In a recent post I asked why the Nigerian government is so keen on military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire when there are far more strategic issues closer to home.
People(including the so-called "international community") defend military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire by claiming it would install democracy (it won't; in their hearts, none of the three major candidates believes in democracy, rule of law or constitutionalism). But if spreading stable democracy is a good enough reason for a military intervention, I asked why Nigeria didn't just intervene in Niger Republic, Chad, Cameroun and especially Equatorial Guinea, that oil-rich African version of North Korea.
Now comes news that Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Dictator of Equatorial Guinea, has been named the new Chairman of the African Union, replacing the president of Malawi.
This is ridiculous.
And don't forget the current chief executive of the AU Commission is Jean Ping, himself a product of Bongo Family dynasty that has made Gabon its autocratic private possession.
That is the problem with politics in Nigeria, in Cote d'Ivoire and at the continental level. For all the pretence otherwise, we are not really presented with a choice of believers in democracy. It is a question of which undemocratic, autocratic, authoritarian, dicatatorial, election-rigging Big Man we'll have to suffer under for the next few years.
Amalgamation Day in Lagos, 1914
31 January, 2011
Jos as microcosm of intra-racial racism
We Africans are quick to anger when we see any act by a European, American, East Asian, Arab, South Asian or Eurasians that could be construed or misconstrued as "racism" directed at Africans or any darker-skinned peoples.
Racism does exist, has existed and I fear will always exist in different forms and varying magnitudes. It is in our nature as human beings; racist attitudes exist between the other so-called races, as well as within them. There are people who believe themselves to be generationally counterpoised warring nations, races or civilizations, but between whom the average African makes no cultural, physical or racial distinction.
With all that said ... we Africans would be better off if we took the energy and militancy we invest in opposing racism from without, and invest instead in dealing with our internal, intra-racial racism against each other. As it is, the greatest single danger to any one African individual or group at any point in history or the present is and has always been another African.
In fact, most of the bad things the other so-called races have done to Africans would not have been possible without the willing participation of Africans.
We are the ones who hunted ourselves and sold ourselves into slavery; the Europeans and Arabs only had to wait in the trading cities on the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts, or at the southern termini of the Trans-Saharan trade routes, while we brought ourselves to sell to them in exchange for junk.
We Africans vastly outnumbered Europeans in the imperial armies that conquered our continent to create European colonies. We went on to vastly outnumber Europeans in the colonial administrations and (more importantly) the colonial armies.
Indeed, problematic post-colonial relationships, political and economic, persist partly because the most powerful economic, political and social actors in our countries profit from these relationships much as their pre-colonial forebears did.
I do not mean to understate our experience of external racism. We were (and still are) the target of other people's attitudes of racial/cultural/biological/mental/intellectual superiority. The idea that we were subhuman, less intelligent and inferior as a "race" or civilization underpinned a rigid, institutionalized, centuries-long, globalized caste system, that assigned us the third-to-bottom position, ahead only of the aboriginal populations of the Americas, Australia and New Guinea. We were exploited for pecuniary and political gain by the rich and powerful of the supposedly higher caste humans. For sections of the poor and disenfranchised among the alleged higher castes, our lower caste status served as a psychological boost; if they were minnows among their own people, they were at least, in their own minds, minor deities when compared to Africans -- and they acted the part when interacting with us.
Still, most of the crimes committed against Africans by "foreigners" would not have been possible without African participation. And the world has always been a harsh place. Other "races" of people have been put through the torture rack; some "races" (in the Americas and Australian particularly) were damn near exterminated. People have even extended the same viciousness we suffered to people in their own "races".
The depressing fact of life on Earth is that if it is possible for someone to exploit you for their own gain, they will. The onus is on you to create as strong a bubble of security around yourself as possible.
Here again the worst enemy of the African is the African.
I could talk for ages about this problem, but this is a blog. Suffice to say my beloved Nigeria was able to muster hundreds of thousands of men to wage a Civil War against itself, but could not find the military resources to invade and destroy the Apartheid State, thus freeing millions of Africans and sparing Nelson Mandela and the others from wasting so much of their lives behind bars. Even now, we Nigerians are waging various low-intensity wars against ourselves, rather than pull together to catch up with global powers so we are not so exposed and weak by comparison.
We couldn't even do much to help people of African descent elsewhere in world; aside from the fact that we had sold them to slavery in the first place, we were so weak that we were in no position to compel any outside power to treat them better. Indeed, we were conquered easily by those same outside powers.
We were conquered piecemeal, often cooperating with the invading power to conquer neighbours we thought were rivals, only to find ourselves the target of our erstwhile allies once they were done with our neighbours.
It is said that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on our academics and intellectuals to educate us. Scratch the surface of some of them, and out pours the same intra-racial bigotry you initially thought they would oppose. As for the res, the show all the effects of a colonially-derived education system, sounding exactly like the "development partners", multilateral agencies, NGO-types, foreign entertainers and others who purport to be trying to save Africa; they all talk about us over our heads, and invariably sound, perhaps unconsciously in some instances, as though they thought we were mentally infantile, incapable of lifting a finger (or a brain cell) in our own defence or self-interest, existentially needing their intervention and intercession specifically (and the rest of the world's intervention generally) lest we perish in our helplessness.
If we reacted to our own intra-racial "racism" the way we react when we are the target of external inter-racial racism, our continent would be such a different place. But there is instead a sort of circular reasoning and self-fulfilling prophecy where people view incidents of African-on-African racism as confirmation of their own intra-racial racist beliefs, rather than see them as evidence of a cancer we all must quash.
There are Nigerians (and Africans) who senselessly celebrate when any random black man is elected mayor of some unknown city in Central or Eastern Europe, and who went into ecstasy when a black man (biracial actually) was elected President of the United States. Oblivious to irony, these same Nigerians would NEVER vote a Kanuri man governor of Delta State, or an Ijaw man Senator from Jigawa State. Ask them to do so, and they will indignantly express frightening (and unconstitutional) views about perfidious "non-indigenes" who exist only to deny "indigenes" a chance. Amusingly, if Europeans, Americans, Arabs, Japanese or Southeast Asians were to deny opportunities to Africans in their country on the basis of our being "non-indigenes", the same people would cry racism.
This makes no sense.
What the rest of the world does to us in their countries is of only marginal effect to our fortunes. What we autochthonously do to ourselves in our own countries not only affects the greater mass of African peoples (just shy of a billion), but also diminishes the protections African countries can directly and indirectly offer our people who live outside Africa.
Racism does exist, has existed and I fear will always exist in different forms and varying magnitudes. It is in our nature as human beings; racist attitudes exist between the other so-called races, as well as within them. There are people who believe themselves to be generationally counterpoised warring nations, races or civilizations, but between whom the average African makes no cultural, physical or racial distinction.
With all that said ... we Africans would be better off if we took the energy and militancy we invest in opposing racism from without, and invest instead in dealing with our internal, intra-racial racism against each other. As it is, the greatest single danger to any one African individual or group at any point in history or the present is and has always been another African.
In fact, most of the bad things the other so-called races have done to Africans would not have been possible without the willing participation of Africans.
We are the ones who hunted ourselves and sold ourselves into slavery; the Europeans and Arabs only had to wait in the trading cities on the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts, or at the southern termini of the Trans-Saharan trade routes, while we brought ourselves to sell to them in exchange for junk.
We Africans vastly outnumbered Europeans in the imperial armies that conquered our continent to create European colonies. We went on to vastly outnumber Europeans in the colonial administrations and (more importantly) the colonial armies.
Indeed, problematic post-colonial relationships, political and economic, persist partly because the most powerful economic, political and social actors in our countries profit from these relationships much as their pre-colonial forebears did.
I do not mean to understate our experience of external racism. We were (and still are) the target of other people's attitudes of racial/cultural/biological/mental/intellectual superiority. The idea that we were subhuman, less intelligent and inferior as a "race" or civilization underpinned a rigid, institutionalized, centuries-long, globalized caste system, that assigned us the third-to-bottom position, ahead only of the aboriginal populations of the Americas, Australia and New Guinea. We were exploited for pecuniary and political gain by the rich and powerful of the supposedly higher caste humans. For sections of the poor and disenfranchised among the alleged higher castes, our lower caste status served as a psychological boost; if they were minnows among their own people, they were at least, in their own minds, minor deities when compared to Africans -- and they acted the part when interacting with us.
Still, most of the crimes committed against Africans by "foreigners" would not have been possible without African participation. And the world has always been a harsh place. Other "races" of people have been put through the torture rack; some "races" (in the Americas and Australian particularly) were damn near exterminated. People have even extended the same viciousness we suffered to people in their own "races".
The depressing fact of life on Earth is that if it is possible for someone to exploit you for their own gain, they will. The onus is on you to create as strong a bubble of security around yourself as possible.
Here again the worst enemy of the African is the African.
I could talk for ages about this problem, but this is a blog. Suffice to say my beloved Nigeria was able to muster hundreds of thousands of men to wage a Civil War against itself, but could not find the military resources to invade and destroy the Apartheid State, thus freeing millions of Africans and sparing Nelson Mandela and the others from wasting so much of their lives behind bars. Even now, we Nigerians are waging various low-intensity wars against ourselves, rather than pull together to catch up with global powers so we are not so exposed and weak by comparison.
We couldn't even do much to help people of African descent elsewhere in world; aside from the fact that we had sold them to slavery in the first place, we were so weak that we were in no position to compel any outside power to treat them better. Indeed, we were conquered easily by those same outside powers.
We were conquered piecemeal, often cooperating with the invading power to conquer neighbours we thought were rivals, only to find ourselves the target of our erstwhile allies once they were done with our neighbours.
It is said that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on our academics and intellectuals to educate us. Scratch the surface of some of them, and out pours the same intra-racial bigotry you initially thought they would oppose. As for the res, the show all the effects of a colonially-derived education system, sounding exactly like the "development partners", multilateral agencies, NGO-types, foreign entertainers and others who purport to be trying to save Africa; they all talk about us over our heads, and invariably sound, perhaps unconsciously in some instances, as though they thought we were mentally infantile, incapable of lifting a finger (or a brain cell) in our own defence or self-interest, existentially needing their intervention and intercession specifically (and the rest of the world's intervention generally) lest we perish in our helplessness.
If we reacted to our own intra-racial "racism" the way we react when we are the target of external inter-racial racism, our continent would be such a different place. But there is instead a sort of circular reasoning and self-fulfilling prophecy where people view incidents of African-on-African racism as confirmation of their own intra-racial racist beliefs, rather than see them as evidence of a cancer we all must quash.
There are Nigerians (and Africans) who senselessly celebrate when any random black man is elected mayor of some unknown city in Central or Eastern Europe, and who went into ecstasy when a black man (biracial actually) was elected President of the United States. Oblivious to irony, these same Nigerians would NEVER vote a Kanuri man governor of Delta State, or an Ijaw man Senator from Jigawa State. Ask them to do so, and they will indignantly express frightening (and unconstitutional) views about perfidious "non-indigenes" who exist only to deny "indigenes" a chance. Amusingly, if Europeans, Americans, Arabs, Japanese or Southeast Asians were to deny opportunities to Africans in their country on the basis of our being "non-indigenes", the same people would cry racism.
This makes no sense.
What the rest of the world does to us in their countries is of only marginal effect to our fortunes. What we autochthonously do to ourselves in our own countries not only affects the greater mass of African peoples (just shy of a billion), but also diminishes the protections African countries can directly and indirectly offer our people who live outside Africa.
There is no case for intervention
The "international community" and ECOWAS are making unconvincing noises about using military force to dethrone Laurent Gbagbo and enthrone Alassane Ouattara. Nigeria is being pressured by the UN and the US to carry out the intervention on their behalf. The Goodluck Jonathan administration wants the dozen or so countries that call themselves "the international community" to quickly recognize their upcoming victory in the 2011 Nigerian elections, and is saying all the things the "international community" wants to hear.
Any "African" or "ECOWAS" military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire would be Nigerian in everything but name. We will be the ones providing most of the troops and doing all of the fighting, if fighting is required. The "international community" will promise finance, transport and logistics, but as our soldiers on duty in Darfur can tell you, there is a difference between what is promised and what is delivered.
Financially, politically, economically, diplomatically, strategically and morally, Nigeria really cannot afford a military intervention anywhere.
The question of which of Gbagbo or Ouattara or Bedie takes the Ivoirien presidency makes no difference to the strategic and regional interests of Nigeria. If you made a list of all the things the Ivorien government could do that would benefit joint Nigerian-Ivoirien and broader West African interests, you would have in effect have made a list of things Gbagbo, Ouattara and Bedie would never do and have never had any interest in doing. The suggestion of doing those things would cause those men to recoil in fear of Nigerian "domination"; they would then run to sell themselves and their country to France, the United States or China, depending on who offered them the best deal.
If you are morally, philosophically and ideologically committed to democracy in West Africa and Africa, well, you have nothing to gain from a Gbagbo, Ouattara or Bedie presidency. Gbagbo, like Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal, comes from the tradition of African politicians who start out leading the opposition to autocrats, only to become autocrats themselves when they finally get power. Ouattara and Bedie are scions of the Houphouet-Boigny autocracy. All three believe in rigging elections, and much like Nigerian politicians, all three rigged in the districts and regions where their machines already controlled.
If you are a modernist who wants Africa to move away from the failed politics of the past, well, you are looking at three dinosaurs left over from the Era of the Big Man. Decades after each man stepped into the political limelight, they have no new ideas or new inspiration; the chaos and instability their contest has brought to the Cote d'Ivoire is very, very old-school, much like the protagonists.
Installing one of the three as president would not make Cote d'Ivoire stable.
There are currently two large armies in the country, each occupying about half the land. One of these armies is the official government army, but in reality both of the armies are privately-owned militias loyal to specific political camps. The New Forces will never swear allegiance to President Gbagbo, and the official government army will never willingly serve a President Ouattara. Any plan to integrate the armies will be resisted by whoever eventually occupies the presidential mansion; if he mixed "enemy" soldiers with his own, and gave them the same access his soldiers have, he would feel himself surrounded at any moment by half-an-integrated-armies' worth of soldiers who would take the first opportunity to mount a coup-de-tat (and/or assassination going by the fate of former President Robert Guei).
Gbagbo, Ouattara and Bedie are the problem. The solution does not lie within them.
But forget that for a second. All of the above are just polemics.
The real issue is this.
Lets start from Nigeria. The internal security situation of our federal republic is ambiguous at the moment. And that is a deliberate understatement.
Some people will say we cannot "avoid our responsibilities" just because we have serious internal problems.
That kind of misses the point, but lets assume they are right.
Fine. Okay. You want to intervene in the politics of neighbouring countries in the interest of stability, even if we have problems of our own? Okay. No qualms.
Why don't we start with Niger Republic and Chad? Over the decades we have paid a political, economic, public safety and strategic price for living with persistent insecurity and instability in our two geographically vast northern neighbours. Our inability to positively influence events there exposes the lie of our claim to be "Giants of Africa".
To our south, apart from our inability to stop oil bunkering, there is the spectre of Equatorial Guinea in the ultra-strategic Gulf of Guinea. You want to promote democracy? This country competes with Eritrea for the title "Africa's North Korea". Before crude oil, it was a refugee camp masquerading as a country; with crude oil, well, think if North Korea discovered crude oil and the ruling family dynasty there pocketed all the money.
You want to unseat a dictator? Paul Biya is next door. In a different universe, the Democratic Republic of Congo would have been our biggest trading partner by volume, but Cameroun would have been integrated into a joint, shared economy that covered both our countries as well as every other country in the broader neighbourhood.
I am NOT saying we should intervene in Cameroun or anywhere else. In case you have not gleaned the fact by now, I am not a supporter of intervening in places, least of all when you haven't a clue what you are doing or why you are doing it.
It is nevertheless mind-boggling that we ignore problems at home and close to home in favour of ill-thought-out adventures in Cote d'Ivoire and Darfur. The weird thing is we would be in a better position to influence events in Cote d'Ivoire and Sudan if we fixed problems closer to home; we might even be able to rely on newly stable neighbours to assist us in any so-called intervention, rather than having to carry the whole load alone as usual.
Why prioritize the "international community's" interests and ignore our own? If the "international community" are so gung-ho on military intervention in Africa, I could make a long list of countries that need it far more than Cote d'Ivoire does ... starting with Equatorial Guinea. Oddly, the "international community" is good friends with the Equatotoguinean dictatorship. In fact, if Nigeria were to intervene in Equatorial Guinea, their reaction would be somewhat similar to their reaction to Iraq invading Kuwait.
I suppose if they want to militarily intervene in Cote d'Ivoire using their own troops, Nigeria is hardly in a position to stop them, but why should we use our troops to enforce their strategic aims. But if you tasked me with coming up with a solution to the Ivoirien crisis, we could talk about different ideas excluding outside military intervention.
