Reflections on June 12

The 1993 elections were contested by two government-manufactured parties. We the people did not create or choose these parties. They were imposed on us by the Babangida diarchy. These were the parties they wanted.

After the diarchy disqualified all of the presidential candidates they did not want, the two prefabricated parties presented Nigerians with a choice between two men. We the people did not choose these candidates. More importantly, we did not have the option of selecting other options, other possibilities that we perhaps would have considered to be superior choices.

We the people were force-fed a choice between two men, in an election that resembled a professional wrestling promotion.

For those of you who have never watched professional wrestling, there are two types of matches. The best-known type of matches are marquee events between two stars. But the most numerous type of matches are "enhancement" matches, which usually feature a star or future star against a nobody; the promoter (i.e. the owner of the company) books the nobody in the match for the specific purpose of having him lose to the star in a way that makes the star look magnificent. Often, the nobody is someone you have never heard of before and will never hear of afterward.

Bashir Tofa was nobody. Not literally, of course, but politically he was a void, a vacuum. He was not even a power in his own home state (it would not surprise me if indigenes of his state had never heard of him before -- I certainly hadn't). Tofa's elevation to the role of presidential candidate, in the context of the heavily government-managed 1993 polls, must raise suspicions that he was a Barry Horowitz or Brooklyn Brawler booked to lose to an Andre the Giant (RIP) or Ric Flair.

The late Moshood Abiola was a man of the system, a dear friend of erstwhile regime head Ibrahim Babangida. There are allegations that Abiola helped fund the 1983 and 1985 coups, and that his newspapers provided propaganda and public relations support for both actions. He definitely garnered great wealth was a key figure in the diarchies of the 1970s, in the Second Republic, and in the diarchies of the 1980s and early 1990s. He was a man of the system. It would not surprise me if his dear friend had manipulated the system to ensure a particular outcome; most of the big names of Nigerian (wuruwuru) politics got the message and did not run, but Babangida certainly disqualified anyone who wanted to run that could have posed a challenge to the desired outcome.

On occasion, the men and women of the system do fight each other for control of the system's levers. Sometimes (too frequently in Nigeria) they even kill each other.

But whomever wins, the system continues.

It is the same everywhere in the world. There may be cosmetic changes here and there when an opposition party replaces a governing party, but the underlying dynamics of the country's social, political and economic life do not change. This is okay in wealthier climes, but it is unfortunate for African countries because we rather strongly need tranformative change and reform. Unfortunately, what we get in Africa is "opposition" politicians complaining about the government, and then doing the same thing themselves after they replace the governing party.

Indeed, "opposition" leaders want to capture the undemocratic, unbound, unchecked and unbalanced powers of the government for themselves, rather than reform and change the system. And to be honest, the leaders of the fight against colonialism ultimately held onto to the colonial government's supreme, unaccountable, de facto dictatorial powers. Colonial governments did not permit such niceties as democratic elections influence their decision-making or their exercise of power; post-colonial regimes were just as disinterested in the democratic voices of the people. The colonial governors perceived themselves as knowing better than the black people they governed; post-colonial leaders, many of whom were in politics strictly because they were part of the well-educated minority in their countries, felt the same way about the people they led.

But I digress.

The fight between the late Sani Abacha and the late Moshood Abiola over which one of them was supposed to succeed their mutual friend Ibrahim Babangida, was real. Power was at stake, and Babangida probably made promises to both of them; they were both influential in bringing Babangida to power in the first place, and had both profited from their friendship with him.

It was a real fight

But it was not a fight about changing the basic nature, structure and function of the Nigerian Federal Republic. Like every fake election and every military coup, it was a fight of "man of the system" against "man of the system".

At some level I think Nigerians know this. There is a reason for the public apathy towards coups and fake elections. Regular Nigerian citizens do not want to die on behalf of any of the putative winners or losers of the coups and rigged polls. None of them is who we really want anyway, none of them would even have been candidates if we had had our way, and none of them offer us anything in the way of policies or possibilities that are worth fighting for or dying for.

