In the late 1990s, at the start of the Fourth Republic, certain politicians affiliated to what you might call the pro-Abiola faction of Nigerian politics withdrew from a nascent political organization because, they said, it was allowing politicians from the pro-Abacha faction to join. The pro-Abiola politicians went on to form the Alliance for Democracy (AD), while the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) became the banner of many, maybe most, but definitely not all of the pro-Abacha politicians.
Success and failure in Nigerian politics has little or nothing to do with proving that you are better at solving our problems than your rivals. It is about making mutually beneficial deals with godfathers, "stakeholders", "illustrious sons", basically people with the (perceived or actual) power to "deliver" discrete geographical blocs to the support column of the politicians and political parties. A person's ability to trade and subsequently "deliver" their village, town, local government area, senatorial zone, state or "geopolitical zone" is, of itself, subject to the same sort of deal-making. The credible threat of violence, and the actual use of violence, were part of the Fourth Republic's deal-making; arguably, the subsequent public security disasters of the Fourth Republic gestated in large part from this early use of "communal violence" and assassination as tools of politicking.
Anyway ...
It became clear the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), acting with ruthless venality, had corralled an juggernaut alliance of these backroom deal-makers, their political godsons and acolytes. Then came news that the AD, who had said they would never work with "Abacha Politicians" (i.e. the ANPP), had formed an anti-PDP electoral alliance with the ANPP (i.e. the Abacha Politicians). At the time, senior AD politicians said terrible things about Olusegun Obasanjo, the PDP presidential candidate....
.... which made it interesting when they flip-flopped four years later, and became incumbent President Obasanjo's most strident defenders and promoters ahead of the 2003 elections. They more or less said they would question the continued existence of Nigeria if Obasanjo didn't win.
I don't mean to pick on the AD/AC/ACN, though the faction, controlled since 2003 by former Lagos govenor Bola Tinubu, continues to switch political alliances every four years.
I could as easily have talked about incumbent Imo Governor Rochas Okorocha, who in the last 20 years has variously been a member of the PDP, the ANPP, the Action Alliance (AA), the Peoples Progressive Alliance (PPA), the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and the APC. Okorocha joined and left the PDP two or three times, and is now, as a member of the APC, theoretically an ally of Bola Tinubu. This lip-service alliance has served the disparate purposes of both men for now, but is almost definitely semi-temporary. Yes, "semi-temporary". There is no basis to the alliance beyond two political sole proprietors' short-term calculation that the alliance works in the short-term for their short-term interests. It could be they continue to think the alliance works for them, and it could be they change their minds tomorrow. So let us call their alliance semi-temporary.
Nigerian politicians, inclusive of those who call themselves "progressive", have formed and broken a succession of ad-hoc alliances through the life of the Fourth Republic. It has been consistently funny to hear the APC blame Nigeria's problems on 16 years of the PDP, when every prominent member of the APC was either a member of the PDP, or a part of one of the other parties that governed Nigeria's three tiers during those 16 years. If the 1999-2015 period was the 16-year failure the APC says it was, then the defector-filled APC is as much to blame for it as the remnant PDP.
How can people like Nasir El-Rufai and Rotimi Amaechi keep straight faces when blaming the PDP for 16 years of bad government? Has Bola Tinubu forgotten that the AD/AC/ACN played a decisive role in reelecting Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan? And how can President Buhari claim the defectors (reverse-defectors?) are corrupt people who are leaving APC because they are afraid of his nonexistent anti-corruption war? Does he think anyone believes the remaining members of APC are all angels of purity?
There are people who think German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the most powerful woman in the world. Oddly enough, President Buhari was standing right next to her when he dismissed his wife's opinions, because (in his words) she belonged in the kitchen, the parlour and "the other room". I do not know what he meant by "the other room", because I am innocent ...
.... but I am going to borrow his metaphor, and say Nigerian politics in the Fourth Republic is like a house. And the political parties are like rooms in a single house. The politicians are like housemates, who are free to choose their roommates, but who never actually leave the house they all share. The halls of this house are always full of housemates carrying their mattresses from one room to another, but solidarity to the house remains strong. They are in it together. They are housemates.
We should probably stop treating the Big Two, the PDP and
the APC, as though they were cohesive entities. Yes, every political
party on Earth is a tense alliance of competing interests, but the Nigerian mega-parties are not even minimally coherent. Hopping back and forth between the two parties is not really a "defection", but is more like an actor moving back and forth between the original television series and the spinoff series.