As I said earlier, we are dealing with two large armies; the official government army has ballooned from a negligible size during Houphouet's autocracy to become the second-largest in West Africa behind Nigeria and the New Forces are at least large enough to balance the official government army. Both armies have access to mercenaries from neighbouring countries. One wonders where the armies are getting their munitions; such materiel is not manufactured in commercial quantities anywhere in West Africa.
I do not see anyone trying to use a military intervention to resolve the problem in Cyprus. Don't misunderstand me. I would hate to see Cote d'Ivoire remain divided for as long as Cyprus. That said, sometimes when you have let the situation get away from you, you have to take a step back as opposed to escalating a situation you already have no control over.
Maybe, just maybe, if the Cote d'Ivoire stabilizes along the lines of Cyprus we can create enough time and political space for new unionist political movements/parties/forces to rise on both sides of the divide. There is a desperate need for a pan-Ivoirien political movement on both sides of the line, movements that could eventually bring the two halves back together, as the West German and East German wings of the CDU did in Germany. Since there are no superpowers with vested interests in keeping Cote d'Ivoire separate, we should have long to wait. Unfortunately I do not think unity is possible so long as Gbagbo, Ouattara and Bedie are still politically relevant.
Actually, if the south and north can install temporary technocratic representation that sidelines Gbagbo and Ouattara, Nigeria and ECOWAS should take the position of neutral arbiters providing the umbrella for a timetable for the reestablishment of unity. Cote d'Ivoire may have to become a semi-federal ten-province republic, or adopt some other constitutional reforms that address fundamental questions.
Any "African" or "ECOWAS" military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire would be Nigerian in everything but name. We will be the ones providing most of the troops and doing all of the fighting, if fighting is required. The "international community" will promise finance, transport and logistics, but as our soldiers on duty in Darfur can tell you, there is a difference between what is promised and what is delivered.
Financially, politically, economically, diplomatically, strategically and morally, Nigeria really cannot afford a military intervention anywhere.
The question of which of Gbagbo or Ouattara or Bedie takes the Ivoirien presidency makes no difference to the strategic and regional interests of Nigeria. If you made a list of all the things the Ivorien government could do that would benefit joint Nigerian-Ivoirien and broader West African interests, you would have in effect have made a list of things Gbagbo, Ouattara and Bedie would never do and have never had any interest in doing. The suggestion of doing those things would cause those men to recoil in fear of Nigerian "domination"; they would then run to sell themselves and their country to France, the United States or China, depending on who offered them the best deal.
If you are morally, philosophically and ideologically committed to democracy in West Africa and Africa, well, you have nothing to gain from a Gbagbo, Ouattara or Bedie presidency. Gbagbo, like Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal, comes from the tradition of African politicians who start out leading the opposition to autocrats, only to become autocrats themselves when they finally get power. Ouattara and Bedie are scions of the Houphouet-Boigny autocracy. All three believe in rigging elections, and much like Nigerian politicians, all three rigged in the districts and regions where their machines already controlled.
If you are a modernist who wants Africa to move away from the failed politics of the past, well, you are looking at three dinosaurs left over from the Era of the Big Man. Decades after each man stepped into the political limelight, they have no new ideas or new inspiration; the chaos and instability their contest has brought to the Cote d'Ivoire is very, very old-school, much like the protagonists.
Installing one of the three as president would not make Cote d'Ivoire stable.
There are currently two large armies in the country, each occupying about half the land. One of these armies is the official government army, but in reality both of the armies are privately-owned militias loyal to specific political camps. The New Forces will never swear allegiance to President Gbagbo, and the official government army will never willingly serve a President Ouattara. Any plan to integrate the armies will be resisted by whoever eventually occupies the presidential mansion; if he mixed "enemy" soldiers with his own, and gave them the same access his soldiers have, he would feel himself surrounded at any moment by half-an-integrated-armies' worth of soldiers who would take the first opportunity to mount a coup-de-tat (and/or assassination going by the fate of former President Robert Guei).
Gbagbo, Ouattara and Bedie are the problem. The solution does not lie within them.
But forget that for a second. All of the above are just polemics.
The real issue is this.
Lets start from Nigeria. The internal security situation of our federal republic is ambiguous at the moment. And that is a deliberate understatement.
Some people will say we cannot "avoid our responsibilities" just because we have serious internal problems.
That kind of misses the point, but lets assume they are right.
Fine. Okay. You want to intervene in the politics of neighbouring countries in the interest of stability, even if we have problems of our own? Okay. No qualms.
Why don't we start with Niger Republic and Chad? Over the decades we have paid a political, economic, public safety and strategic price for living with persistent insecurity and instability in our two geographically vast northern neighbours. Our inability to positively influence events there exposes the lie of our claim to be "Giants of Africa".
To our south, apart from our inability to stop oil bunkering, there is the spectre of Equatorial Guinea in the ultra-strategic Gulf of Guinea. You want to promote democracy? This country competes with Eritrea for the title "Africa's North Korea". Before crude oil, it was a refugee camp masquerading as a country; with crude oil, well, think if North Korea discovered crude oil and the ruling family dynasty there pocketed all the money.
You want to unseat a dictator? Paul Biya is next door. In a different universe, the Democratic Republic of Congo would have been our biggest trading partner by volume, but Cameroun would have been integrated into a joint, shared economy that covered both our countries as well as every other country in the broader neighbourhood.
I am NOT saying we should intervene in Cameroun or anywhere else. In case you have not gleaned the fact by now, I am not a supporter of intervening in places, least of all when you haven't a clue what you are doing or why you are doing it.
It is nevertheless mind-boggling that we ignore problems at home and close to home in favour of ill-thought-out adventures in Cote d'Ivoire and Darfur. The weird thing is we would be in a better position to influence events in Cote d'Ivoire and Sudan if we fixed problems closer to home; we might even be able to rely on newly stable neighbours to assist us in any so-called intervention, rather than having to carry the whole load alone as usual.
Why prioritize the "international community's" interests and ignore our own? If the "international community" are so gung-ho on military intervention in Africa, I could make a long list of countries that need it far more than Cote d'Ivoire does ... starting with Equatorial Guinea. Oddly, the "international community" is good friends with the Equatotoguinean dictatorship. In fact, if Nigeria were to intervene in Equatorial Guinea, their reaction would be somewhat similar to their reaction to Iraq invading Kuwait.
I suppose if they want to militarily intervene in Cote d'Ivoire using their own troops, Nigeria is hardly in a position to stop them, but why should we use our troops to enforce their strategic aims. But if you tasked me with coming up with a solution to the Ivoirien crisis, we could talk about different ideas excluding outside military intervention.
As I said earlier, we are dealing with two large armies; the official government army has ballooned from a negligible size during Houphouet's autocracy to become the second-largest in West Africa behind Nigeria and the New Forces are at least large enough to balance the official government army. Both armies have access to mercenaries from neighbouring countries. One wonders where the armies are getting their munitions; such materiel is not manufactured in commercial quantities anywhere in West Africa.
I do not see anyone trying to use a military intervention to resolve the problem in Cyprus. Don't misunderstand me. I would hate to see Cote d'Ivoire remain divided for as long as Cyprus. That said, sometimes when you have let the situation get away from you, you have to take a step back as opposed to escalating a situation you already have no control over.
Maybe, just maybe, if the Cote d'Ivoire stabilizes along the lines of Cyprus we can create enough time and political space for new unionist political movements/parties/forces to rise on both sides of the divide. There is a desperate need for a pan-Ivoirien political movement on both sides of the line, movements that could eventually bring the two halves back together, as the West German and East German wings of the CDU did in Germany. Since there are no superpowers with vested interests in keeping Cote d'Ivoire separate, we should have long to wait. Unfortunately I do not think unity is possible so long as Gbagbo, Ouattara and Bedie are still politically relevant.
Actually, if the south and north can install temporary technocratic representation that sidelines Gbagbo and Ouattara, Nigeria and ECOWAS should take the position of neutral arbiters providing the umbrella for a timetable for the reestablishment of unity. Cote d'Ivoire may have to become a semi-federal ten-province republic, or adopt some other constitutional reforms that address fundamental questions.
The Naira and African China ....
Starting under Professor Charles Soludo and continuing under Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Nigeria (via the Central Bank of Nigeria) has depleted its external reserves by tens of billions to defend (in this case "propping up") the value of the Naira against the Dollar. They were helped in their task by the dollar's depreciation against other major world currencies in the same period. Heaven knows how much we would have spent if the dollar's value had been stable, or if it had appreciated.
Elsewhere in the world, when the currency depreciates, people start talking about how it will help exports. In Nigeria we spend tens of billions to keep the Naira up because we gain nothing from its decline.
It possible the CBN is acting to protect citizens' and firms' from the decline savings and other Naira-denominated assets losing assetsavings from eroding. It is much more likely the CBN is acting to prevent the price of imports from going up.
Which is the other side of the paradox.
Elsewhere in the world, people are happy to be able to export more and to have domestic producers claim a greater share of the local market as imports go up in price. But not Nigeria. It would be only a minor exaggeration to say our economy revolves around exporting unprocessed, unrefined crude oil and importing everything else.
We import capital equipment and spare parts, so we have to keep import prices down, or so they say. However, we are unable to use cheap labour (made more so by a depreciating currency) to attract capital investment in labour-intensive industry.
We cannot bring the textile industry back to life, so the moribund industry cannot benefit from an improved exchange rate (from the perspective of an exporter). So it is a priority to keep the Naira from a decline that would make it difficult for the people to buy imported textile products.
But it is more than that.
A few years ago, there was much talk of agricultural subsidies in Europe and North America. African governments talked about it. The Bretton Woods institutions talked about it. Commentators in the African media wrote about it. International non-governmental organizations and national "civil society" groups protested it. The World Trade Organization weighed in, as did the African Union. The European Union, the United States, Canada and Japan made the usual rhetorical statements that were (as usual) the direct opposite of what they were actually doing. Everyone said Western agricultural subsidies were destroying African agriculture, and everyone said the subsidies had to be removed.
It was quite a sexy topic for a while. Nowadays, no one talks about it much.
Agricultural subsidies were (and are) only the tip of a massive iceberg of market-distorting policies employed by global economic powers. The truth about the "free" market is it has never been free and it has never been fair. If an interested party demands some specific thing be done to make the market more free and fair, odds are the thing they are asking for is something that will distort the market to the advantage of that particular interest party (or that party's industry in general).
It is not a fair playing field, which is why I get very angry with Nigerian (and African) politics, economics and social dynamics. We are so far behind, so lacking in the basic infrastructure and superstructure we need to compete with the rest of the world, and yet we continue to waste vast amounts of time, energy and resources arguing with each other, not to mention fighting and sometimes killing each other, over rubbish that has nothing to do with maximizing our potential or achieving the strategic necessities.
What is interesting is there is a school of thought in Africa that believes the expanding trade with China is superior to the traditional trade with Europe and North America.
I am perfectly aware that the rise of China and India has been of monumental benefit to Nigeria. Once upon a time, all of the world's resource producers had to sell all of their product to a tiny fraction of the world's population. With supply high and demand limited (even people who consume to excess can only consume so much), commodity prices were low and flat. Adding India and China to the demand side of the commodity trade ratcheted up demand, even as supply remained fairly flat, and commodity prices shot up. In the first decade of the 21st century, before the Great Recession, Nigeria was able to enjoy a second Oil Boom, albeit a smaller boom than we had in the 1970s.
But if you were a Nigerian interested in diversifying our economy in general, our exports in particular, and manufacturing specifically ... you would immediately realize we were facing the same glass ceiling we faced during the era when Europe and North America dominated our import/export trade. China's currency manipulation, domestic market protectionism, lax protection of intellectual property theft, and other policies would be as much of a problem for us as the infamous agricultural subsidies (and other policies) of Europe and North America were and still are. All told, what we considered a neo-colonial trading pattern continues as always, but with China taking a share of a trade that used to be the exclusive preserve of the Europeans and North Americans.
Of course a conversation of how the trade policies of global powers affects us is just academic, virtual, ephemeral, theoretical. There is not practical import to talking about it.
You see, inasmuch as we suffer the effects of these policies, we do not actually notice the pain. We don't notice the pain because we are in no position to feel the pain.
Okay, let me speak plainly. And I will use China once more for comparative purposes.
It is not just their market-distorting policies that gives them the economic advantage over us. They also have better infrastructure, better superstructure, better administration, more effective bureaucracy and higher productivity among other advantages.
What bothers me is, even if we Nigerians fix our deficiencies in all of those sectors, we would still have to deal with the legacy of China's market-distorting policies, same as with the rest of the global powers.
When I say "legacy", I mean things that start out as short-term or medium-term distortions, but which eventually acquire a sort of permanence, and immortality if you will, until everyone (investors, consumers, traders, politicians, administrators, everybody) treats it as the "normal" structure of world production and trade even though it is in effect a permanently distorted production or trading pattern.
But like I said, we are not even at the point where we truly feel the pain.
Where we are right now, a devaluation of the Naira does not help exports. Just makes it difficult for us to import things that other countries are able to sell to use because of market-distorting policies.
Elsewhere in the world, when the currency depreciates, people start talking about how it will help exports. In Nigeria we spend tens of billions to keep the Naira up because we gain nothing from its decline.
It possible the CBN is acting to protect citizens' and firms' from the decline savings and other Naira-denominated assets losing assetsavings from eroding. It is much more likely the CBN is acting to prevent the price of imports from going up.
Which is the other side of the paradox.
Elsewhere in the world, people are happy to be able to export more and to have domestic producers claim a greater share of the local market as imports go up in price. But not Nigeria. It would be only a minor exaggeration to say our economy revolves around exporting unprocessed, unrefined crude oil and importing everything else.
We import capital equipment and spare parts, so we have to keep import prices down, or so they say. However, we are unable to use cheap labour (made more so by a depreciating currency) to attract capital investment in labour-intensive industry.
We cannot bring the textile industry back to life, so the moribund industry cannot benefit from an improved exchange rate (from the perspective of an exporter). So it is a priority to keep the Naira from a decline that would make it difficult for the people to buy imported textile products.
But it is more than that.
A few years ago, there was much talk of agricultural subsidies in Europe and North America. African governments talked about it. The Bretton Woods institutions talked about it. Commentators in the African media wrote about it. International non-governmental organizations and national "civil society" groups protested it. The World Trade Organization weighed in, as did the African Union. The European Union, the United States, Canada and Japan made the usual rhetorical statements that were (as usual) the direct opposite of what they were actually doing. Everyone said Western agricultural subsidies were destroying African agriculture, and everyone said the subsidies had to be removed.
It was quite a sexy topic for a while. Nowadays, no one talks about it much.
Agricultural subsidies were (and are) only the tip of a massive iceberg of market-distorting policies employed by global economic powers. The truth about the "free" market is it has never been free and it has never been fair. If an interested party demands some specific thing be done to make the market more free and fair, odds are the thing they are asking for is something that will distort the market to the advantage of that particular interest party (or that party's industry in general).
It is not a fair playing field, which is why I get very angry with Nigerian (and African) politics, economics and social dynamics. We are so far behind, so lacking in the basic infrastructure and superstructure we need to compete with the rest of the world, and yet we continue to waste vast amounts of time, energy and resources arguing with each other, not to mention fighting and sometimes killing each other, over rubbish that has nothing to do with maximizing our potential or achieving the strategic necessities.
What is interesting is there is a school of thought in Africa that believes the expanding trade with China is superior to the traditional trade with Europe and North America.
I am perfectly aware that the rise of China and India has been of monumental benefit to Nigeria. Once upon a time, all of the world's resource producers had to sell all of their product to a tiny fraction of the world's population. With supply high and demand limited (even people who consume to excess can only consume so much), commodity prices were low and flat. Adding India and China to the demand side of the commodity trade ratcheted up demand, even as supply remained fairly flat, and commodity prices shot up. In the first decade of the 21st century, before the Great Recession, Nigeria was able to enjoy a second Oil Boom, albeit a smaller boom than we had in the 1970s.
But if you were a Nigerian interested in diversifying our economy in general, our exports in particular, and manufacturing specifically ... you would immediately realize we were facing the same glass ceiling we faced during the era when Europe and North America dominated our import/export trade. China's currency manipulation, domestic market protectionism, lax protection of intellectual property theft, and other policies would be as much of a problem for us as the infamous agricultural subsidies (and other policies) of Europe and North America were and still are. All told, what we considered a neo-colonial trading pattern continues as always, but with China taking a share of a trade that used to be the exclusive preserve of the Europeans and North Americans.
Of course a conversation of how the trade policies of global powers affects us is just academic, virtual, ephemeral, theoretical. There is not practical import to talking about it.
You see, inasmuch as we suffer the effects of these policies, we do not actually notice the pain. We don't notice the pain because we are in no position to feel the pain.
Okay, let me speak plainly. And I will use China once more for comparative purposes.