As for the politicians (and militicians), well they know the score, don't they? Tom Ikimi and Baba Gana Kingibe were the leaders of the two 1993 political parties, and they jumped ship to become ministers in the Abacha government. Except they didn't really "jump ship" did they? Both parties were part of the same system as the Babangida and Abacha regimes, as was the election itself and the abortive Third Republic. Ikimi and Kingibe simply moved from one functionality within the diarchy to another.

Loyalists do exist, people who fight on for particular Big Men. These loyalists are either Big Men themselves (with a stake in the results) or are the sort of "youths" who, since the before the First Republic, have been ever-willing to fight (literally) for an ethnic kinsman, a co-religionist or a moneybag.

It is never really about the principles of transformation and structural reform.

Many of the men who fought the longest for the late Moshood Abiola's mandate turned around to give their support in 2003 to then-President Olusegun Obasanjo, a man who supported the annulment of the 1993 elections. And after years of supposedly campaigning for democracy, they support a man who was the face of a Peoples Democratic Party machine that revels in subverting and thwarting democracy.

And it is not just an Abiola thing. Supporters of retired General Mohammedu Buhari have also abandoned him, after years of allegedly advocating "democracy" in the face of Obasanjo's often unconstitutional behaviour.

Let us be honest.

Obasanjo satisfied something that the erstwhile pro-Abiola group wanted, and Yar'Adua satisfied something the erstwhile pro-Buhari faction wanted. And we all know what that something is, and we know it has nothing to do with transformation and structural reform, or to do with any policies or ideologies or principles. It is ethnic in nature, isn't it?

And if we are going to keep the spirit of honesty alive, let us admit that part of the apathy (and outright hostility) towards Abiola's mandate in the third leg of the old tripod was just as ethnic-driven. The tripod still works the same way it always has; when two legs gang up on the third, the third loses.

But that is what happens in a country where politicians stand for nothing and offer nothing. Almost the only thing that differentiates them from each other is their ethnicity, their religion, and whether they are ex-army officers or life-long civilians. Other than that, they are mostly the same and would do the same things if placed in office.

The politicians themselves recognize this. Initially, they used their ethnic, regional and religious differences as the basis of mobilizing support. After the Civil War showed the dangers of doing that, we moved into a different era. One of these days, an intelligent researcher needs to write a series of books detailing how Nigerian politics moved from the disaster of the Civil War to the hegemony (for now) of the Peoples Democratic Party. The irony is the late Moshood Abiola was part of that process, though he was consumed by it, as were so many others.

But it isn't just the Big Men. We the people are the same.

Any number of intellectuals, commentators, etc, from any and every corner of the country, have the fascinating ability to massively criticize a regime, demanding accountability, transparency and democracy, only to turn around and become cheerleaders for the regime (or another regime exactly like the one they criticized) because of some perceived advantage for themselves (appointment to a cushy job) or for their socio-cultural groups. We the people cannot criticize our leaders because we do the same thing; in my own ancestral village, the people acquiesced in a game of deception by the former governor of the state, to allow him to claim to have built schools in the area (in his list of accomplishments) even though the schools in question were standing in the colonial days -- my townspeople did this because the governor appointed one of "our sons" to high office.

This is part of the reason why the broader public, 140-million-strong, do not stand up to fight the political battles of any politician. We know that he or she is as likely to turn around and cut a deal with the person who was supposedly the mortal enemy just two seconds ago. We will die, and die, and die, and then (like Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga) the people we were fighting for will shake hands and continue to enjoy their positions atop society.

June 12, 1993 is one of the important in our shared history. But we tend to draw the wrong lessions from our important days, and ascribe to them the wrong reasons for significance.

These are days when one faction of the system gained the upper hand over other factions of the system. Advantage, no matter how long it lasts, is always temporary.

And advantage, no matter which faction holds it, does nothing to break the federal republic free from the constraints that keep us from achieving our full potential.

I do not think we will see real change until a date in the future -- when we choose a new system to replace the one we have now.