Amalgamation Day in Lagos, 1914
28 September, 2018
30 August, 2018
The things politicians say
I am not naive; I know politics all over the world is a game of information manipulation and outright deception. Still, I've always been intrigued by the degree to which politicians, political parties, and the mass media are able to convince millions of people to be emotional, unquestioning supporters of one or another politician or political faction.
The fundamental dishonesty of politics is not a problem for those countries whose citizens inherit the benefits and privileges their ancestors created for them via 500 years of unrelenting, globe-spanning violence that reshaped Planet Earth's political and economic functioning. Their countries consume an epically outsize share of the planet's resources regardless of who wins their elections.
But we in Africa, and in Nigeria specifically, need to have serious conversations about serious issues ... including issues that really should have been resolved back in the 1950s before the event officially referred to as "Independence". We are materially harmed by politics perennially free of anything that could be considered "substance", suffused with outright lies and factually insupportable assertions, with promises that are not intended to be delivered, and promises that are contextually undeliverable.
Speaking of undeliverable promises, why do our governments (all of them) like to set and pompously declare totally random "deadlines" for the accomplishment of things? It will be done by the end of the year, they insist, their faces determined and serious in the glare of the cameras. Meanwhile, a rational person can see the thing in question could only be accomplished over a 10-year period of consistent policy superintended by a succession of competent governments.
Sometimes the issue is something inherently unpredictable like the insurgency, yet our governments will set deadlines for "victory". According to Buhari, the deadline for victory was December of 2015 -- he was going to win the war within half a year of taking office.
Then there was that 3-year deadline (1999-2002) set for the unification of all non-CFA currencies in West Africa. This was back when Charles Soludo was Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. The 2002 deadline got stretched to 2005, then 2009. As of today, the new deadline is 2020, some 21 years after the initial 3-year deadline was set in 1999. And at an ECOWAS conference held this year, some participants vocalized their rational expectation that the 2020 deadline will also be missed.
Our leaders think these "deadlines" make them sound competent and serious, but in reality they just end up sounding like they don't understand the topics they are talking about. In fact, they sound like they fought so hard to become the government (by "election" or coup) without ever having given a single thought to any of the problems they would have to resolve once they became the government.
I am starting to digress, as I tend to do.
This post was intended to briefly talk about a member of the National Assembly I watched launching a "constituency project" on Channels TV . He told the people gathered for the event that they should vote for (here he mentioned his political party and its definite presidential candidate) because that was the only way they would continue to get "constituency projects".
Legislators all over the world use their control over the government treasury money to buy popularity in their home constituencies. Even in legislatures where political rivalries are heated, the legislators are always able to set their differences aside long enough to collectively renew their self-given right to use public money as a reelection tool. In some places it is called "pork barrel" spending, and it doesn't make that much fiscal difference in countries that benefit from the way the planet has been designed to function over the last 500 years' violence.
I am not fond of fiscal waste. And it is democratically unfair for aspirant candidates to have to face incumbent politicians who are allowed to use government money as the de facto reelection campaign funds. I find it particularly crass the way Nigerian politicians behave as though they are using their personal money to give their constituents a personal gift out of their personal kindness. The schedule for these "launchings" always includes a moment where selected people are lined up to deliver, one after another, sychophantic remarks extolling the saviour-like magnificence of the politician.
Unbeknownst to these citizens, they will pay a heavy fiscal price in the near- to medium-term future. There is little thought to the fiscal or operational sustainability of these projects, or to whether it is or isn't the best possible way to permanently solve whatever the core problem is. When the federal and state debts start to bite, there will be fiscal cuts to many areas, including maintenance of the projects and salaries/pensions (which will not be cut per se, but just won't be paid).
But I am digressing again.
This legislator on Channels TV lied to his constituents, telling them there would be no "constituency projects" if they didn't vote for his party and its presidential candidate.
The truth is, regardless of who they vote for, and whichever party wins, the winner will join with his (or her) legislative colleagues to reauthorize spending on "constituency projects". There is little or no discussion in Fourth Republic politics about fiscal responsibility, and I am beginning to think we will remember the Fourth Republic as the most fiscally reckless period of our history. Every candidate in Nigeria with a realistic chance of "winning" a legislative election, is by definition a candidate who will not act to block wasteful, but reelection-enhancing, spending by legislators.