It is not just their market-distorting policies that gives them the economic advantage over us. They also have better infrastructure, better superstructure, better administration, more effective bureaucracy and higher productivity among other advantages.
What bothers me is, even if we Nigerians fix our deficiencies in all of those sectors, we would still have to deal with the legacy of China's market-distorting policies, same as with the rest of the global powers.
When I say "legacy", I mean things that start out as short-term or medium-term distortions, but which eventually acquire a sort of permanence, and immortality if you will, until everyone (investors, consumers, traders, politicians, administrators, everybody) treats it as the "normal" structure of world production and trade even though it is in effect a permanently distorted production or trading pattern.
But like I said, we are not even at the point where we truly feel the pain.
Where we are right now, a devaluation of the Naira does not help exports. Just makes it difficult for us to import things that other countries are able to sell to use because of market-distorting policies.
30 January, 2011
Assassination in Borno
The gubernatorial candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party in Bornu state was murdered Friday. Six other citizens, including a 12-year-old boy, were murdered in the same attack.
The Northeast, like the Niger-Delta, is caught in a low-intensity insurgency. I have yet to hear any of the candidates say anything convincing or concrete about what they will do to improve security (and to reform the security agencies).
Jos, for example, has been on fire since 1999. I have the depressing suspicion that it will still be on fire in 2015 when we gather again to hold yet another meaningless election that resolves none of the strategic political, economic or social questions.
The Northeast, like the Niger-Delta, is caught in a low-intensity insurgency. I have yet to hear any of the candidates say anything convincing or concrete about what they will do to improve security (and to reform the security agencies).
Jos, for example, has been on fire since 1999. I have the depressing suspicion that it will still be on fire in 2015 when we gather again to hold yet another meaningless election that resolves none of the strategic political, economic or social questions.
The budget and the nomination form
THE 2011 BUDGET:
The BBC's breakdown of the federal government's 2011 Budget Proposal:
THE NOMINATION FORM
Different countries have different methods of nominating candidates.
In some countries that use the parliamentary system, national and (in the case of Canada, South Africa and I believe Australia) provincial/state party leaders can impose a candidate of their choosing on a constituency even if a super-majority of the constituency party-members prefer someone else.
It is not necessarily a democratic process, even in "democracies".
That said, the idea of "purchasing" nomination forms as it is done in Nigeria is to block the poor majority and the middle-class from direct participation in politics.
The poor are at the very edge of survival, while the middle-class are making ends meet while spending what should be their retirement savings to support their extended families. Neither would have spare money to "purchase" a nomination form even if they were priced affordably, which they are not.
In a sense, the "nomination form" system guarantees godfather politics, because the forms are priced so high as to be afforded only by the rich ... or by someone who has a rich godfather. To hold political office, you must be a Big Man, or sell your soul to a Big Man.
Godsons have to repay their godfathers' investment, or their godfathers swiftly make their states ungovernable. It is interesting that political machines seem to have more "constitutional" power over states than state governments; men like Chris Uba and the late Lamidi Adedibu even gave orders to the state police as though they were commanders-in-chief.
The political office-holders have become experts at finding ways to fleece the treasury on behalf of their godfathers without technically breaking the law. It seems the job description of executive positions extends no further than the award of spurious contracts, while the legislatures have become experts at passing bills that put more money in the pocket of the legislators without explicitly saying so.
Rather than take money out of the treasury to give to their godfathers (which would be a crime), some governors have given front companies affiliated to the godfathers contracts to collect taxes and other revenues on behalf of the state. The companies are paid on commission, keeping a percentage of the revenues they collect. In effect it is the same thing; you are giving the godfather a slice of the state's treasury except you are not breaking the law.
Big Men invest a lot of money to secure political offices for themselves or for their godsons. They are keen on getting their money back, and perhaps making a profit. And we end up with high-stakes, do-or-die politics, because the competing political machines are staring at a stark choice between high profits and high losses.
The BBC's breakdown of the federal government's 2011 Budget Proposal:
Ministries: $12bn
Other government bodies: $350m
Parliament: $707m
Pensions and gratuities: $1bn
Transfers to statuary bodies: $1.3bn
Debt payments: $3.5bn
Other expenses: $2.6bn
Total Running Costs: $21bn
Capital Expenditure: $6.5bn
Total Budget: $27.6bn
THE NOMINATION FORM
Different countries have different methods of nominating candidates.
In some countries that use the parliamentary system, national and (in the case of Canada, South Africa and I believe Australia) provincial/state party leaders can impose a candidate of their choosing on a constituency even if a super-majority of the constituency party-members prefer someone else.
It is not necessarily a democratic process, even in "democracies".
That said, the idea of "purchasing" nomination forms as it is done in Nigeria is to block the poor majority and the middle-class from direct participation in politics.
The poor are at the very edge of survival, while the middle-class are making ends meet while spending what should be their retirement savings to support their extended families. Neither would have spare money to "purchase" a nomination form even if they were priced affordably, which they are not.
In a sense, the "nomination form" system guarantees godfather politics, because the forms are priced so high as to be afforded only by the rich ... or by someone who has a rich godfather. To hold political office, you must be a Big Man, or sell your soul to a Big Man.
Godsons have to repay their godfathers' investment, or their godfathers swiftly make their states ungovernable. It is interesting that political machines seem to have more "constitutional" power over states than state governments; men like Chris Uba and the late Lamidi Adedibu even gave orders to the state police as though they were commanders-in-chief.
The political office-holders have become experts at finding ways to fleece the treasury on behalf of their godfathers without technically breaking the law. It seems the job description of executive positions extends no further than the award of spurious contracts, while the legislatures have become experts at passing bills that put more money in the pocket of the legislators without explicitly saying so.
Rather than take money out of the treasury to give to their godfathers (which would be a crime), some governors have given front companies affiliated to the godfathers contracts to collect taxes and other revenues on behalf of the state. The companies are paid on commission, keeping a percentage of the revenues they collect. In effect it is the same thing; you are giving the godfather a slice of the state's treasury except you are not breaking the law.
Big Men invest a lot of money to secure political offices for themselves or for their godsons. They are keen on getting their money back, and perhaps making a profit. And we end up with high-stakes, do-or-die politics, because the competing political machines are staring at a stark choice between high profits and high losses.
The lineup and prospects
The Presidential Candidates:
For years now, there has been talk of the opposition parties (defined as every party other than PDP) uniting under a single coalition banner to "dethrone" the PDP. A brief synopsis of these efforts was published by NEXT, and Daily Trust has devoted lots of column inches to months of alliance discussions between Bola Tinubu's ACN and Mohammedu Buhari's CPC.
The interminable talks between the ACN and CPC are apparently still going onbut the ANPP stepping in to present itself to the ACN as an alternative alliance partner.
This is problematic.
Underneath the official rhetoric (and ghost-written facebook posts), President Goodluck Jonathan's campaign has been built on rallying support from the southern half of the federal republic for ditching the PDP's internal "zoning" arrangements. It seems the ANPP, CPC and ACN campaigns will revolve around mobilizing support from the northern half of the country for the de facto restoring of "zoning". Given what has been happening in recent days (Jos especially), recent years (since the Fourth Republic) and in each of five decades since 1960, this is a very, very dangerous ground on which to hold an election in Nigeria -- and it doesn't help that all parties will rig, and that all parties know that all parties will rig, which means none of the parties will consider themselves to have legitimately lost regardless of the announced result.
I doubt the CPC/ACN alliance will happen. There are Big Egos and Big Ambitions involved, and two Big Men who do not trust each other. And why should they? They are each trying to use the other to get at Aso Rock; once they are there, they will forget whoever got them there as seems to be the tradition in the Fourth Republic, which will be remembered only for the wars between godfathers and their godson.
At one point, APGA was involved in the talks. In a federal republic that has been influenced (some might say scarred) by ethnic majority "tripod" politics, it is easy to see why ACN, CPC and APGA would consider an alliance with each other against the ruling party. APGA unabashedly appeals to sectionalist interests in the Igbo-majority states. In the Yoruba-majority states, ACN is increasingly replacing the Alliance for Democracy as the sectionalist party. And in the Hausa-majority states, the CPC is starting to outflank the moribund ANPP as the region's sectionalist party.
I do not support any of our parties or politicians; I do not even see any difference between the lot of them. And I have disliked ethnic "tripod" politics ever since I was introduced to it as a child during the Second Republic; learning more about our history (including but not limited to the run-up to Independence and the First Republic), made me hate ethnic "tripod" politics even more.
Still, if the ACN, CPC and APGA had somehow come up with some sort of agreement ... it would still lose to the PDP. The Peoples Democratic Party is the culmination of a 50-year process of consolidation of Big Men from all over Nigeria, united in the singular goal of creating and maintaining a stable structure to share the "national cake" amongst themselves. The party's national reach (not of voters, but of Big Men and the political machines they control) has made sectionalist parties irrelevant at the federal centre for the first time since 1960.
Maybe Governor Peter Obi knows this. Interestingly, when he endorsed Jonathan, he was not speaking not as an APGA leader, but as Chairman of the "Southeast Governors' Forum", which would (in theory) count as the endorsement of all the governors of the Igbo-majority states.
In the meantime, Tinubu and Buhari continued their 11th hour negotiations.
This election really has nothing to do with the interests of the federal republic or of its people. Different power blocs within the political class are manoeuvring their political machines in preparation for fighting (literally) for a greater or lesser share of the national cake.
Even so, it worries me.
The unspoken-but-ever-present undercurrent of violence that lies beneath the façade of Nigerian political life is has been slowly, tortuously cresting the surface since 1999. The politicians still think they can play the usual games; some even think they can parlay the violence to their advantage.
I am ... concerned about the outcome.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP): Goodluck Jonathan (incumbent President)
Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN): Nuhu Ribadu (former EFCC boss)
All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP): Ibrahim Shekarau (Governor of Kano)
Congress for Progressive Change (CPC): Mohammedu Buhari (former Head of State)
National Conscience Party (NCP): Dele Momodu (publisher of Ovation Magazine)
All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA): No candidate "purchased" the presidential nomination form of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). The party's most powerful political office-holder, Anambra State Governor Peter Obi, has endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan.
For years now, there has been talk of the opposition parties (defined as every party other than PDP) uniting under a single coalition banner to "dethrone" the PDP. A brief synopsis of these efforts was published by NEXT, and Daily Trust has devoted lots of column inches to months of alliance discussions between Bola Tinubu's ACN and Mohammedu Buhari's CPC.
The interminable talks between the ACN and CPC are apparently still going onbut the ANPP stepping in to present itself to the ACN as an alternative alliance partner.
This is problematic.
Underneath the official rhetoric (and ghost-written facebook posts), President Goodluck Jonathan's campaign has been built on rallying support from the southern half of the federal republic for ditching the PDP's internal "zoning" arrangements. It seems the ANPP, CPC and ACN campaigns will revolve around mobilizing support from the northern half of the country for the de facto restoring of "zoning". Given what has been happening in recent days (Jos especially), recent years (since the Fourth Republic) and in each of five decades since 1960, this is a very, very dangerous ground on which to hold an election in Nigeria -- and it doesn't help that all parties will rig, and that all parties know that all parties will rig, which means none of the parties will consider themselves to have legitimately lost regardless of the announced result.
I doubt the CPC/ACN alliance will happen. There are Big Egos and Big Ambitions involved, and two Big Men who do not trust each other. And why should they? They are each trying to use the other to get at Aso Rock; once they are there, they will forget whoever got them there as seems to be the tradition in the Fourth Republic, which will be remembered only for the wars between godfathers and their godson.
At one point, APGA was involved in the talks. In a federal republic that has been influenced (some might say scarred) by ethnic majority "tripod" politics, it is easy to see why ACN, CPC and APGA would consider an alliance with each other against the ruling party. APGA unabashedly appeals to sectionalist interests in the Igbo-majority states. In the Yoruba-majority states, ACN is increasingly replacing the Alliance for Democracy as the sectionalist party. And in the Hausa-majority states, the CPC is starting to outflank the moribund ANPP as the region's sectionalist party.
I do not support any of our parties or politicians; I do not even see any difference between the lot of them. And I have disliked ethnic "tripod" politics ever since I was introduced to it as a child during the Second Republic; learning more about our history (including but not limited to the run-up to Independence and the First Republic), made me hate ethnic "tripod" politics even more.
Still, if the ACN, CPC and APGA had somehow come up with some sort of agreement ... it would still lose to the PDP. The Peoples Democratic Party is the culmination of a 50-year process of consolidation of Big Men from all over Nigeria, united in the singular goal of creating and maintaining a stable structure to share the "national cake" amongst themselves. The party's national reach (not of voters, but of Big Men and the political machines they control) has made sectionalist parties irrelevant at the federal centre for the first time since 1960.
Maybe Governor Peter Obi knows this. Interestingly, when he endorsed Jonathan, he was not speaking not as an APGA leader, but as Chairman of the "Southeast Governors' Forum", which would (in theory) count as the endorsement of all the governors of the Igbo-majority states.
In the meantime, Tinubu and Buhari continued their 11th hour negotiations.
This election really has nothing to do with the interests of the federal republic or of its people. Different power blocs within the political class are manoeuvring their political machines in preparation for fighting (literally) for a greater or lesser share of the national cake.
Even so, it worries me.
The unspoken-but-ever-present undercurrent of violence that lies beneath the façade of Nigerian political life is has been slowly, tortuously cresting the surface since 1999. The politicians still think they can play the usual games; some even think they can parlay the violence to their advantage.
I am ... concerned about the outcome.
We are all islands
I watched a gruesome video of a Tunisian protester shot dead by the Tunisian police the other day.
I was struck by the fact that the people of Nigeria have not reacted to the events unfolding in Tunisia. There were no mass demonstrations in front of the Tunisian embassy in Abuja, or in front of Aso Rock or the National Assembly to use citizen pressure to force our federal government to intercede at a maximum or speak out at a minimum in defence of the Tunisian citizens.
True, we have our own problems. I have watched videos of summary, extra-judicial executions of Nigerian citizens by our security services in the Niger-Delta and Maiduguri. Come to think of it, the people of Tunisia did not react with mass demonstrations at the Nigerian embassy.
Actually, when the people of one African country suffer for one reason or another, the people of the rest of the countries in Africa just go on with their lives, unconcerned so long as it does not affect them.
Yes, I know our governments don't listen to us, and yes, I know that any mass protest, even over events in another country, is treated by the governments of our own country as a possible coup-de-tat. The thought of thousands of people rallying together without government participation or permission, in favour of an issue the government doesn't care about, for the purpose of pressuring the government to do something it has no interest in doing, with the belief that the government is supposed to do what the people want it to ... well, the whole thing just terrifies every regime in Africa.
As for us citizens, most of us have seemingly given up hope. It is not that we do not care, it is more that we have come to accept the fact that there is nothing we can do about it even if we do care.
But in order to live like this, you have to build a very, very, very hard shell around yourself, to lock out the sights and sounds of your fellow Africans' suffering. You have to walk past him, drive by him, fly over him, and otherwise pretend you do not see him. Even as you pray, in Church or Mosque, for the Almighty to intercede on behalf of your land, your decisions and actions betray the mindset of one who does not expect anything to change, and who fears he may lose what little safety he has if the powers-that-be perceive him to be caring a little too much about the effect everything they are doing has on the ordinary citizen.
And so, if ethnic violence breaks out in Kenya or Rwanda, there is no reaction from the people or political class of Angola. If the Mozambican police crack down viciously on citizens protesting the rise in the price of staple commodities, you hear nary a whisper from the people of Ghana or Gabon. Women could be mass-raped in Congo or Liberia, and Nigerians and Moroccans just go about their day. Oh, there is xenophobic violence in South Africa? Don't expect so much as a whisper out of the people of Ethiopia.
Yes, we all have our own problems ... but if we do not stand together, who will stand with us? We are all hesitant to risk our lives for change because we know no one will come to our aid after we start; but does it occur to us that they won't take the risk of coming to our aid because they know we won't come to their aid after they have taken a risk (on our behalf or their own)?
African governments do not, will not act to prevent, forestall or ameliorate crises in other African countries. You would be wasting time and energy if you invested it in expressing anger at African governments for inaction when crises are imminent or on-going. They are just as bad when they do decide to act, usually after the crisis produces the sort of shocking images which attract the global media long after it is too late for their reports to do any good to the dead; and at that, the African governments just tag along with whatever the "international community" decides to do even though the "international community" never has a clue what to do and just sort of fumbles around until the crises resolve themselves or run out of steam.
It is what it is.
African governments barely if ever respond to potential, threatened, imminent or existing crises in their own countries; it would be self-deception to expect them to react helpfully to a neighbour's plight. Moreover, the continent's political/social/economic/bureaucratic/intellectual elite share a substantially similar, warped worldview. When the leaders of an African country do the sort of things that promote avoidable crises or make unavoidable crises unnecessarily difficult to deal with, the leaders in other African countries think they are doing the right things -- they do the same things in their own countries and see nothing wrong with it, and are just as offended as their leadership colleagues by anyone suggesting that these are in fact bad things they are doing.
