Nigeria: 4th Republic At 20: Imperatives For The Next Level
07 June 2019By Abdulwarees Solanke
With the swearing in of President Muhammadu Buhari for a second four year term
on May 29, Nigeria’s fourth experiment in democracy or democratization, indeed
the longest in the country’s history, will clock 20 years of teeing off¸
witnessing six presidential inaugurations. These are two of President Olusegun
Obasanjo, one of Late President Umaru Yar’adua, and President Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan respectively, One of President Buhari in 2015 and another one now.
Of cause, it is a period sufficient enough to remedy the past challenges of
governance and development in Africa’s most populous nation since her
independence in 1960. These past 20 years of the Fourth Republic, 16 of them
spent under the behemoth political party, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP
which thrilled Nigerians with a boast to rule the country for 60 years before
it was swept out of office in 2015, therefore offer an opportunity to explain
the tardiness of development and reform in the country, as well as to
interrogate the imperatives of taking her to The Next Level as promised by
this continuing government during electioneering in the warm up to the general
elections earlier this year.
Nigeria’s experience in democratization since the first republic shows that
ours had been one of unnecessary muscle-flexing among tiers and arms of
government when all should play complementary roles without prejudice to the
norms of checks and balances, given the enormous challenges confronting the
nation. Between the Federal and State governments in many instances, there is
power or jurisdiction contestation while the local governments often claim
subjugation under the states.
In the same vein, confrontation is not uncommon between the executive and
legislative arms of government on areas that ordinarily demand understanding
and cooperation. Realities also abound of corruption and interference in
judiciary, and consequently compromise or delay of justice and interpretation
of the constitution, even on issues that should facilitate amity in our
polity. More dangerous is the tendency for the politicization of the police,
the armed forces and the anti-corruption agencies. If this is the scenario, it
would of cause be difficult, if not impossible for development or reform to be
facilitated in the country.
If the government policies anchored on CHANGE in the past four years must
therefore be consolidated for national development, they must enjoy ownership
of all stakeholders in the Nigerian Project while Federal Government projects
must in similar vein find expression support and partnership in all regional
development initiatives in the country. This is beyond party loyalty and
political affiliation. This is about alignment and coordinated national
development.
Here, a historical evaluation of party formation starting from the First
Republic comes handy. A simple question: Which of the republic’s political
parties had a national character? Even if any of them set out to be a national
party, what was the extent of its penetration to other culture areas outside
its primary base? There were the Northern People’s Congress, Action Group,
Northern Elements Progressive Union, United Middle Belt Congress and National
Council of Nigerian Citizens.
But the Nigerian political party history shows that in the strongholds of each
of these parties during the pre-independence struggle and the immediate
post-independence era, any other party that attempted to establish presence in
areas outside its primary base was considered an intruder, and membership of
such party was treated with disdain.
This culture of intolerance played out in the nation’s successive democratic
experiments when ethnic, tribal and creedal sentiments are called upon in
power calculation and distribution. The first lesson here is that the Nigerian
political system does not encourage, accommodate national spread. Secondly,
her experience has shown that parties are often built round personalities and
not on a defined structure that subject individuals to the party or subjugate
personal or tribal interests to the overriding national interest.
Other ills of the political party system which have manifested over the years
include a dearth of abiding political ideologies; a culture of political
violence; lack loyalty and disciplined followership; poor internal party
mechanism; rise of cult personalities and god-fatherism among other vices.
From these lessons, we can also extrapolate further on political diversity and
pluralism in the country. It is known that political parties exist to canvass
interests and capture power in any polity. They compete for the same
electorate, in spite of the political and demographic diversity, not vying for
segmented citizenry with peculiar needs or niches in the economic sense. So,
how should this be done without offending the sensibilities of any segment of
the electorate?
In a 2015 article Mirror of the Moment this analyst had noted that “there is
an entrenched consciousness in the country that population size, need or merit
cannot be the only determinants of representation and distribution of power
and resources in the country as there is a growing awareness that no part of
the country should be taken as superior in need or size than the other under
any guise. This awareness has been at the root of different agitations in the
country, and has informed some of the policies in place.”
Across Nigeria, people now canvass for equal length of tenure of office among
the six geopolitical zones. We have accepted that there should be equal number
of representation both in government and in the parliament in a way that no
region will have undue advantage over the other, and that we should have equal
share of resources. In my understanding of our equalitarian politics, however,
we must accept equal burden of neglect in every part of the country, equal
blame for failure in governance, and also equal responsibility for the wastage
of opportunities and advantages we have had.
In the Nigerian equalitarian politics, the belief is that what you give A, B
must also have regardless of whether B has a need for it or not. The metaphor
of the national cake is illustrative of this phenomenon. Many states will
actually prefer that the proverbial cake is sliced into 36 equal parts but
none may ask if the equal share is the right or sufficient share for each
state, how manage its own share is likely to be the refrain even when the so
called equal slice might be too much or too little for some.
Political choice and alternatives in such system of government must conduce to
rationality, objectivity, freedom, consciousness and conscience in the
determination of who is elected to power, with most citizens in agreement that
such leaders and representatives emerge by political consensus and they truly
approximate the values of integrity, including merit, knowledge, sanity,
experience and health in its entirety in the collective interests of the
nation.
It is generally believed that the first 16 years of the 4th Republic belonged
to the wolves in the rapacity of PDP shredding the nation’s commonwealth. It
is seen as the justification for the sacking of the President Ebele Goodluck
Jonathan led-government in 2015. It is also what informed the resistance of
the party’s return to power in the loss of former Vice President Atiku
Abubakar in the last general election. On the election of President Buhari one
resisted the temptation of congratulating him in an open letter published as
opinion in a number of national dailies because he still has on hand an
unfinished assignment, of leading Nigeria out of the woods, restoring pride in
Nigerians, facilitating national cohesion and solidarity and inspiring the
spirit of a new Nationalism among Nigerians.
Now, one can only pity and pray for President Buhari in this arduous task of
retrieving Nigeria from a near six-decade odiousness and taking her to the
NEXT LEVEL that these imperatives of leading the nation out of the woods imply
for the Fourth Republic to endure. President Muhammadu Buhari indeed needs to
recruit a vibrant successor generation whose political philosophy will be
rooted strictly on merit, service and integrity to champion the ascension of
the country on to the Next Level because this might be the last opportunity
the nation has for her endurance before the prognosis of “There was once a
Nation” is validated.
Abdulwarees works with Voice of Nigeria, VON
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