The legislators will not stop themselves from spending in this way, and they won't stop the executives either, especially the 36 state governors. Our state legislatures function as little more than expensively assembled rubber stamps.
The fundamental dishonesty of politics is not a problem for those countries whose citizens inherit the benefits and privileges their ancestors created for them via 500 years of unrelenting, globe-spanning violence that reshaped Planet Earth's political and economic functioning. Their countries consume an epically outsize share of the planet's resources regardless of who wins their elections.
But we in Africa, and in Nigeria specifically, need to have serious conversations about serious issues ... including issues that really should have been resolved back in the 1950s before the event officially referred to as "Independence". We are materially harmed by politics perennially free of anything that could be considered "substance", suffused with outright lies and factually insupportable assertions, with promises that are not intended to be delivered, and promises that are contextually undeliverable.
Speaking of undeliverable promises, why do our governments (all of them) like to set and pompously declare totally random "deadlines" for the accomplishment of things? It will be done by the end of the year, they insist, their faces determined and serious in the glare of the cameras. Meanwhile, a rational person can see the thing in question could only be accomplished over a 10-year period of consistent policy superintended by a succession of competent governments.
Sometimes the issue is something inherently unpredictable like the insurgency, yet our governments will set deadlines for "victory". According to Buhari, the deadline for victory was December of 2015 -- he was going to win the war within half a year of taking office.
Then there was that 3-year deadline (1999-2002) set for the unification of all non-CFA currencies in West Africa. This was back when Charles Soludo was Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. The 2002 deadline got stretched to 2005, then 2009. As of today, the new deadline is 2020, some 21 years after the initial 3-year deadline was set in 1999. And at an ECOWAS conference held this year, some participants vocalized their rational expectation that the 2020 deadline will also be missed.
Our leaders think these "deadlines" make them sound competent and serious, but in reality they just end up sounding like they don't understand the topics they are talking about. In fact, they sound like they fought so hard to become the government (by "election" or coup) without ever having given a single thought to any of the problems they would have to resolve once they became the government.
I am starting to digress, as I tend to do.
This post was intended to briefly talk about a member of the National Assembly I watched launching a "constituency project" on Channels TV . He told the people gathered for the event that they should vote for (here he mentioned his political party and its definite presidential candidate) because that was the only way they would continue to get "constituency projects".
Legislators all over the world use their control over the government treasury money to buy popularity in their home constituencies. Even in legislatures where political rivalries are heated, the legislators are always able to set their differences aside long enough to collectively renew their self-given right to use public money as a reelection tool. In some places it is called "pork barrel" spending, and it doesn't make that much fiscal difference in countries that benefit from the way the planet has been designed to function over the last 500 years' violence.
I am not fond of fiscal waste. And it is democratically unfair for aspirant candidates to have to face incumbent politicians who are allowed to use government money as the de facto reelection campaign funds. I find it particularly crass the way Nigerian politicians behave as though they are using their personal money to give their constituents a personal gift out of their personal kindness. The schedule for these "launchings" always includes a moment where selected people are lined up to deliver, one after another, sychophantic remarks extolling the saviour-like magnificence of the politician.
Unbeknownst to these citizens, they will pay a heavy fiscal price in the near- to medium-term future. There is little thought to the fiscal or operational sustainability of these projects, or to whether it is or isn't the best possible way to permanently solve whatever the core problem is. When the federal and state debts start to bite, there will be fiscal cuts to many areas, including maintenance of the projects and salaries/pensions (which will not be cut per se, but just won't be paid).
But I am digressing again.
This legislator on Channels TV lied to his constituents, telling them there would be no "constituency projects" if they didn't vote for his party and its presidential candidate.
The truth is, regardless of who they vote for, and whichever party wins, the winner will join with his (or her) legislative colleagues to reauthorize spending on "constituency projects". There is little or no discussion in Fourth Republic politics about fiscal responsibility, and I am beginning to think we will remember the Fourth Republic as the most fiscally reckless period of our history. Every candidate in Nigeria with a realistic chance of "winning" a legislative election, is by definition a candidate who will not act to block wasteful, but reelection-enhancing, spending by legislators.
The legislators will not stop themselves from spending in this way, and they won't stop the executives either, especially the 36 state governors. Our state legislatures function as little more than expensively assembled rubber stamps.
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