I don't know if they don't care, or if they just neither realize nor understand the difference between that which is optimal and that which is self-defeating. Human beings are motivated by rational self-interest, and in this case we the people of Africa face a double roadblock: (a) the status quo is beneficial to the people with the most power to change the status quo; and (b) crises do not seem to affect the security and economic well-being of those with the most power to avoid the crises in the first place -- the rich and powerful either remain rich and powerful when the dust settles, or they fly abroad into "exile" in countries where they own real estate and have banked fortunes, leaving the poor and the middle-class behind to dodge AK-47-totting gunmen. What the rest of us perceive as terrible outcomes are in fact outgrowths of what people of power consider to be the "normal" way of doing business, politics, diplomacy, etc.
If they lack the internal motivation to stand up for what is right, they are under no external pressure to change their stance. We the people do not pressure them because we know what they will do to us if we do (and know that no one, from Africa or beyond, will stand up for us or fight alongside us).
If you are interested in peace, stability, democracy, development and progress in Africa, don't waste your hopes on the "international community", a sort of wannabe-global-junta made up of a dozen or self-anointed countries. Their rhetoric insists on their right to decide things over the heads over everyone else in the supposed interest of all humanity, but their actions are the usual self-interested strategic manoeuvres familiar to anyone who has studied great powers through history. Iraq invading Kuwait alters the political and economic dynamics of crude oil; hundreds of thousands of Rwandans getting massacred does not have quite the same strategic resonance. These powers get whatever they want from Africa, whatever the continent has or can provide that they deem necessary to their strategic interest. They don't just talk about it, they forcefully get it, doing whatever is necessary regardless of the ethics. More often than not, the things they do to advance their interests result in the opposite of what they loudly profess to be their aims as "development partners"
I am not being bitter or resentful. We Africans are going to continue suffering unnecessary negative outcomes as long as we believe the rest of the world has any intention to come and fix all of our problems for us. If we do not tackle our problems, we will suffer for it. I can't describe the feeling I got while watching documentaries of the Liberian civil war, seeing Liberians in the conflict zone wailing before the cameras begging the United States to come and save them. The Americans did not come. The Americans were never going to come. Why in the world did they expect them to?
I am not angry at the "international community". Every country on Earth acts or should act in its own strategic self-interest. We complain fruitlessly, strictly rhetorically, that other countries do not take our interests into account when making their decisions and taking their actions; practically, we do everything in our power to make ourselves useful to their interests even as we neglect our own.
Africans should start thinking and acting in our own interests. The catalyst for this change will never come from the elite; their interests are diametrically opposed to the peoples' interests. If we do not care about each other enough to fight for each other, then there is no point to it, is there?
I was struck by the fact that the people of Nigeria have not reacted to the events unfolding in Tunisia. There were no mass demonstrations in front of the Tunisian embassy in Abuja, or in front of Aso Rock or the National Assembly to use citizen pressure to force our federal government to intercede at a maximum or speak out at a minimum in defence of the Tunisian citizens.
True, we have our own problems. I have watched videos of summary, extra-judicial executions of Nigerian citizens by our security services in the Niger-Delta and Maiduguri. Come to think of it, the people of Tunisia did not react with mass demonstrations at the Nigerian embassy.
Actually, when the people of one African country suffer for one reason or another, the people of the rest of the countries in Africa just go on with their lives, unconcerned so long as it does not affect them.
Yes, I know our governments don't listen to us, and yes, I know that any mass protest, even over events in another country, is treated by the governments of our own country as a possible coup-de-tat. The thought of thousands of people rallying together without government participation or permission, in favour of an issue the government doesn't care about, for the purpose of pressuring the government to do something it has no interest in doing, with the belief that the government is supposed to do what the people want it to ... well, the whole thing just terrifies every regime in Africa.
As for us citizens, most of us have seemingly given up hope. It is not that we do not care, it is more that we have come to accept the fact that there is nothing we can do about it even if we do care.
But in order to live like this, you have to build a very, very, very hard shell around yourself, to lock out the sights and sounds of your fellow Africans' suffering. You have to walk past him, drive by him, fly over him, and otherwise pretend you do not see him. Even as you pray, in Church or Mosque, for the Almighty to intercede on behalf of your land, your decisions and actions betray the mindset of one who does not expect anything to change, and who fears he may lose what little safety he has if the powers-that-be perceive him to be caring a little too much about the effect everything they are doing has on the ordinary citizen.
And so, if ethnic violence breaks out in Kenya or Rwanda, there is no reaction from the people or political class of Angola. If the Mozambican police crack down viciously on citizens protesting the rise in the price of staple commodities, you hear nary a whisper from the people of Ghana or Gabon. Women could be mass-raped in Congo or Liberia, and Nigerians and Moroccans just go about their day. Oh, there is xenophobic violence in South Africa? Don't expect so much as a whisper out of the people of Ethiopia.
Yes, we all have our own problems ... but if we do not stand together, who will stand with us? We are all hesitant to risk our lives for change because we know no one will come to our aid after we start; but does it occur to us that they won't take the risk of coming to our aid because they know we won't come to their aid after they have taken a risk (on our behalf or their own)?
African governments do not, will not act to prevent, forestall or ameliorate crises in other African countries. You would be wasting time and energy if you invested it in expressing anger at African governments for inaction when crises are imminent or on-going. They are just as bad when they do decide to act, usually after the crisis produces the sort of shocking images which attract the global media long after it is too late for their reports to do any good to the dead; and at that, the African governments just tag along with whatever the "international community" decides to do even though the "international community" never has a clue what to do and just sort of fumbles around until the crises resolve themselves or run out of steam.
It is what it is.
African governments barely if ever respond to potential, threatened, imminent or existing crises in their own countries; it would be self-deception to expect them to react helpfully to a neighbour's plight. Moreover, the continent's political/social/economic/bureaucratic/intellectual elite share a substantially similar, warped worldview. When the leaders of an African country do the sort of things that promote avoidable crises or make unavoidable crises unnecessarily difficult to deal with, the leaders in other African countries think they are doing the right things -- they do the same things in their own countries and see nothing wrong with it, and are just as offended as their leadership colleagues by anyone suggesting that these are in fact bad things they are doing.
I don't know if they don't care, or if they just neither realize nor understand the difference between that which is optimal and that which is self-defeating. Human beings are motivated by rational self-interest, and in this case we the people of Africa face a double roadblock: (a) the status quo is beneficial to the people with the most power to change the status quo; and (b) crises do not seem to affect the security and economic well-being of those with the most power to avoid the crises in the first place -- the rich and powerful either remain rich and powerful when the dust settles, or they fly abroad into "exile" in countries where they own real estate and have banked fortunes, leaving the poor and the middle-class behind to dodge AK-47-totting gunmen. What the rest of us perceive as terrible outcomes are in fact outgrowths of what people of power consider to be the "normal" way of doing business, politics, diplomacy, etc.
If they lack the internal motivation to stand up for what is right, they are under no external pressure to change their stance. We the people do not pressure them because we know what they will do to us if we do (and know that no one, from Africa or beyond, will stand up for us or fight alongside us).
If you are interested in peace, stability, democracy, development and progress in Africa, don't waste your hopes on the "international community", a sort of wannabe-global-junta made up of a dozen or self-anointed countries. Their rhetoric insists on their right to decide things over the heads over everyone else in the supposed interest of all humanity, but their actions are the usual self-interested strategic manoeuvres familiar to anyone who has studied great powers through history. Iraq invading Kuwait alters the political and economic dynamics of crude oil; hundreds of thousands of Rwandans getting massacred does not have quite the same strategic resonance. These powers get whatever they want from Africa, whatever the continent has or can provide that they deem necessary to their strategic interest. They don't just talk about it, they forcefully get it, doing whatever is necessary regardless of the ethics. More often than not, the things they do to advance their interests result in the opposite of what they loudly profess to be their aims as "development partners"
I am not being bitter or resentful. We Africans are going to continue suffering unnecessary negative outcomes as long as we believe the rest of the world has any intention to come and fix all of our problems for us. If we do not tackle our problems, we will suffer for it. I can't describe the feeling I got while watching documentaries of the Liberian civil war, seeing Liberians in the conflict zone wailing before the cameras begging the United States to come and save them. The Americans did not come. The Americans were never going to come. Why in the world did they expect them to?
I am not angry at the "international community". Every country on Earth acts or should act in its own strategic self-interest. We complain fruitlessly, strictly rhetorically, that other countries do not take our interests into account when making their decisions and taking their actions; practically, we do everything in our power to make ourselves useful to their interests even as we neglect our own.
Africans should start thinking and acting in our own interests. The catalyst for this change will never come from the elite; their interests are diametrically opposed to the peoples' interests. If we do not care about each other enough to fight for each other, then there is no point to it, is there?
11 January, 2011
The mooted military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire
What you have in the Cote d'Ivoire are two large armies led by two men.
Having grown rapidly over the last 17 years, the "official" army, the militia supporting Laurent Gbagbo, is now the second-largest in West Africa by number of enlisted me. I am not sure of the numbers of the rebel New Forces, but I suspect they have enough force at least to balance the "government" army (or the war would have resumed).
So long as Gbagbo and Ouattara can each count on tens of thousands of soldiers to back his claim, neither man was ever going to accept defeat in an election. If you think Ouattara would have gracefully accepted defeat, had he been declared the loser, you must not have noticed what has been going on these last 17 years. There are credible suggestions that both men "manipulated" results in areas under the control of their respective armies; and even pie-in-the-sky optimists have queried the rationale of holding an election in what is still effectively a divided war zone (albeit one with a firm ceasefire).
If Gbagbo does not step down, the New Forces will not relinquish their control of the North and will not recognize his government. This much everyone acknowledges.
Unsurprisingly, no one is similarly acknowledging the fact that the 50,000-strong "official" government army is just as unlikely to accept Ouattara as its president.
The "international community" (i.e. a small group of Western European, North American and Japanese countries) has been threatening Gbagbo, trying to get him to step down for Ouattara. I personally don't think Gbagbo, Ouattara or Bedie is the solution to the Ivoirien crisis, but Ouattara is clearly the favourite of the "international community", having previously held high office at the IMF, at the BCEAO and in the neo-colonial Houphouet-Boigny government.
The "international community" may or may not have persuaded the Economic Community of West African States to back their line.
I rather suspect ECOWAS leaders couldn't care less about "democracy" in Cote d'Ivoire.
For one thing, the majority of ECOWAS member states are either undemocratic or pseudo-democratic. An organization that recognizes Yahya Jammeh of Gambia and Faure Gnassingbe of Togo can hardly presume to comment on the democratic virtues (or lack thereof) of anyone. Even the likes of Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria can hardly hold their heads up with pride and say they were properly elected (remember, Goodluck Jonathan is in office because of the monumentally undemocratic 2007 Nigerian Elections).
For another thing, the only matter of principle on which all African presidents can agree on is their own self-preservation, and as such, the idea of removing a sitting African president should ever lose office. And for something as "trivial" as not being democratic?
Thing is, the "international community" and ECOWAS have taken to declaring the existence of a military option for forcing Gbagbo from office.
I am not sure anyone takes the threat of military force seriously.
I don't.
Gbagbo doesn't seem to either.
Three (maybe four) members of "the international community" have deployable military forces of the sort that could intervene militarily in Cote d'Ivoire. Of this shortlist, all except France are tied up in other conflicts they consider strategically more important. All, including France, face voting publics who (a) are tired of war; (b) are uninterested in and possibly entirely unaware of Cote d'Ivoire and/or its crisis; and (c) do not think Cote d'Ivoire and its problems are worth the life of even one of their soldiers. France, the most likely "international community" member to intervene, is widely disliked in Cote d'Ivoire and across much of West and Central Africa, as well well as in Rwanda, which these days is considered East Africa.
The "international community" could (in theory) use bombs and long-range missiles in place of troops on the ground, but I suspect a key outcome of such an act would be greater hatred of Ouattara, France and the "international community" among any Ivoiriens not emotionally committed to Ouattara. The sight of a partially bombed-out Abidjan wouldn't play well in the rest of Africa either; because the average African does not hold a particularly high opinion of Gbagbo, Bedie or Ouattara, the average African does not thing any of them is so important he is worth bombing Abidjan for.
In fact, that is one of the sources of political apathy among the African masses, the sense that none of the politicians or political factions is worth fighting for. And you can't say the fight is for "democracy" because the masses know the politicians and factions do not believe in "democracy". Everyone sees Gbagbo using undemocratic tactics against Bedie and Ouattara; everyone has forgotten that Bedie and Ouattara were part of the Felix Houphouet-Boigny regime that used similarly undemocratic tactics against Gbagbo (back when Gbagbo was Houphouet's only substantial opposition). At the end of the day, all three of them have, are, and would use undemocratic means to keep themselves in office, and the people of Africa know it.
One gets the impression that the "international community" will get around these various handicaps by leaning on ECOWAS to either mount this putative military expedition, or to at least to provide the visible military muscle that can be pointed at to back up the verbal threats. As such there have been ECOWAS conferences (most recently in Abuja), and lots of vague talk about all options still being on the table, including the military option. This is a link to a briefing on ECOWAS involvement in the Ivoirien crisis.
I doubt any ECOWAS member state is interested in an armed intervention in Cote d'Ivoire. But I equally doubt any of them has the guts to say so to the "international community". Even without the prior experience of ECOMOG in the Liberian and Sierra Leonian wars as a guide, the assumption behind any suggestion of an "ECOWAS" intervention in Cote d'Ivoire is that it would be a Nigerian intervention in all but name -- and Nigeria has NO INTEREST whatsoever in doing such a thing. Of course, the Nigerian federal government will never openly say it has no interest in an Ivorien intervention; Presidents Obasanjo, Yar'Adua (RIP) and Jonathan have all continually promised the "international community" they would send soldiers to Somalia, but I don't think we ever will, nor do I think Obasanjo, Yar'Adu and Jonathan ever had any intention of doing so.
All things considered, a West African military intervention to dethrone Gbagbo and enthrone Ouattara is unlikely at the moment.
Still, there was an interesting opinion piece in the Guardian today, discussing what Nigeria should or shouldn't do if it is planning on a military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire.
Having grown rapidly over the last 17 years, the "official" army, the militia supporting Laurent Gbagbo, is now the second-largest in West Africa by number of enlisted me. I am not sure of the numbers of the rebel New Forces, but I suspect they have enough force at least to balance the "government" army (or the war would have resumed).
So long as Gbagbo and Ouattara can each count on tens of thousands of soldiers to back his claim, neither man was ever going to accept defeat in an election. If you think Ouattara would have gracefully accepted defeat, had he been declared the loser, you must not have noticed what has been going on these last 17 years. There are credible suggestions that both men "manipulated" results in areas under the control of their respective armies; and even pie-in-the-sky optimists have queried the rationale of holding an election in what is still effectively a divided war zone (albeit one with a firm ceasefire).
If Gbagbo does not step down, the New Forces will not relinquish their control of the North and will not recognize his government. This much everyone acknowledges.
Unsurprisingly, no one is similarly acknowledging the fact that the 50,000-strong "official" government army is just as unlikely to accept Ouattara as its president.
The "international community" (i.e. a small group of Western European, North American and Japanese countries) has been threatening Gbagbo, trying to get him to step down for Ouattara. I personally don't think Gbagbo, Ouattara or Bedie is the solution to the Ivoirien crisis, but Ouattara is clearly the favourite of the "international community", having previously held high office at the IMF, at the BCEAO and in the neo-colonial Houphouet-Boigny government.
The "international community" may or may not have persuaded the Economic Community of West African States to back their line.
I rather suspect ECOWAS leaders couldn't care less about "democracy" in Cote d'Ivoire.
For one thing, the majority of ECOWAS member states are either undemocratic or pseudo-democratic. An organization that recognizes Yahya Jammeh of Gambia and Faure Gnassingbe of Togo can hardly presume to comment on the democratic virtues (or lack thereof) of anyone. Even the likes of Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria can hardly hold their heads up with pride and say they were properly elected (remember, Goodluck Jonathan is in office because of the monumentally undemocratic 2007 Nigerian Elections).
For another thing, the only matter of principle on which all African presidents can agree on is their own self-preservation, and as such, the idea of removing a sitting African president should ever lose office. And for something as "trivial" as not being democratic?
Thing is, the "international community" and ECOWAS have taken to declaring the existence of a military option for forcing Gbagbo from office.
I am not sure anyone takes the threat of military force seriously.
I don't.
Gbagbo doesn't seem to either.
