In fashioning solutions, we must take into account our strengths and weaknesses. We must recognise who we are as a people and work around our frailties. I have repeatedly lamented our lack of capacity or interest in working or even thinking as a collective. When the movement to go a new direction began to gain momentum in 2016, I wrote an article, querying the wisdom in setting up new political parties, identifying what I consider the fundament in the logjam and proposing what we can do to break it. I argued then that “…the problem with Nigeria is not an insufficiency of political platforms or parties through which one can ventilate one’s political philosophy or actualise the ambition for power (and that) our problem, in fact, is the ease with which we take to charting our own course, seeking to singularly take on a new path rather than joining hands to build one house and not dissipating energy in different directions.” PACT falling apart is part-proof that we might not have been wrong in our submission.
But, one point to note is that there is really nothing new to newbies running for office of the president in Nigeria, just to make the point, as some seem to argue for, at the moment. Each of the previous elections has featured dozens of new – young and not-too-young faces, some running multiple times. So many outsiders who people do not know their names have run in the past. There is a litany of past presidential candidates who ran as outsiders, when they were even younger than some of the aspirants of today. There is really nothing new or different in what we are witnessing now. What we lack is that willingness to learn from mistakes made by others in the past in building our future.
Indeed, the real battle for the future that we seek and truly deserve is that between idealists and pragmatists. Every struggle, at some point, will throw up a spectrum. There will be different shades of understanding of what the struggle is about and how it ought to be executed. There are the ‘Purists’ who would want to go it all alone, not wanting to associate or be tainted by anything that bears semblance with the status quo.
There are the ‘Idealists’ who aim for that which is likely unattainable. They are forever betrothed to the elegance and details of the struggle, enchanted by the attention an involvement with the struggle brings, oblivious of, and unwilling, sometimes, to put in the dirty work required for a realisation of the objective.
In a way, they are like the Purists. They usually neither have the resources, nor are they concerned or conscious of the need to design a methodology for raising resources needed, seeing that without such, the execution of programme is bound to be fraught with problems.
There are also the fair-weather agitators. For them, the struggle is all about the belly. At the slightest hint of discomfort, they begin to pull back. A slight wink from the opposite side, and they cross over. They are gone. They become foot-soldiers for the other side. They repudiate whatever they once claimed to believe. They never did, in the first place.
Then, there are the pragmatists. These ones see the ending from the beginning. They have a strategy in place. They are tactical, as well. They have options in mind. They know when to engage, when to hold back, when to sit down, when to accept a compromise, having foreseen that point of compromise, even before it materialises.
Every one genuinely desirous of change starts from one point of the spectrum or the other. Most genuine agents of change start at the extreme left – fiery, uncompromising, revolutionary-idealist, who want to bring the house down.
But time and experience often mellow most. A richer perspective mould many into different people from whom they were, starting out. The man who worked and walked into the prison will sit down with the oppressor, behind the scene, to negotiate peace for the sake of the future. Every struggle needs a mix of the different elements. Some will stay true to the struggle. Some will sell out. A few will be sacrificed. Some will be fortunate to see the end of the struggle. A few will benefit from the struggle.
There is a battle presently going on to reclaim the soul of Nigeria. There is an on-going contestation between those who want the status quo to remain, there are pragmatists at work in their own way, there are idealists who believe things can work out in a particular way, irrespective of the realities and the odds, and then, there are puritans who insist it has to be their own way or no other way.
Some who were idealists yesterday are pragmatists today. Some who were pragmatists yesterday have become purists or idealists of convenience today. Some who were onlookers yesterday are purists today. Some who were in charge of yesterday are new-age idealists today. We always have a mix of the different elements at every part of the chain, from top to bottom. Knowing and accepting where each stands in the battle is crucial. Knowing the right time and what point to move from one point to the other is critical for the struggle – for the individual, the collective and the nation.
The challenge is that idealists often confuse politics with ethics, whereas it is not. We must recognise that a political party is not a gathering of saints beatified for the purpose of assisting arm-chair activists to achieve their objectives, while they sit in their corners, punching away on keyboards. Politics is about hard contestation for power. Moral sophistry is no substitute for strategic thinking and engagement, which should precipitate action on the part of advocates for change. I do not dismiss the place of ethics or morality but I argue that they must be framed around workable solutions with a pragmatic mind-set. To approach politics at the normative level with a nose-thumping attitude is naïve and unrealistic. We have to understand the system, break down the structure in our mind and strategise on how we can deploy ideas to break it, as a collective. I heard someone say that politics is not about being cool, but about tough choices.” I agree.
Bernard Crick reminds us that politics is a messy, mundane, inconclusive and tangled business that cannot be compared to the ‘world-shaking quests’ that afflict the ‘totalitarian intellectual.’ “Politics is not religion, ethics, law, science, history, or economics; it neither solves everything, nor is it present everywhere; and it is not any one political doctrine, such as conservatism, liberalism, socialism, communism, or nationalism, though it can contain elements of most of these things. Politics is politics, to be valued as itself, not because it is ‘like’ or ‘really is’ something else more respectable or peculiar. Politics is politics.”
We must understand that politics is the substructure and governance the superstructure. The sub is the foundation for the super. Politics is not a “grasping for the ideal; but neither is it a freezing of tradition. It is an activity – lively, adaptive, flexible, and conciliatory.” The earlier we understand that, the better. Being a cynic or critic is the easy bit. Seeing the end ahead, understanding the contours of the journey, is the difficult thing.
If indeed the battle is for the soul of the nation and tomorrow, it should inevitably lead one in the direction of pragmatism for 2019.
Concluded.
Olorunfemi works for Hoofbeatdotcom, a Nigerian communications consultancy and publisher of Africa Enterprise.
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