lazy’ and ‘inexperienced’ in the Nigerian polity and politicking. But if they are not provided appropriate job opportunities why won’t they be lazy; if they are not given the political opportunities to participate among so-called experienced leaders, how will they be experienced?
Engagement brings experience. Experience breeds expertise. It’s a posteriori a playbook borne out of the pretext of perpetually putting the youth incommunicado in order that they, the ‘petty-bourgeois’ bureaucrats, would sequester them away from their very precinct of power and plenipotentiary.
This collectivisation of bureaucratisation is increasingly on the slippery slope, thus consequentially catastrophically plunging the youths into deeper depths of personal disintegration, making them instrumental, to be sure, to national deterioration and disorientation. Four things, I mean basically, four qualities, will make Buhari’s successor quintessential.
The first is the successor’s ability to envision. With a country prone to civil spasm of recidivism, we need a leader who’s got the fortitude of vision to say this is where we are and this is where we are going.
The passion of vision fuels the impetus for purposeful direction and decision-making. Economically, for example, the country is on a dwindling mode; and an envisioned leader – who may have little or no experience but he’s passionate about making economic reforms – would be able to sacrificially front an equilibrium in the private and public sectors. One sector is intrinsically crucial for another’s progressivism; therefore, investing in the education sector will, of course, reverberate in the growth of the country’s gross domestic product.
The education sector, at the moment, is in crisis of epic proportions. The Federal Government, the Academic Staff Union of Universities and the Nigerian Universities Commission are, again cataclysmically, entrapped in a dire tug of war simply because of the disproportionate, delinquent funding of the sector, which of course is grossly ricocheting back on the ‘God-for-peasant’ students.
Another one is the successor’s potentiality to explain. “Explanation,” says former President Bill Clinton, “is way more important than eloquence.”
Explanation comes to play from the basis of an envisioned platform, beginning transparently, and not hypocritically, on the campaign trail. After the election and all that, the successor might want to necessarily make some crucial developmental changes – i.e. on domestic-foreign policies – which could be misconstrued or misgiven. But then, the envisioned leader would have to be the ‘chief explainer’ for the alteration, in order to avoid any form of incendiary altercation.
What is even important, the leader should possess the indissoluble quality of inclusion. As a thought-experiment, if 10 geniuses and 100 not-so-intelligent persons are given some problem to solve equally but separately in different rooms, the latter are going to provide better solutions to the problem simply because, arising from their more diverse unique, equalising qualities and capacities, they are able to make better decisions than the former. Inclusive politics is an extremely powerful instrument in fostering national cohesion and integration.
This is, of course, against the background of partisan, cross-carpeting, personalistic agenda of disreputable demagogues. To be inclusive, in short, is to have purged oneself from the spoils of power and office.
Last but not least is the power of execution. Vision without execution, says one, is simply hallucination. You have a vision. Good. You’ve got the gift to explain.
Good. You even have the servant-leader quality of including the mudslingers and the guttersnipes in your politics. That’s even better. Of far greater significance, however, is that you’re able to execute each of these essential elements dynamically and uncompromisingly.
•Segun Ige, a Lagos-based freelance journalist, wrote via: [email protected]