Three (maybe four) members of "the international community" have deployable military forces of the sort that could intervene militarily in Cote d'Ivoire. Of this shortlist, all except France are tied up in other conflicts they consider strategically more important. All, including France, face voting publics who (a) are tired of war; (b) are uninterested in and possibly entirely unaware of Cote d'Ivoire and/or its crisis; and (c) do not think Cote d'Ivoire and its problems are worth the life of even one of their soldiers. France, the most likely "international community" member to intervene, is widely disliked in Cote d'Ivoire and across much of West and Central Africa, as well well as in Rwanda, which these days is considered East Africa.
The "international community" could (in theory) use bombs and long-range missiles in place of troops on the ground, but I suspect a key outcome of such an act would be greater hatred of Ouattara, France and the "international community" among any Ivoiriens not emotionally committed to Ouattara. The sight of a partially bombed-out Abidjan wouldn't play well in the rest of Africa either; because the average African does not hold a particularly high opinion of Gbagbo, Bedie or Ouattara, the average African does not thing any of them is so important he is worth bombing Abidjan for.
In fact, that is one of the sources of political apathy among the African masses, the sense that none of the politicians or political factions is worth fighting for. And you can't say the fight is for "democracy" because the masses know the politicians and factions do not believe in "democracy". Everyone sees Gbagbo using undemocratic tactics against Bedie and Ouattara; everyone has forgotten that Bedie and Ouattara were part of the Felix Houphouet-Boigny regime that used similarly undemocratic tactics against Gbagbo (back when Gbagbo was Houphouet's only substantial opposition). At the end of the day, all three of them have, are, and would use undemocratic means to keep themselves in office, and the people of Africa know it.
One gets the impression that the "international community" will get around these various handicaps by leaning on ECOWAS to either mount this putative military expedition, or to at least to provide the visible military muscle that can be pointed at to back up the verbal threats. As such there have been ECOWAS conferences (most recently in Abuja), and lots of vague talk about all options still being on the table, including the military option. This is a link to a briefing on ECOWAS involvement in the Ivoirien crisis.
I doubt any ECOWAS member state is interested in an armed intervention in Cote d'Ivoire. But I equally doubt any of them has the guts to say so to the "international community". Even without the prior experience of ECOMOG in the Liberian and Sierra Leonian wars as a guide, the assumption behind any suggestion of an "ECOWAS" intervention in Cote d'Ivoire is that it would be a Nigerian intervention in all but name -- and Nigeria has NO INTEREST whatsoever in doing such a thing. Of course, the Nigerian federal government will never openly say it has no interest in an Ivorien intervention; Presidents Obasanjo, Yar'Adua (RIP) and Jonathan have all continually promised the "international community" they would send soldiers to Somalia, but I don't think we ever will, nor do I think Obasanjo, Yar'Adu and Jonathan ever had any intention of doing so.
All things considered, a West African military intervention to dethrone Gbagbo and enthrone Ouattara is unlikely at the moment.
Still, there was an interesting opinion piece in the Guardian today, discussing what Nigeria should or shouldn't do if it is planning on a military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire.
09 January, 2011
Stand for nothing, fall for everything
I have this Zimbabwean acquaintance who is a staunch, hero-worshipping supporter of Robert Mugabe. So this Zimbabwean declares the other day his belief that multi-party democracy has "failed" in Africa and followed up by insisting a one-party state was the ideal system for Africa.
First let me say I am always fascinated by that micro-minority of Africans who say multi-party democracy has failed in Africa. I always want to ask them ... when did we try multi-party democracy? I mean, if you are saying it failed somewhere in Africa, then surely it means it was tried somewhere in Africa and didn't work there. So where is this place in Africa you are talking about; when did they try it; how long did the experiment last; and when did it fail?
I was under the impression that we had spent the last 50 years doing everything in the world EXCEPT multi-party democracy. Mind you, those are two different, separate words; you can have many political parties (like Nigeria) without having "democracy". Heck, you can hold any number of elections (like Egypt) without there being any "democracy"
Ghana's experience with multi-party democracy is 10 years old; it seems to be working well for them.
Other than Ghana, the closest thing Africa has to democracy are those countries that (like Japan between 1955 and 2009) are one-party states in all but name. In those countries (as, ironically in Japan), the inertia and rigidity of the ruling parties, and the complete lack of motivation to do anything (because even if they do nothing, they still "win") retard development.
Either way, it is silly to say multi-party democracy has failed when the continent's political, economic, social and cultural elite have done everything in the world to AVOID multi-party democracy.
But that is not the worst part of it.
You see, my Zimbabwean acquaintance does not really support the one-party state, nor does he really believe it is the best system for Africa. What he really supports is Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF, and in order to keep them in power forever, he is quite willing to prevent the existence of democracy in his homeland.
Let me put it this way: If Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC somehow came to power and subsequently declared Zimbabwe a one-party state, this acquaintance of mine would be the first and most vociferous opponent of the move. And in doing so, he would have proven the very reason why the one-party state is such a failure; you see, once a person and party you dislike (or in his case, hate) is in office, you cannot remove them because there are no elections. You are stuck with a situation you do not want "forever".
Yet, he sees nothing wrong with denying people who oppose ZANU and Mugabe the very constitutional right he would demand if it were Morgan Tsvangirai and MDC in office. Indeed, stupid claims like "democracy has failed in Africa" are usually uttered by the very same people who work so hard to prevent it from existing in the first place as an excuse for their actions in blocking it.
My Zimbabwean acquaintance is quite typical of the people who dominate Africa's politics, business community and society. When they are in power, they tell you Africa does not need democracy, constitutionalism, rule of law, human rights, etc, but when they are out of power and their opponents are crushing them with the same tools of state they used to use against their opponents, they become born-again believers in all of the things they did not do when in office. And if by some chance they return to office, they will simply carry on where they left off, explaining to all and sundry that democracy has never worked in Africa, and how constitutionalism and rule of law are "foreign" concepts, etc, etc.
I have another acquaintance, a fellow Nigerian. He and I get into arguments because he believes the proper response to a "bad" African government is to support the "opposition" party. I keep telling him the "opposition" party (or parties) are exactly the same as the "government" party. Opposition politicians will exploit his passion and desire for change in their quest for power, will promise him everything they know he wants, and will oppose every aspect of the current government they know he opposes....
....but if they somehow seize power, they will immediately forget about him and do exactly the same things as the current government he is opposed to.
Some of them do not even wait until their faction gains power, but instead opt for a sort of trade-by-barter or extortion. We who believe in nothing will oppose you and mobilize those who truly believe in something to oppose you too .... unless you cut us in on the deal. As soon as the ruling faction gives them a share of the political spoils, they undergo an "ideological" conversion and begin to defend the very things they were vociferously opposed to just a few seconds before.
I am baffled and exasperated by those of my countrymen who get really militant about issues of "power shift". We have had more changes of government in the last 50 years than most countries in the world, and I am not just talking about countries with lifetime dictators; the "democratic" countries of Western Europe and the United States have changed their governments fewer times than we have.
We have had army generals and civilians; we have had northerners and southerners; we have had "minorities" and "majorities"; we have had parliamentary, presidential and authoritarians systems; we have had Open Ballot, Option A-4, Closed Ballot; I could go on and on and on. We have been power-shifting like crazy and nothing about the substance of governance in Nigeria has ever changed.
Don't you understand? These people competing for the power of political office stand for nothing and believe in nothing.
You might argue that the same thing happens in other countries. Regardless of which political faction wins the world over, the fundamental nature of governance, administration, policy-making and policy-execution in those countries does not really change.
I agree, and it isn't a problem if the fundamental substance of governance, administration, policy-making and policy-execution in your country is working well enough for your country and its people. But when "the system" is a failure, a hindrance, a roadblock, then you start to run into trouble ... and the trouble starts to persist and gain a certain permanence.
[By the way, for the record, a large part of the world's current economic troubles lie in the fact that the political party systems are good for maintaining Mid-20th Century realities, but lack the flexibility or originality of thought to deal with the changed reality of the 21st Century. Honestly speaking, none of them have a clue as to what to do.
But I digress.]
If you are a Nigerian (or African) interested in fundamental reform, restructuring and transformation, then politically you have nowhere to turn. The political factions that profess to want what you want will stop "wanting" those things the moment they get into political office. Once they have access to the same "enjoyment" the current occupants of those offices are enjoying, they will forget what they promised. Actually, they never believed in their promises, only using the words to mobilize support from the masses.
And they are successful at it. Over the decades, many of the Nigerian/African masses have invested so much hope and belief in certain political figures/factions. Some of use have fought for, shed blood for, and even died on behalf of our chosen heroes and their factions. We keep doing it though time and again we have been betrayed by the very people in whom we placed so much trust. They have wasted our energies and wasted our lives and achieved little of what we truly want. Again and again it has been like George Orwell's Animal Farm ... after an initial period of morale-boosting publicity stunts (what we Nigerians call "initial gra-gra") the new regime eventually becomes indistinguishable from the old regime.
It is funny ... in a sad way.
In Nigeria, men and women who claim to be "progressive reformers" are nevertheless quite keen on gaining wealth, status and position as the technocratic managers of the very system they pretend they want to reform. Some continue talking-the-talk of reform while walking-the-status-quo-walk. Others metamorphose to become vociferous defenders of the status quo. Either way, they (secretly or openly) become enemies of true reform, because reform might eliminate their cushy positions, or at best open their jobs up to competition -- and like my Zimbabwean acquaintance, the "supporter" of one-party states, they hate the idea of having to compete for their jobs.
And so the alleged "progressives" and "reformers" make a lucrative career out of being the mouthpieces and bureaucratic functionaries of the same class of oligarchs, godfathers, plutocrats, kleptocrats and political vagabonds they once loquaciously pretended to oppose. Their only real "ideology" is doing anything that GUARANTEES themselves a political job. Their allegiance is to any political machine willing to grant them a well-paid job, with no care to the consequences to the country.
This is the point where some people will accuse me of "bad belle". As Jos burns (again), bombs explode in Abuja (again), police are killed in Maiduguri (again) and violence flares in the Niger-Delta (again), there are still many citizens willing to hail those who acquire wealth and any costs and denigrate anyone who points out the obvious -- our political system is rubbish!
For the record, a few years ago I was offered a well-paying Abuja-based job. At first, I thought it was a dream job where I would get to do some of the things I can only blog about .... but then I realized I would be working for someone who is directly and personally responsible for some of the crises faced by the federal republic in the Fourth Republic. I turned the job down. What would have been the point? I would have been drawing a salary to participate in propagating avoidable crises.
The funny thing is, the man in question has since fallen out of favour in Abuja. Had I been inclined to sell my soul for money, I would probably be jobless by now.
But you see, I have actual principles. There are things I believe to be right, and things I believe to be wrong. As I read news of the violence in Jos (for example), what would I have thought of myself if I was a part of causing the mess?
In fact, what do these people think of themselves? How can people be so bad at their jobs, but still be so pompous, self-important and arrogant? Have they no shame?
Nobody really cares about anything, except power.
Ahead of the 2011 (rigged) Elections, politicians are moving around like cockroaches surprised by someone turning on the light. Everyone is looking for guaranteed candidature and guaranteed victories at the polls. Like my Zimbabwean acquaintance, the thought of a fair contest, may the best man win, is anathema to them.
Mohammedu Buhari has created a party from scratch so he could be a presidential candidate without having to hassle with the few remaining ANPP governors. Much of the ANPP had already decamped to the PDP anyway, the trickle of movement becoming a flood during the administration of the late President Umaru Yar'Adua (RIP); Isa Yuguda and Mahmud Shinkafi, governors of Bauchi and Zamfara respectively were among the more notable decampees. What remains of the ANPP exists only because the holdouts have no hope of GUARANTEED candidatures in the PDP (their state branch is the private property of rival machines), or CPC (Buhari left the ANPP to get away from them in the first place).
Nuhu Ribadu has moved from the corruption-filled PDP to work for the corrupt Bola Tinubu because Tinubu promised him the ACN presidential ticket.
Dora Akunyili has decamped from PDP to APGA, because Governor Peter Obi will use the power of the Governor's mansion to give her the Senatorial nomination, and may have promised to hand her the gubernatorial mansion in 2014. The enemy of my enemy is my friend; Peter Obi and Dora Akunyili are both feuding with the Anambra political machines helmed by Charles Soludo (former CBN Governor), Andy Uba (former illicit cash carrier for President Olusegun Obasanjo) and Chris Uba (former breaker of every felony law in the Nigerian statute book in broad daylight and full view of everyone, though was never prosecuted, convicted or jailed).
Adams Oshiomhole had no interest in the hard work necessary to mobilize rally blue-collar workers and the poor masses into creating a left-leaning party to fight for change politicially (as opposed to hurting citizens, harming the economy, and wasting everyone's time with strikes that never achieve anything); alas, Oshiomhole decided it was much easier to ride Tinubu's powerful coat-tails into office, even though Tinubu is the sort of politician a left-leaning party should be trying to unseat.
The garrulous and oft-unintelligible Patrick Obahiagbon has defected from the PDP to the ACN. He says his "peregrination" to ACN was in response to his people who had left the PDP and joined the ACN. But why was he in the PDP to begin with? Because that was the one his people wanted him to be in? Does he have a political opinion or does he change party when "his people" ask him to? Why can't he be honest and say he was in the PDP because their political machines controlled Edo State, so any PDP candidate was guaranteed a seat in the federal legislature. Now that those political machines have switched allegiance to Tinubu's ACN, he has made sure to switch too. I bet if the machines switch to APGA or CPC or even the Chinese Communist Party, Patrick Obahiagbon will switch with them.
I know I sound harsh, but these people are supposed to be LEADERS. They are supposed to guide the federal republic in a particular direction, towards something they BELIEVE IN. But they just flit like butterflies from flower to flower looking for nectar anywhere they can find it, concerned only with filling their bellies.
They are ridiculous.
Future students of Nigerian politics will surely study the chameleon-like antics of the Ilorin political warlord, Olusola Saraki. Lets focus just on his activities in the Fourth Republic. In 1999, as a chieftain of the All People's Party (later All Nigeria People's Party, ANPP), Saraki imposed Mohammed Lawal as Governor of Kwara. When Lawal rebelled (as all Fourth Republic godsons have done to their godfathers), Saraki left the ANPP and joined the PDP, from where he handed Kwara State to his son Bukola Saraki. Since Bukola was his won, Papa Saraki probably figured he had escaped the inevitable godfater-vs-godson battle, but alas, Bukola is refusing to play along with his father's plans to impose Senator Gbemisola Saraki (Olusola's daughter and Bukola's sister) as Bukola's successor. So Papa Saraki has left the PDP and invested in an unknown micro-party called Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, his third party since 1999.
Its not like it matters. All of the parties are the same. The big ones. The small ones. The ones in government. The ones in opposition. The ones that were registered and kept vacant and disused so the owner can sell it to when a politician cannot get a nomination elsewhere and needs to rent the empty shell to use as his election vehicle (which is what Saraki seems to have done).
Everyone does it.
Nnamdi "Andy" Uba facilitated illegal movements of cash for the Obasanjo regime. Having served Obasanjo loyally, he was rewarded with (rigged) "victory" at the 2007 Anambra gubernatorial elections. But then Obasanjo was gone from Aso Rock, freeing the courts to annul Uba's so-called victory and restore Peter Obi to office. The late President Yar'Adua, keen on ridding Anambra of the Uba brothers, imposed Charles Soludo as the PDP candidate for the eventual 2010 state polls. In response, the Labour Party (which sounds like something Oshiomhole should have been leading, but which in fact is as much a joke as the rest of the parties) saw an opportunity and offered Andy Uba a guaranteed ticket as their candidate. Uba took their offer. Uba assured his new party of his loyalty by promising the Labour Party he would not dump them and return to the PDP if he won. He lost, and (you guessed it) has now defected from the Labour Party back to the PDP.
How can you take any of them seriously? What do they believe in? Do they even believe in anything? Anything at all, good, bad or otherwise? What principle are they willing to fight for, other than their own political and financial ambitions?
And where are you supposed to turn if you are interested in reform, restructuring and transformation?
First let me say I am always fascinated by that micro-minority of Africans who say multi-party democracy has failed in Africa. I always want to ask them ... when did we try multi-party democracy? I mean, if you are saying it failed somewhere in Africa, then surely it means it was tried somewhere in Africa and didn't work there. So where is this place in Africa you are talking about; when did they try it; how long did the experiment last; and when did it fail?
I was under the impression that we had spent the last 50 years doing everything in the world EXCEPT multi-party democracy. Mind you, those are two different, separate words; you can have many political parties (like Nigeria) without having "democracy". Heck, you can hold any number of elections (like Egypt) without there being any "democracy"
Ghana's experience with multi-party democracy is 10 years old; it seems to be working well for them.
Other than Ghana, the closest thing Africa has to democracy are those countries that (like Japan between 1955 and 2009) are one-party states in all but name. In those countries (as, ironically in Japan), the inertia and rigidity of the ruling parties, and the complete lack of motivation to do anything (because even if they do nothing, they still "win") retard development.
