Defects of First Republic pervade 2015 politics, say panelists

HOW far apart is Nigeria’s politics of 2015 from that of 1965 that was largely characterised by ethnic and religious cleavages that subsequently led to the collapse of the First Republic? What lessons have politicians of today learnt from that era in forging a cohesive and progressive country from the impediments of the past?

  These were some of the issues that a panel of four citizens tackled two days ago in Lagos. It had Mrs. Ayo Obe, Opeyemi Agbaje, Toyin Akinosho and Innocent Chukwuma as panelists. It was at the launch of a book, Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic written by Prof. Larry Diamond of Stanford University, California, U.S. The roundtable discussion had as theme, ‘The 2015 Elections: Ethnicity, Governance and Democracy in Nigeria: Are We making Progress?’

  In setting the tone for the discussion, the moderator, Dr. Abimbola Agboluade, said that the importance of Diamond’s book was that it eliminated the danger of a single story or narrative and offered a basis for debating Nigeria’s political history and how the past could help shape the future.

  However, the unanimous submission was that not much had changed in political orientation in the intervening years since 1965. According to Agbaje, a lawyer and columnist, the political parties were an illusion and mere platforms for power negotiations and aligned along ethnic and religious lines. He also argued that Fulani hegemony, as expounded in Diamond’s book was a political fact in Nigeria, it suffered a halt in 1999, but it is on the march again. He described the Fulani as “very skillful political tacticians, and that it’s their aspirations through the hegemony that is the root cause of Nigeria’s problems.”

  Agbaje also described the retired Major-General Muhammadu Buhari and Yemi Osinbajo ticket as an ‘Alimi and Afonja alliance,’ the sort that led to the founding of Ilorin, the present day capital of Kwara State. “No, we have not made progress in 2015 from 1965. Nothing much has changed; the essence of our politics hasn’t changed,” Agbaje declared.

  He based his assertion on the method of wealth acquisition in the country, which he noted was based on what he called statism. “I get disillusioned about the relation between wealth and state power. The consequence of the last 16 years is that, to be wealthy, you have to talk to an Olusegun Obasanjo or Ahmed Bola Tinubu or Abubakar Atiku. There’s now a conjunction of wealth and state power just as it was in the 1950s and 1960s.”

  Agbaje also noted that the way the almajiris had always been a creation of the Fulani from among the Hausa in the North, so, too, had the Internet created another set of almajiris in the South, a people who are largely illiterate and who know nothing. “The almajiris in the South are young people who don’t know history or the relationship between history and politics.”

  Chukwuma, who is West Africa’s representative of the Ford Foundation, traced the history of privatisation in the last two decades in Nigeria and said that those who engineered them still held political lever with which they influenced the polity at will. He noted that elections in the country had become a sort of referendum on leaders, as performance usually fall short of expectations.

   According to Chukwuma, in spite of high oil prices before the recent fall, the average Nigerian had not gained much from the democracy. He noted, however, that one positive characteristic of the current political arrangement was that true national political parties had evolved. “Today, we have evolved true national parties. Opposition party is now more stable and vibrant and the ruling party is not so confident any more, as it is genuinely being challenged. This election will run on who will deliver security that has traumatised Nigerians. So, some things are heading in the way of some positive, but not all. Things have happened in Nigeria that we’re not happy about but we must be hopeful.”

  Publisher of Oil and Gas magazine, Akinosho, born a few days before Nigeria’s independence, described his generation as a dislocated one, as none of the promises made to it had been fulfilled till date. According to him, “reading Diamond’s book, you feel you have just read minutes of the last meeting. If you put 2015 and remove all the years in between and leave 1965, we’re very much where we were.

  “There’s anxiety in the polity and the temperature is high. It’s looks like this that amplify all the clichés we’re used to. It’s about the fact that how far away we can get from the endgame of 1965 that will determine how much progress we have made. Ethnicity is still a force to rally support.”

  Akinosho lamented that although the economy is said to be growing, “people still have to depend on government to do business.”

  Obe, who spent her growing up years in England, accused the British of fostering ethnic cleavages in the country, as its indirect rule left intact the feudal system in the North, which entrenched ethnicity in the democratic front. The North’s determination to preserve its cultural and religious values, Obe said, was to cost the region in terms of educational advancement, just as it is still at the bottom rung today.

  She, however, noted that the sort of violence that erupted back in 1965 is not likely today. “Nigerians are enthusiastic about having genuine change, but whether we can remove the venom from the process is another thing.”