Gani and Moshood

In my last post, I shared excerpts of a speech by Donald Duke on election manipulation in Nigeria.

A few minutes before I sat to type this post, I had a conversation with someone about this set of accusations in Sahara Reporters directed towards Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos and his godfather and immediate predecessor, ex-Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The person with whom I was conversing is a fan of Fashola's, and of the work the governor has been doing in Lagos, and believes there are too many cynics who don't think that there are "decent" people in Nigeria.

Nigeria is full of decent people, good people. The world cherishes its negative stereotypes about us Nigerians, and we seem to be the only people for whom it is still politically correct to openy express stereotypical views about.

But the thing is, condition makes the crayfish bend as we say, and the system/environment/instiutions/structure/nature/etc of Nigerian politics is such that a "decent" man or woman could not hope to win political office. I didn't need ex-Governor Donald Duke to tell me that you would never "win" (if you can call it that) a Nigerian election if you ran a "decent" campaign, nor can you hope to be effective once in office if you try to do your job "decently".

The same holds true of supposedly "military" regimes (really diarchies led by army generals). Be you a soldier or civilian, a "northerner" or "southerner", a Moslem or Christian, if you are opposed to the way the system functions, then you have a snowball's chance in the Sahara of occupying an important political job. If you manage to deceive the system long enough to stumble into such a job, you have less than a snowball's chance in the heart of the Sun of keeping the job long enough to make a difference.

Actually, to succeed in Nigerian politics you don't have to be personally "bad" yourself ... you just have to be willing to make an endless sequence of compromises with bad people. So long as they know you will keep the gears and levers greased, allowing them to "efficiently" continue doing what they do, the system will leave you alone and might even allow you to make an achievement or two. However, no matter how just, ethical and moral the person once was, the effect, consistency, pervasiveness and totality of his/her ceaseless compromises leaves him/her just as guilty, just as complicit in the "bad" behaviour, as the "bad" people.

A few of our apex political leaders (presidents and prime ministers) were decent men elevated to high office because the denizens of the system would rather a "neutral" figure was referee, rather than one who would use the office to give undue advantage (system-wise) to himself, his faction/machine, and his clients/patrons. But the "compromise" concept appears mostly in appointed positions, like the federal and state cabinets, the federal and state commissions, and the advisory positions.

Don't get me wrong, most of these appointees are denizens of the system, who are given a share of the national cake, as we term it, a niche position from which to milk the polity/economy/society on behalf of their factions/patrons/clients/etc. However, a few appointees, people like the late Dr. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti in the past, and possibly Hajia Amina Az Zubair in the present, work for administrations that are otherwise detrimental to what you assume are their heartfelt aspirations because they think that it will give them a chance to make a difference even if a small one on those aspiration. The thing is, it doesn't really work out well for them; our healthcare system is still nowhere near what I am certain Dr. Ransome-Kuti desired, and I think Hajia Az Zubair continues to overstate the impact of her programme in a country where the numbers of child beggars and child labourers has not changed an iota (and that is just one statistic, just one issue area).

Back to my conversation with an associate about Fashola and Tinubu ....

Without reading Donald Duke's excerpts, I already knew that no one could succeed in Nigerian politics without at least being "tainted" by the system. And the office of governor is so powerful in the Nigerian context, the holder almost an absolute monarch in his state, that the system would never allow anyone "win" the governor's desk if the system was not infintely certain that this person would allow the way of things to proceed as they always have. And to be blunt about it, if Tinubu didn't rig Fashola into office the way Donald Duke described, then he probably rigged Fashola into office some other way. I suspect Fashola would have won a free and fair vote, but in the context of Nigerian politics, if you don't make sure of it through controlling the rigging processes, then you open the door for your opponents to take the seat from you.

The irony is Babatunde Fashola has probably been the best governor Lagos State has ever had. He would still be the best if you extended the period of comparison to include British colonial governors from 1860 to 1960 ... and to be honest, I think Fashola would come out tops even if you included all of the sovereign, pre-1860 Obas of Isale-Eko (Lagos Island).

With that said, like any other successful politician in Nigeria (and frankly, like most of the unsuccessful politicians too), Fashola is most definitely open to accusations of impropriety, waste, corruption, undemocratic and unconstitutional practices, etc, etc. It is what made Olusegun Obasanjo's use of the EFCC as a political weapon so powerful; the EFCC never had to "frame" a target -- if that person was a politician in Nigeria, then the EFCC always had ample true, factual and judicially provable crimes to charge the person with. Because the system is so entrenched, none of the denizens of the system ever pay much attention to covering their tracks (they don't have to, the law enforcement, prosecutorial and judicial institutions are part and parcel of the system), so the EFCC can always find with ample evidence to convict, if they could be bothered to try. Alas, the EFCC, ICPC, NPF, NDLEA and other agencies are ... compromised. You would have to lack political connections, lose political favour, or be a necessary scapegoat before you had anything to fear.

Those who adore Fashola will tell you he has to do these things to maintain Bola Ahmed Tinubu's support, but that is probably too simplistic a way of looking at it.

As I said to this person I was discussing with, the late Chief Gani Fawehimni never came close to becoming President of Nigeria, while the late Alhaji Moshood K.O. Abiola won the annulled 1993 elections. There is a vitally important lesson in that, a vitally important message that I do not think we Nigerians give enough thought to. We take these two facts as fait accompli, not bothering to ponder what these facts tell us about our country and its political system.