Either way, it is silly to say multi-party democracy has failed when the continent's political, economic, social and cultural elite have done everything in the world to AVOID multi-party democracy.
But that is not the worst part of it.
You see, my Zimbabwean acquaintance does not really support the one-party state, nor does he really believe it is the best system for Africa. What he really supports is Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF, and in order to keep them in power forever, he is quite willing to prevent the existence of democracy in his homeland.
Let me put it this way: If Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC somehow came to power and subsequently declared Zimbabwe a one-party state, this acquaintance of mine would be the first and most vociferous opponent of the move. And in doing so, he would have proven the very reason why the one-party state is such a failure; you see, once a person and party you dislike (or in his case, hate) is in office, you cannot remove them because there are no elections. You are stuck with a situation you do not want "forever".
Yet, he sees nothing wrong with denying people who oppose ZANU and Mugabe the very constitutional right he would demand if it were Morgan Tsvangirai and MDC in office. Indeed, stupid claims like "democracy has failed in Africa" are usually uttered by the very same people who work so hard to prevent it from existing in the first place as an excuse for their actions in blocking it.
My Zimbabwean acquaintance is quite typical of the people who dominate Africa's politics, business community and society. When they are in power, they tell you Africa does not need democracy, constitutionalism, rule of law, human rights, etc, but when they are out of power and their opponents are crushing them with the same tools of state they used to use against their opponents, they become born-again believers in all of the things they did not do when in office. And if by some chance they return to office, they will simply carry on where they left off, explaining to all and sundry that democracy has never worked in Africa, and how constitutionalism and rule of law are "foreign" concepts, etc, etc.
I have another acquaintance, a fellow Nigerian. He and I get into arguments because he believes the proper response to a "bad" African government is to support the "opposition" party. I keep telling him the "opposition" party (or parties) are exactly the same as the "government" party. Opposition politicians will exploit his passion and desire for change in their quest for power, will promise him everything they know he wants, and will oppose every aspect of the current government they know he opposes....
....but if they somehow seize power, they will immediately forget about him and do exactly the same things as the current government he is opposed to.
Some of them do not even wait until their faction gains power, but instead opt for a sort of trade-by-barter or extortion. We who believe in nothing will oppose you and mobilize those who truly believe in something to oppose you too .... unless you cut us in on the deal. As soon as the ruling faction gives them a share of the political spoils, they undergo an "ideological" conversion and begin to defend the very things they were vociferously opposed to just a few seconds before.
I am baffled and exasperated by those of my countrymen who get really militant about issues of "power shift". We have had more changes of government in the last 50 years than most countries in the world, and I am not just talking about countries with lifetime dictators; the "democratic" countries of Western Europe and the United States have changed their governments fewer times than we have.
We have had army generals and civilians; we have had northerners and southerners; we have had "minorities" and "majorities"; we have had parliamentary, presidential and authoritarians systems; we have had Open Ballot, Option A-4, Closed Ballot; I could go on and on and on. We have been power-shifting like crazy and nothing about the substance of governance in Nigeria has ever changed.
Don't you understand? These people competing for the power of political office stand for nothing and believe in nothing.
You might argue that the same thing happens in other countries. Regardless of which political faction wins the world over, the fundamental nature of governance, administration, policy-making and policy-execution in those countries does not really change.
I agree, and it isn't a problem if the fundamental substance of governance, administration, policy-making and policy-execution in your country is working well enough for your country and its people. But when "the system" is a failure, a hindrance, a roadblock, then you start to run into trouble ... and the trouble starts to persist and gain a certain permanence.
[By the way, for the record, a large part of the world's current economic troubles lie in the fact that the political party systems are good for maintaining Mid-20th Century realities, but lack the flexibility or originality of thought to deal with the changed reality of the 21st Century. Honestly speaking, none of them have a clue as to what to do.
But I digress.]
If you are a Nigerian (or African) interested in fundamental reform, restructuring and transformation, then politically you have nowhere to turn. The political factions that profess to want what you want will stop "wanting" those things the moment they get into political office. Once they have access to the same "enjoyment" the current occupants of those offices are enjoying, they will forget what they promised. Actually, they never believed in their promises, only using the words to mobilize support from the masses.
And they are successful at it. Over the decades, many of the Nigerian/African masses have invested so much hope and belief in certain political figures/factions. Some of use have fought for, shed blood for, and even died on behalf of our chosen heroes and their factions. We keep doing it though time and again we have been betrayed by the very people in whom we placed so much trust. They have wasted our energies and wasted our lives and achieved little of what we truly want. Again and again it has been like George Orwell's Animal Farm ... after an initial period of morale-boosting publicity stunts (what we Nigerians call "initial gra-gra") the new regime eventually becomes indistinguishable from the old regime.
It is funny ... in a sad way.
In Nigeria, men and women who claim to be "progressive reformers" are nevertheless quite keen on gaining wealth, status and position as the technocratic managers of the very system they pretend they want to reform. Some continue talking-the-talk of reform while walking-the-status-quo-walk. Others metamorphose to become vociferous defenders of the status quo. Either way, they (secretly or openly) become enemies of true reform, because reform might eliminate their cushy positions, or at best open their jobs up to competition -- and like my Zimbabwean acquaintance, the "supporter" of one-party states, they hate the idea of having to compete for their jobs.
And so the alleged "progressives" and "reformers" make a lucrative career out of being the mouthpieces and bureaucratic functionaries of the same class of oligarchs, godfathers, plutocrats, kleptocrats and political vagabonds they once loquaciously pretended to oppose. Their only real "ideology" is doing anything that GUARANTEES themselves a political job. Their allegiance is to any political machine willing to grant them a well-paid job, with no care to the consequences to the country.
This is the point where some people will accuse me of "bad belle". As Jos burns (again), bombs explode in Abuja (again), police are killed in Maiduguri (again) and violence flares in the Niger-Delta (again), there are still many citizens willing to hail those who acquire wealth and any costs and denigrate anyone who points out the obvious -- our political system is rubbish!
For the record, a few years ago I was offered a well-paying Abuja-based job. At first, I thought it was a dream job where I would get to do some of the things I can only blog about .... but then I realized I would be working for someone who is directly and personally responsible for some of the crises faced by the federal republic in the Fourth Republic. I turned the job down. What would have been the point? I would have been drawing a salary to participate in propagating avoidable crises.
The funny thing is, the man in question has since fallen out of favour in Abuja. Had I been inclined to sell my soul for money, I would probably be jobless by now.
But you see, I have actual principles. There are things I believe to be right, and things I believe to be wrong. As I read news of the violence in Jos (for example), what would I have thought of myself if I was a part of causing the mess?
In fact, what do these people think of themselves? How can people be so bad at their jobs, but still be so pompous, self-important and arrogant? Have they no shame?
Nobody really cares about anything, except power.
Ahead of the 2011 (rigged) Elections, politicians are moving around like cockroaches surprised by someone turning on the light. Everyone is looking for guaranteed candidature and guaranteed victories at the polls. Like my Zimbabwean acquaintance, the thought of a fair contest, may the best man win, is anathema to them.
Mohammedu Buhari has created a party from scratch so he could be a presidential candidate without having to hassle with the few remaining ANPP governors. Much of the ANPP had already decamped to the PDP anyway, the trickle of movement becoming a flood during the administration of the late President Umaru Yar'Adua (RIP); Isa Yuguda and Mahmud Shinkafi, governors of Bauchi and Zamfara respectively were among the more notable decampees. What remains of the ANPP exists only because the holdouts have no hope of GUARANTEED candidatures in the PDP (their state branch is the private property of rival machines), or CPC (Buhari left the ANPP to get away from them in the first place).
Nuhu Ribadu has moved from the corruption-filled PDP to work for the corrupt Bola Tinubu because Tinubu promised him the ACN presidential ticket.
Dora Akunyili has decamped from PDP to APGA, because Governor Peter Obi will use the power of the Governor's mansion to give her the Senatorial nomination, and may have promised to hand her the gubernatorial mansion in 2014. The enemy of my enemy is my friend; Peter Obi and Dora Akunyili are both feuding with the Anambra political machines helmed by Charles Soludo (former CBN Governor), Andy Uba (former illicit cash carrier for President Olusegun Obasanjo) and Chris Uba (former breaker of every felony law in the Nigerian statute book in broad daylight and full view of everyone, though was never prosecuted, convicted or jailed).
Adams Oshiomhole had no interest in the hard work necessary to mobilize rally blue-collar workers and the poor masses into creating a left-leaning party to fight for change politicially (as opposed to hurting citizens, harming the economy, and wasting everyone's time with strikes that never achieve anything); alas, Oshiomhole decided it was much easier to ride Tinubu's powerful coat-tails into office, even though Tinubu is the sort of politician a left-leaning party should be trying to unseat.
The garrulous and oft-unintelligible Patrick Obahiagbon has defected from the PDP to the ACN. He says his "peregrination" to ACN was in response to his people who had left the PDP and joined the ACN. But why was he in the PDP to begin with? Because that was the one his people wanted him to be in? Does he have a political opinion or does he change party when "his people" ask him to? Why can't he be honest and say he was in the PDP because their political machines controlled Edo State, so any PDP candidate was guaranteed a seat in the federal legislature. Now that those political machines have switched allegiance to Tinubu's ACN, he has made sure to switch too. I bet if the machines switch to APGA or CPC or even the Chinese Communist Party, Patrick Obahiagbon will switch with them.
I know I sound harsh, but these people are supposed to be LEADERS. They are supposed to guide the federal republic in a particular direction, towards something they BELIEVE IN. But they just flit like butterflies from flower to flower looking for nectar anywhere they can find it, concerned only with filling their bellies.
They are ridiculous.
Future students of Nigerian politics will surely study the chameleon-like antics of the Ilorin political warlord, Olusola Saraki. Lets focus just on his activities in the Fourth Republic. In 1999, as a chieftain of the All People's Party (later All Nigeria People's Party, ANPP), Saraki imposed Mohammed Lawal as Governor of Kwara. When Lawal rebelled (as all Fourth Republic godsons have done to their godfathers), Saraki left the ANPP and joined the PDP, from where he handed Kwara State to his son Bukola Saraki. Since Bukola was his won, Papa Saraki probably figured he had escaped the inevitable godfater-vs-godson battle, but alas, Bukola is refusing to play along with his father's plans to impose Senator Gbemisola Saraki (Olusola's daughter and Bukola's sister) as Bukola's successor. So Papa Saraki has left the PDP and invested in an unknown micro-party called Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, his third party since 1999.
Its not like it matters. All of the parties are the same. The big ones. The small ones. The ones in government. The ones in opposition. The ones that were registered and kept vacant and disused so the owner can sell it to when a politician cannot get a nomination elsewhere and needs to rent the empty shell to use as his election vehicle (which is what Saraki seems to have done).
Everyone does it.
Nnamdi "Andy" Uba facilitated illegal movements of cash for the Obasanjo regime. Having served Obasanjo loyally, he was rewarded with (rigged) "victory" at the 2007 Anambra gubernatorial elections. But then Obasanjo was gone from Aso Rock, freeing the courts to annul Uba's so-called victory and restore Peter Obi to office. The late President Yar'Adua, keen on ridding Anambra of the Uba brothers, imposed Charles Soludo as the PDP candidate for the eventual 2010 state polls. In response, the Labour Party (which sounds like something Oshiomhole should have been leading, but which in fact is as much a joke as the rest of the parties) saw an opportunity and offered Andy Uba a guaranteed ticket as their candidate. Uba took their offer. Uba assured his new party of his loyalty by promising the Labour Party he would not dump them and return to the PDP if he won. He lost, and (you guessed it) has now defected from the Labour Party back to the PDP.
How can you take any of them seriously? What do they believe in? Do they even believe in anything? Anything at all, good, bad or otherwise? What principle are they willing to fight for, other than their own political and financial ambitions?
And where are you supposed to turn if you are interested in reform, restructuring and transformation?
05 January, 2011
The Secret Oil Deal
Strange days in the Nigerian Oil industry.
Take a look at this mysterious, opaque deal to swap crude oil for imports of refined fuel.
Aside from the fact that we are committing ourselves to a long-term deal that is self-defeating, as well as being far from an optimal way to run our oil industry (surely I don't have to explain "why" to you), the deal is kind of shady (in the way such deals always are), designed to create grey areas certain people can milk.
Even now the government is going through the motions of pretending to investigate the alleged embezzlement and/or mismanagement of =N=1.2 trillion ($8 billion) related the fuel-price subsidy; the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) are being subjected to forensic audit.
The entire structure of our fuel markets make no sense. The NNPC continues to run up debts to that unproductive class of rent-seekers known as "fuel importers".
It is abnormal that Nigeria, which long ago should have become the major exporter of refined petroleum products to the African market (and the major investor in newly-discovered oil fields in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, Chad and elsewhere) is planning on importing refined fuel product from Cote d'Ivoire.
Take a look at this mysterious, opaque deal to swap crude oil for imports of refined fuel.
Aside from the fact that we are committing ourselves to a long-term deal that is self-defeating, as well as being far from an optimal way to run our oil industry (surely I don't have to explain "why" to you), the deal is kind of shady (in the way such deals always are), designed to create grey areas certain people can milk.
Even now the government is going through the motions of pretending to investigate the alleged embezzlement and/or mismanagement of =N=1.2 trillion ($8 billion) related the fuel-price subsidy; the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) are being subjected to forensic audit.
The entire structure of our fuel markets make no sense. The NNPC continues to run up debts to that unproductive class of rent-seekers known as "fuel importers".
It is abnormal that Nigeria, which long ago should have become the major exporter of refined petroleum products to the African market (and the major investor in newly-discovered oil fields in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, Chad and elsewhere) is planning on importing refined fuel product from Cote d'Ivoire.
04 January, 2011
The Ivoirien franc
A few Ivoirien news sources are reporting rumours that the Laurent Gbagbo government is considering withdrawing Cote d'Ivoire from the CFA Franc and inaugurating a new currency that could be called the "Ivoirien", the "Ivoirien franc" or the "MIR". [The news site in the hyper-link is in French].
Gbagbo's action is prompted by moves by the Banque Centrale des États de l'Afrique de l'Ouest to deny his government access to Cote d'Ivoire's revenues/reserves/treasury. The BCEAO is an 8-nation, shared Central Bank that administers the western CFA franc zone (the Banque des Etats de l'Afrique Centrale or BEAC administers the Central African CFA zone).
I personally think Cote d'Ivoire would be better off rid of Gbagbo, Ouattara AND Bedie, as well as every other Houphouet-Era politician and the support structures (including younger politicians) that keep these dinosaurs from extinction.
Also, I do not think the Ivoiriens will carry through with the threat to start a new currency. Cote d'Ivoire is the richest member of the BCEAO zone (actually, they are probably the wealthiest member of the two CFA zones combined), and I suspect the threat of withdrawal is being used as a negotiating tactic to force the BCEAO to contemplate life without Cote d'Ivoire thus pressuring them into neutrality in the Ivoirien political crisis.
Having said that, a part of me wishes Cote d'Ivoire would break free of the CFA.
I have two problems with that currency. One is political. The other is economic.
On the political side, the CFA is anachonistic and is managed in an anachronistic way. It is as though the French Colonial Empire never ended. Like a colonial currency, the CFA is pegged to the French currency (first the French Franc, and now the Euro), and while everyone pretends the currency is managed by the BCEAO and BEAC, it is in reality managed by the French Treasury (and thus by extension the French government).
All BCEAO and BEAC countries are required to deposit their reserves with the French Treasury. The French Treasury then gets to "lend" their own money back to them, earning interest (i.e. adding to French revenues). Over the years I have read many (angry) commentaries by citizens of BCEAO and BEAC countries complaining about the lack of transparency, some believing the French use these reserves to bolster France's own fiscal position, credit rating, and internal capital investment (i.e. investment in France).
But that is another long argument in itself ... and one that I am not interested in.
Suffice to say, the CFA is managed in a rather "colonial" way, and that bothers me.
On the economic side of things, there is much debate about what constitutes an "Optimal Currency Area". Outside of the rarified world of academic and theoretical Economics, there exists in the "real world" political camps ranging from nationalistic ideologuess who never want to give up their own national currency, and free market ideologues who seem to believe everything, everywhere will be better if all currencies are replaced with a single currency.
Life is never as simple as a textbook or as a political ideology.
Massive fiscal transfers sustain most of the world's large currency areas, even in the United States where there are no barriers per se to the movement of labour or capital.
The newest large currency area, the Euro is currently struggling with the dawning reality that their currency cannot exist without such transfers from richer regions of the currency area (e.g. Germany) to poorer regions (e.g. Greece). The Europeans might want to consider the United States, where states that receive net fiscal transfers from other states tend to be the states that vote against exactly the kind of government tax-and-spend policies that allow their states to receive the unearned largesse. Having been quite happy to be receive years of de facto subsidies from California, Congressional legislators from the recipient states are just as happy to vote against using federal money to bail out California in its time of economic distress because it would mean their states would stop being transfer recipients and become instead the source of fiscal transfers to a putatively recipient California.
The newest large economy, China, is struggling to handle (actually to prevent) the massive internal movements of labour driven by regionally unbalanced growth. While there are legally no barriers to movement in the United States, in practice most citizens of the United States would probably rather have New York indirectly subsidize Mississippi, rather than having the whole population of Mississippi come crowding into New York City (or to have had the population of Alaska before the discovery of crude oil abandon the place for California).
Long story short, I do not think Africa would benefit from having a single continental currency (the so-called "Afro"; yes, that is what they call it, these people who just copy the facade, but not the substance, of everything Europe does).
On the other hand, I do not think Africa's present-day currency areas are optimal or even basically reflective of the continent's underlying economics.
Why does Cote d'Ivoire share the same currency as the Central African Republic and Cameroun (or even Senegal) ... but not with Ghana?
It doesn't make sense.
In fact, I daresay Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso should constitute a single currency area. This would mean the rearrangement of currency areas beyond these three. While I am not interested in getting into that long discussion, suffice to say no one would argue with me if I said our northern neighbour Niger Republic should be in the Naira zone, or that Gambia and Senegal should be in the same zone (ironically Gambia is trying to join a shared zone with Nigeria that will not be the Naira zone, while Senegal remains in a currency it incongruously shares with Gabon).
It is no simple thing to change currency and adjusting currency area, however, the fact that Ghana already has a currency (the Ghana Cedi) would make such a transition less jarring for Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso than it would be if the Ivoiriens and/or Burkinabes were trying to create new national currencies from scratch.
Of course none of this will happen.
The Ivoirien Franc won't happen either. Mind you, if it did, I will probably write a blog post to criticize it. Rather than two currencies (Cedi and CFA) or three (Cedi, CFA and Ivoirien Franc), the Ivoiriens should be moving to a single currency area with their neighbours Ghana and Burkina Faso.
Gbagbo's action is prompted by moves by the Banque Centrale des États de l'Afrique de l'Ouest to deny his government access to Cote d'Ivoire's revenues/reserves/treasury. The BCEAO is an 8-nation, shared Central Bank that administers the western CFA franc zone (the Banque des Etats de l'Afrique Centrale or BEAC administers the Central African CFA zone).
I personally think Cote d'Ivoire would be better off rid of Gbagbo, Ouattara AND Bedie, as well as every other Houphouet-Era politician and the support structures (including younger politicians) that keep these dinosaurs from extinction.
Also, I do not think the Ivoiriens will carry through with the threat to start a new currency. Cote d'Ivoire is the richest member of the BCEAO zone (actually, they are probably the wealthiest member of the two CFA zones combined), and I suspect the threat of withdrawal is being used as a negotiating tactic to force the BCEAO to contemplate life without Cote d'Ivoire thus pressuring them into neutrality in the Ivoirien political crisis.
Having said that, a part of me wishes Cote d'Ivoire would break free of the CFA.
I have two problems with that currency. One is political. The other is economic.
On the political side, the CFA is anachonistic and is managed in an anachronistic way. It is as though the French Colonial Empire never ended. Like a colonial currency, the CFA is pegged to the French currency (first the French Franc, and now the Euro), and while everyone pretends the currency is managed by the BCEAO and BEAC, it is in reality managed by the French Treasury (and thus by extension the French government).
All BCEAO and BEAC countries are required to deposit their reserves with the French Treasury. The French Treasury then gets to "lend" their own money back to them, earning interest (i.e. adding to French revenues). Over the years I have read many (angry) commentaries by citizens of BCEAO and BEAC countries complaining about the lack of transparency, some believing the French use these reserves to bolster France's own fiscal position, credit rating, and internal capital investment (i.e. investment in France).
But that is another long argument in itself ... and one that I am not interested in.
Suffice to say, the CFA is managed in a rather "colonial" way, and that bothers me.
On the economic side of things, there is much debate about what constitutes an "Optimal Currency Area". Outside of the rarified world of academic and theoretical Economics, there exists in the "real world" political camps ranging from nationalistic ideologuess who never want to give up their own national currency, and free market ideologues who seem to believe everything, everywhere will be better if all currencies are replaced with a single currency.
Life is never as simple as a textbook or as a political ideology.
Massive fiscal transfers sustain most of the world's large currency areas, even in the United States where there are no barriers per se to the movement of labour or capital.
The newest large currency area, the Euro is currently struggling with the dawning reality that their currency cannot exist without such transfers from richer regions of the currency area (e.g. Germany) to poorer regions (e.g. Greece). The Europeans might want to consider the United States, where states that receive net fiscal transfers from other states tend to be the states that vote against exactly the kind of government tax-and-spend policies that allow their states to receive the unearned largesse. Having been quite happy to be receive years of de facto subsidies from California, Congressional legislators from the recipient states are just as happy to vote against using federal money to bail out California in its time of economic distress because it would mean their states would stop being transfer recipients and become instead the source of fiscal transfers to a putatively recipient California.
The newest large economy, China, is struggling to handle (actually to prevent) the massive internal movements of labour driven by regionally unbalanced growth. While there are legally no barriers to movement in the United States, in practice most citizens of the United States would probably rather have New York indirectly subsidize Mississippi, rather than having the whole population of Mississippi come crowding into New York City (or to have had the population of Alaska before the discovery of crude oil abandon the place for California).
Long story short, I do not think Africa would benefit from having a single continental currency (the so-called "Afro"; yes, that is what they call it, these people who just copy the facade, but not the substance, of everything Europe does).
On the other hand, I do not think Africa's present-day currency areas are optimal or even basically reflective of the continent's underlying economics.
Why does Cote d'Ivoire share the same currency as the Central African Republic and Cameroun (or even Senegal) ... but not with Ghana?
It doesn't make sense.
In fact, I daresay Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso should constitute a single currency area. This would mean the rearrangement of currency areas beyond these three. While I am not interested in getting into that long discussion, suffice to say no one would argue with me if I said our northern neighbour Niger Republic should be in the Naira zone, or that Gambia and Senegal should be in the same zone (ironically Gambia is trying to join a shared zone with Nigeria that will not be the Naira zone, while Senegal remains in a currency it incongruously shares with Gabon).
It is no simple thing to change currency and adjusting currency area, however, the fact that Ghana already has a currency (the Ghana Cedi) would make such a transition less jarring for Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso than it would be if the Ivoiriens and/or Burkinabes were trying to create new national currencies from scratch.
Of course none of this will happen.
The Ivoirien Franc won't happen either. Mind you, if it did, I will probably write a blog post to criticize it. Rather than two currencies (Cedi and CFA) or three (Cedi, CFA and Ivoirien Franc), the Ivoiriens should be moving to a single currency area with their neighbours Ghana and Burkina Faso.
Comparative Budgets Part 2
Like any good Nigerian film, I have to supply a "Part Two" don't I?
But seriously, this is an addendum to my earlier post on the 2011 Budgets of our federal and state governments.
KANO STATE
Population: 9.4 million
2011 State Budget: $730 million (=N=109.5 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $77.66
This is shockingly low, both as an absolute number and as a per capita statistic. Business Day is the most reliable source of Nigerian business/economic/financial news, but could they have made a typographical error?
I am sure someone will raise the old argument about census and population, but that does not affect the conclusion here. I am on record as saying I think Nigeria's population is not as high as 150 million, and also on record as saying I believe EVERY state's population has been inflated .... but any and all estimates of Kano State's "real" population (be they good-faith or with malign intent) would still leave you facing the reality of a $730 million state budget, and consequently a per capita spending statistic that will still be shockingly low.
For the record, the per capita statistic for the other states I've mentioned in my 2011 "Comparative Budgets" posts are (in ascending order):
Katsina: $115
Anambra: $106
Enugu: $138
Oyo: $171
Nigeria (federal budget): $253
Lagos: $330
Rivers: $373
Bayelsa: $635
(See raw numbers in "Part 1" of "Comparative Budgets").
These are not particularly high numbers (there is only a $29 difference between Anambra and Kano, for instance), though you would expect Lagos and Rivers States (acting in consort with the supplementary federal spending statistic) to at least have more impressive results from public spending than and Uganda, especially since they have smaller geographic spaces to deal with.
Mind you, being better than Uganda is a different proposition from being sufficient. As I have said before on this blog, the problem with the "Giant of Africa" ideology is that it permits us to be satisfied with being the biggest of the small, the strongest of the weak, the quickest of the slow. We should aspire to be even with the global juggernauts, and on that basis we are very far away from where we want to be. I mean, it is great and all that the Falcons always win the African Women's Cup and the Eagles always finish in the top three at the Nations Cup, but these achievements start to pale somewhat when you realize we are cannon-fodder at the World Cup and Women's World Cup.
But seriously, this is an addendum to my earlier post on the 2011 Budgets of our federal and state governments.
KANO STATE
Population: 9.4 million
2011 State Budget: $730 million (=N=109.5 billion)
Budget Expense Per Capita: $77.66
This is shockingly low, both as an absolute number and as a per capita statistic. Business Day is the most reliable source of Nigerian business/economic/financial news, but could they have made a typographical error?
I am sure someone will raise the old argument about census and population, but that does not affect the conclusion here. I am on record as saying I think Nigeria's population is not as high as 150 million, and also on record as saying I believe EVERY state's population has been inflated .... but any and all estimates of Kano State's "real" population (be they good-faith or with malign intent) would still leave you facing the reality of a $730 million state budget, and consequently a per capita spending statistic that will still be shockingly low.
For the record, the per capita statistic for the other states I've mentioned in my 2011 "Comparative Budgets" posts are (in ascending order):
Katsina: $115
Anambra: $106
Enugu: $138
Oyo: $171
Nigeria (federal budget): $253
Lagos: $330
Rivers: $373
Bayelsa: $635
(See raw numbers in "Part 1" of "Comparative Budgets").
These are not particularly high numbers (there is only a $29 difference between Anambra and Kano, for instance), though you would expect Lagos and Rivers States (acting in consort with the supplementary federal spending statistic) to at least have more impressive results from public spending than and Uganda, especially since they have smaller geographic spaces to deal with.
Mind you, being better than Uganda is a different proposition from being sufficient. As I have said before on this blog, the problem with the "Giant of Africa" ideology is that it permits us to be satisfied with being the biggest of the small, the strongest of the weak, the quickest of the slow. We should aspire to be even with the global juggernauts, and on that basis we are very far away from where we want to be. I mean, it is great and all that the Falcons always win the African Women's Cup and the Eagles always finish in the top three at the Nations Cup, but these achievements start to pale somewhat when you realize we are cannon-fodder at the World Cup and Women's World Cup.
03 January, 2011
And now for something completely different ....
Growing up in Nigeria, I felt and knew the way we treated people suffereing from severe mental illness was wrong.
It was wrong the way we left them to fend for themselves, roaming the streets and fields, totally naked and utterly filthy, and more often than not covered in wounds and sores. On occasion, they would attack people, sometimes because those people mocked or otherwise provoked them, and sometimes because of an acute attack of whatever illness they were suffering (I don't know the technical terms; on television I've heard them say "manic episode", but that may not be what it was).
One such mentally ill woman who roamed the towns near my secondary school was raped (that is the word for it) by a youth or youths in the area. I don't know how many there were, or even when he or they did it. There was no police investigation, no social service agency to look into how it was that the women ended up pregnant. By the time her pregnancy was visible (she was naked, so there was no hiding it), any evidence of the incident was likely long gone. The woman herself was in no mental condition to give evidence or help investigators, not that anyone was interested in investigating.
Let me digress for a second ....
There is a certain kind of young man who exploits vulnerable women; teenaged female domestic servants (a.k.a. "househelps") were particularly vulnerable to the depredations of the teenage sons (and fathers if we are to be honest) in the family homes where they worked. It is particularly bad for these househelps because the mothers/wives are liable to react in outrage towards the girl (and not their sons or husbands) if they ever find out. These girls cannot even turn to their own parents, because their parents are usually the ones who sent them out to work 24/7 in vulnerable conditions in someone else's house in exchange for payments from the family in question. The last thing they want is their daughter upsetting their apple cart, or acquiring a reputation as a "disobedient" or "troublesome" girl, which would make it difficult to place her in another home. You know the sons (or fathers) are going to deny it if the girl appeals to the woman of the house, and the woman of the house naively (or perhaps desperately) believes her sons and husband over "that wicked girl" ... and you know she will tell all her friends about it too, and they will all commisserate, fellow sufferers of the machinations of these "wicked husband-snatchers".
But enough digressing ....
As I said, there was a mentally ill woman who wandered around the towns near my secondary school. She was raped, she became pregnant ....
.... and every day as we drove by, to or from school, I wondered what would happen to the child. Indeed, I wondered what would happen when the woman went into labour.
I never did find out. The woman "disappeared" at some point. Only God knows what happened to her. Maybe all went well. On the other hand, if she had died in childbirth, who would know or care?
You might ask, "Well what did you do to help?"
Well, as a small child in Nigeria, it is your job to shut up. Reminding older people that they are not doing what they are supposed to do is an action that brings consequences ... consequences which do not include said older persons doing the thing you thought they were supposed to do.
Years (well, decades) later, as an adult myself I have to say I understand the apathy. At that time, and even today, the super-majority of Nigerians did not have enough for their families, much less a stranger. How can you give someone food when you don't have any? Give them money when you are hiding from your landlord lest your family is evicted?
It did not help that institutions of state and government agencies were designed to PUNISH anyone who tried to help. Far from lessening your load as a private citizens, these entities would add to it. Indeed, if you came upon a person bleeding to death from a gunshot wound or multiple gunshot wounds, the safest thing for you to do was to leave them to their fate, because if you took them to the hospital it was highly likely the police would arrest you and accuse you of being an armed robber! They would keep you locked in jail, without charge or trial, for months or years, insisting all the time that you are a robber and demanding you tell them where the rest of your gang is.
It is not like you could have called an ambulance -- there were none.
Its not like you could have anonymously called the police at 999 and then disappeared before they arrived. In those days there were no phones, and even today after the GSM revolution, the police still respond to emergency calls 24 hours after the call was made (and promptly ask the caller to refund their gas money and give them "a little something" so they can eat that afternoon).
We Nigerians are not the only people guilty of mistreating the mentally ill.
When I first came to the "rich" United States, I did not expect to see mentally ill people roaming the streets as they did in Nigeria. The Americans have a $14 trillion dollar economy. Their population is only two or three times ours (depending on if you believ our population is 150 or 100 million), while their economy is 70 times bigger in nominal terms and 42 times bigger in Purchasing Power Parity measurments. If our teeming masses can live, somehow, with what we have, then surely the Americans had more than enough to avoid the spectre of mentally ill citizens roaming the streets?
Alas, I was wrong.
There they were, fully clothed, but just as mentally disturbed, and just as homeless.
What really got me during the time I lived in Washington DC was the public park just outside the World Bank building. This park was within spitting distance of the White House, the IMF, the World Bank, the US Supreme Court and the US Capitol. On these streets, powerful men and women drove to and from work, to and from meetings with each other and with other global grandees. These men and women move and shake the world, supervise massive budgets, and tell anyone unfortunate enough to have to listen that they are committed to fighting poverty and what-not.
You see, this public park outside the World Bank building was a place that the homeless and the mentally ill would gather every day and presumably sleep every night (I was never there at night, so I am just guessing).
These powerful men and women drove past these homeless, mentally ill people everyday ... and just looked the other way pretending not to see .... the same as we, the global poor, did in Nigeria.
It was wrong the way we left them to fend for themselves, roaming the streets and fields, totally naked and utterly filthy, and more often than not covered in wounds and sores. On occasion, they would attack people, sometimes because those people mocked or otherwise provoked them, and sometimes because of an acute attack of whatever illness they were suffering (I don't know the technical terms; on television I've heard them say "manic episode", but that may not be what it was).
One such mentally ill woman who roamed the towns near my secondary school was raped (that is the word for it) by a youth or youths in the area. I don't know how many there were, or even when he or they did it. There was no police investigation, no social service agency to look into how it was that the women ended up pregnant. By the time her pregnancy was visible (she was naked, so there was no hiding it), any evidence of the incident was likely long gone. The woman herself was in no mental condition to give evidence or help investigators, not that anyone was interested in investigating.
Let me digress for a second ....
There is a certain kind of young man who exploits vulnerable women; teenaged female domestic servants (a.k.a. "househelps") were particularly vulnerable to the depredations of the teenage sons (and fathers if we are to be honest) in the family homes where they worked. It is particularly bad for these househelps because the mothers/wives are liable to react in outrage towards the girl (and not their sons or husbands) if they ever find out. These girls cannot even turn to their own parents, because their parents are usually the ones who sent them out to work 24/7 in vulnerable conditions in someone else's house in exchange for payments from the family in question. The last thing they want is their daughter upsetting their apple cart, or acquiring a reputation as a "disobedient" or "troublesome" girl, which would make it difficult to place her in another home. You know the sons (or fathers) are going to deny it if the girl appeals to the woman of the house, and the woman of the house naively (or perhaps desperately) believes her sons and husband over "that wicked girl" ... and you know she will tell all her friends about it too, and they will all commisserate, fellow sufferers of the machinations of these "wicked husband-snatchers".
But enough digressing ....
As I said, there was a mentally ill woman who wandered around the towns near my secondary school. She was raped, she became pregnant ....
.... and every day as we drove by, to or from school, I wondered what would happen to the child. Indeed, I wondered what would happen when the woman went into labour.
I never did find out. The woman "disappeared" at some point. Only God knows what happened to her. Maybe all went well. On the other hand, if she had died in childbirth, who would know or care?
You might ask, "Well what did you do to help?"
Well, as a small child in Nigeria, it is your job to shut up. Reminding older people that they are not doing what they are supposed to do is an action that brings consequences ... consequences which do not include said older persons doing the thing you thought they were supposed to do.
Years (well, decades) later, as an adult myself I have to say I understand the apathy. At that time, and even today, the super-majority of Nigerians did not have enough for their families, much less a stranger. How can you give someone food when you don't have any? Give them money when you are hiding from your landlord lest your family is evicted?
It did not help that institutions of state and government agencies were designed to PUNISH anyone who tried to help. Far from lessening your load as a private citizens, these entities would add to it. Indeed, if you came upon a person bleeding to death from a gunshot wound or multiple gunshot wounds, the safest thing for you to do was to leave them to their fate, because if you took them to the hospital it was highly likely the police would arrest you and accuse you of being an armed robber! They would keep you locked in jail, without charge or trial, for months or years, insisting all the time that you are a robber and demanding you tell them where the rest of your gang is.
It is not like you could have called an ambulance -- there were none.
Its not like you could have anonymously called the police at 999 and then disappeared before they arrived. In those days there were no phones, and even today after the GSM revolution, the police still respond to emergency calls 24 hours after the call was made (and promptly ask the caller to refund their gas money and give them "a little something" so they can eat that afternoon).
We Nigerians are not the only people guilty of mistreating the mentally ill.
When I first came to the "rich" United States, I did not expect to see mentally ill people roaming the streets as they did in Nigeria. The Americans have a $14 trillion dollar economy. Their population is only two or three times ours (depending on if you believ our population is 150 or 100 million), while their economy is 70 times bigger in nominal terms and 42 times bigger in Purchasing Power Parity measurments. If our teeming masses can live, somehow, with what we have, then surely the Americans had more than enough to avoid the spectre of mentally ill citizens roaming the streets?
Alas, I was wrong.
There they were, fully clothed, but just as mentally disturbed, and just as homeless.
What really got me during the time I lived in Washington DC was the public park just outside the World Bank building. This park was within spitting distance of the White House, the IMF, the World Bank, the US Supreme Court and the US Capitol. On these streets, powerful men and women drove to and from work, to and from meetings with each other and with other global grandees. These men and women move and shake the world, supervise massive budgets, and tell anyone unfortunate enough to have to listen that they are committed to fighting poverty and what-not.
You see, this public park outside the World Bank building was a place that the homeless and the mentally ill would gather every day and presumably sleep every night (I was never there at night, so I am just guessing).
These powerful men and women drove past these homeless, mentally ill people everyday ... and just looked the other way pretending not to see .... the same as we, the global poor, did in Nigeria.
01 January, 2011
This is not about 2011 politics
I was on a Nigerian discussion board this morning. As is often the case with these sort of political discussions, people were inventing stories that are not supported by the facts. Fans of Goodluck Jonathan were accusing Ibrahim Babangida and Atiku Abubakar of being behind the bombings; and those who oppose Goodluck Jonathan were insisting the bombings were a sign he was a weak leader. Gradually, I got more and more annoyed, and then I read this from a man who seems to worship the ground Goodluck Jonathan walks on:
Okay, listen people.
There was violence in Nigeria before anyone knew Goodluck Jonathan even existed. Heck, there was violence in Nigeria before Jonathan was old enough to go to primary school. And at this rate (unfortunately), there will probably be violence in Nigeria long after Jonathan, Atiku, Babangida, Buhari, Ribadu and the rest have disappeared into political irrelevance. Violence is a seeming constant, as much a recurrent part of our existence as the Harmattan winds.
No country is totally free of violence. No country on Earth is free from crime, and crime can be (and often is) violent. No country on Earth is free from the scourge of cold-blooded murder.
The thing is, Nigeria has the "usual" sort of criminal violence that exists everywhere in the world and has always existed (for example armed robbery) but has been plagued by additional "political" violence. This political violence comes in many forms and goes by many names, be it "communal" or "religious" or "assassination" or "militancy" or "coup" or "extremism" or "land case" or "indigene versus settler" or "ethnic clash" or "militia violence" or "farmers and herdsmen" or whatever. It can be between people of differing ethnicity or religion, or it can be between people who are essentially the same (like this sequence of clashes between two tiny Ogoni communities that are separated from each other literally by nothing more than a narrow road).
We have lost more citizens' lives to political violence than we have to "regular" criminal violence. You might say it is unfair to include the lives lost to the Civil War, because it was an out-and-out war, but the fact is even if you subtract the lives lost to the Civil War from the total, we have still lost more lives to political violence than to criminal violence. Heck, subtract all of the lives lost in the violent decade-and-half from 1954 to 1970, and count only the ones lost since 1970 .... and we have still lost more citizens to political violence than to criminal violence.
Criminal violence is unavoidable because human society is what it is and what it has always been.
Political violence on the other hand is NOT unavoidable. There is nothing inevitable about it. And even if it had to happen, surely the frequency and magnitude of its occurrence in Nigeria is monumentally ABNORMAL. We must have one of the highest rates of political violence for a country that is not actively or openly at war. It is ridiculous .... and deadly .... and so counter-productive.
This phenomenon is not about underwhelming President Goodluck Jonathan. Nor is it about the rest of the plague of unimpressive herd who constitute our political class. Frankly, there is no difference between any of them. They are all policy-illiterates with nothing to offer.
Neither Jonathan nor any of the other candidates or would-be candidates has said anything or done anything to suggest they have a plan of action to create a Nigeria where we will finally be free of the scourge of rampant, unchecked political violence. All I am hearing out of the federal government (and the political class at large) is the same empty rhetoric they have been spewing for decades.
I think there must be some kind of textbook or thesaurus from which they get their empty, meaningless words, because it is not just the politicians but the police force and all the security agencies that spew out the same standardized tripe. And don't get me started on the media reports; all the usual cliches, from top to bottom. I wonder if they (politicians, security agencies, journalists) have a template saved on their computers, which they just copy-and-paste to the public once there has been another outbreak.
No one pays any attention to these empty vessels and their empty noise. We have all heard it before, and we do not believe them. We do not believe their assurances, we do not believe their promises. They will not do anything new, different or better, and we will not be any more secure (or insecure) than we are now.
It is just the same thing over and over again. In 2008 there was violence between Egba youths and Awori youths in Sango-Ota (not far from Lagos) over a chieftaincy issue. The politicians, the police and all the other security agencies made the usual empty noises. Two years later, in 2010, guess what? Another outbreak of violence in Sango-Ota, this time over a land case.
Half the time I think they like it this way. Their actions spawn and sustain political violence; for the most part they (the political class) are the beneficiaries of the violence (it certainly helps them mobilize ethnic, regional and religious blocs which they can then trade to each other in the backrooms chess that really decides Nigerian politics); and they would be the losers should Nigeria ever become a country where constitutionalism and rule of law prevailed. All things considered, maybe they are not too keen on changing the state of affairs.
The other half the time I suspect the real reason they are ineffectual is they don't have a mental, philosophical, ideological or practical clue as to what to do about the issue. They are as clueless as a newborn baby subjected to a calculus exam.
We should be able, Christians, Moslems and Traditionalists alike, to call upon our faith, our spirituality, our traditions and customs to guide us collectively to build a land that substantively reflects our beliefs. But we can't do that, can we? Somehow these most precious cultural and spiritual strengths have become tools for politicians keen on dividing us, on keeping us disunited and suspicious of each other. This too spawns violence.
Indeed, our political class has so successfully intertwined issues of identity with the violence that they (the political class) have put themselves in a position where renouncing and crushing the violence is akin to renouncing and crushing themselves. Nowhere was this more obvious than Goodluck Jonathan's confused response to bombings where MEND was the chief suspect. Other politicians have been similarly tongue-tied over the OPC, Bakassi Boys and over groups that wreak violence on those of differing religion. When clashes erupt between youths from Zangon and Kataf, or between youths from the Benue River valley peoples (Tiv, Jukun, Chamba), it soon becomes clear that the "national" political figures from the area, the men who you would expect to calm things down, are actually falling over themselves to support the youths from their communities covertly while overtly shielding the youths from blame in the court of public opinion.
It just annoys me that this is being portrayed as an issue about President Goodluck Jonathan. With all due respect, the man might be "President" but he isn't even an important figure within the confraternity of the political class ... and even if he was, this is not an issue in which we should take the side of one member of that class over another.
It makes no difference which member of the political class emerges victorious in 2011. All of them, the entire political class, are individually and collectively useless to anyone who is serious about building a Nigeria of constitutionalism, peace, order and the rule of law.
Clearly, this bombings have been designed to make Jonathan look weak. But it has failed.
Okay, listen people.
There was violence in Nigeria before anyone knew Goodluck Jonathan even existed. Heck, there was violence in Nigeria before Jonathan was old enough to go to primary school. And at this rate (unfortunately), there will probably be violence in Nigeria long after Jonathan, Atiku, Babangida, Buhari, Ribadu and the rest have disappeared into political irrelevance. Violence is a seeming constant, as much a recurrent part of our existence as the Harmattan winds.
No country is totally free of violence. No country on Earth is free from crime, and crime can be (and often is) violent. No country on Earth is free from the scourge of cold-blooded murder.
The thing is, Nigeria has the "usual" sort of criminal violence that exists everywhere in the world and has always existed (for example armed robbery) but has been plagued by additional "political" violence. This political violence comes in many forms and goes by many names, be it "communal" or "religious" or "assassination" or "militancy" or "coup" or "extremism" or "land case" or "indigene versus settler" or "ethnic clash" or "militia violence" or "farmers and herdsmen" or whatever. It can be between people of differing ethnicity or religion, or it can be between people who are essentially the same (like this sequence of clashes between two tiny Ogoni communities that are separated from each other literally by nothing more than a narrow road).
We have lost more citizens' lives to political violence than we have to "regular" criminal violence. You might say it is unfair to include the lives lost to the Civil War, because it was an out-and-out war, but the fact is even if you subtract the lives lost to the Civil War from the total, we have still lost more lives to political violence than to criminal violence. Heck, subtract all of the lives lost in the violent decade-and-half from 1954 to 1970, and count only the ones lost since 1970 .... and we have still lost more citizens to political violence than to criminal violence.
Criminal violence is unavoidable because human society is what it is and what it has always been.
Political violence on the other hand is NOT unavoidable. There is nothing inevitable about it. And even if it had to happen, surely the frequency and magnitude of its occurrence in Nigeria is monumentally ABNORMAL. We must have one of the highest rates of political violence for a country that is not actively or openly at war. It is ridiculous .... and deadly .... and so counter-productive.
This phenomenon is not about underwhelming President Goodluck Jonathan. Nor is it about the rest of the plague of unimpressive herd who constitute our political class. Frankly, there is no difference between any of them. They are all policy-illiterates with nothing to offer.
Neither Jonathan nor any of the other candidates or would-be candidates has said anything or done anything to suggest they have a plan of action to create a Nigeria where we will finally be free of the scourge of rampant, unchecked political violence. All I am hearing out of the federal government (and the political class at large) is the same empty rhetoric they have been spewing for decades.
I think there must be some kind of textbook or thesaurus from which they get their empty, meaningless words, because it is not just the politicians but the police force and all the security agencies that spew out the same standardized tripe. And don't get me started on the media reports; all the usual cliches, from top to bottom. I wonder if they (politicians, security agencies, journalists) have a template saved on their computers, which they just copy-and-paste to the public once there has been another outbreak.
No one pays any attention to these empty vessels and their empty noise. We have all heard it before, and we do not believe them. We do not believe their assurances, we do not believe their promises. They will not do anything new, different or better, and we will not be any more secure (or insecure) than we are now.
It is just the same thing over and over again. In 2008 there was violence between Egba youths and Awori youths in Sango-Ota (not far from Lagos) over a chieftaincy issue. The politicians, the police and all the other security agencies made the usual empty noises. Two years later, in 2010, guess what? Another outbreak of violence in Sango-Ota, this time over a land case.
Half the time I think they like it this way. Their actions spawn and sustain political violence; for the most part they (the political class) are the beneficiaries of the violence (it certainly helps them mobilize ethnic, regional and religious blocs which they can then trade to each other in the backrooms chess that really decides Nigerian politics); and they would be the losers should Nigeria ever become a country where constitutionalism and rule of law prevailed. All things considered, maybe they are not too keen on changing the state of affairs.
The other half the time I suspect the real reason they are ineffectual is they don't have a mental, philosophical, ideological or practical clue as to what to do about the issue. They are as clueless as a newborn baby subjected to a calculus exam.
We should be able, Christians, Moslems and Traditionalists alike, to call upon our faith, our spirituality, our traditions and customs to guide us collectively to build a land that substantively reflects our beliefs. But we can't do that, can we? Somehow these most precious cultural and spiritual strengths have become tools for politicians keen on dividing us, on keeping us disunited and suspicious of each other. This too spawns violence.
Indeed, our political class has so successfully intertwined issues of identity with the violence that they (the political class) have put themselves in a position where renouncing and crushing the violence is akin to renouncing and crushing themselves. Nowhere was this more obvious than Goodluck Jonathan's confused response to bombings where MEND was the chief suspect. Other politicians have been similarly tongue-tied over the OPC, Bakassi Boys and over groups that wreak violence on those of differing religion. When clashes erupt between youths from Zangon and Kataf, or between youths from the Benue River valley peoples (Tiv, Jukun, Chamba), it soon becomes clear that the "national" political figures from the area, the men who you would expect to calm things down, are actually falling over themselves to support the youths from their communities covertly while overtly shielding the youths from blame in the court of public opinion.
It just annoys me that this is being portrayed as an issue about President Goodluck Jonathan. With all due respect, the man might be "President" but he isn't even an important figure within the confraternity of the political class ... and even if he was, this is not an issue in which we should take the side of one member of that class over another.
It makes no difference which member of the political class emerges victorious in 2011. All of them, the entire political class, are individually and collectively useless to anyone who is serious about building a Nigeria of constitutionalism, peace, order and the rule of law.
A violent end to 2010
So, we've had the bomb blasts in Jos, the bomb blasts in Bayelsa, and continued attacks by extremists in Borno.
Beyond these incidents, the overall tenor of violence has definitely gone up a notch ahead of the 2011 Elections (which will probably be rigged).
What can I say?
What can I do?
I was going to launch into a long, exhaustive essay .... but the strength to do so fails me at the moment. It is just so depressing.
Maybe sometime in the New Year.
For now, I will simply repeat the mantra of this blog .... to create a New Federal Republic, we must substantively, aggressively and systemically reform, restructure and transform Nigeria.
It is not a choice or an option but a strategic life-and-death necessity!
We just can't continue to live like this.
God Bless Nigeria. May the souls of the those we lost this year Rest In Peace.
EDIT: Minutes after I initially posted this, I stumbled upon this report of a bomb blast at the Army barracks in Abuja. The explosion took place today, quite possibly while I was typing the post. I start to think maybe I should get involved in politics myself. Writing blog posts doesn't really change anything in the real world. It is so frustrating.
Beyond these incidents, the overall tenor of violence has definitely gone up a notch ahead of the 2011 Elections (which will probably be rigged).
What can I say?
What can I do?
I was going to launch into a long, exhaustive essay .... but the strength to do so fails me at the moment. It is just so depressing.
Maybe sometime in the New Year.
For now, I will simply repeat the mantra of this blog .... to create a New Federal Republic, we must substantively, aggressively and systemically reform, restructure and transform Nigeria.
It is not a choice or an option but a strategic life-and-death necessity!
We just can't continue to live like this.
God Bless Nigeria. May the souls of the those we lost this year Rest In Peace.
EDIT: Minutes after I initially posted this, I stumbled upon this report of a bomb blast at the Army barracks in Abuja. The explosion took place today, quite possibly while I was typing the post. I start to think maybe I should get involved in politics myself. Writing blog posts doesn't really change anything in the real world. It is so frustrating.
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