A month ago, I wrote this post about violence in the build-up to the election. It was a blog post. Blog posts are of necessity brief. To fully and exhaustively discuss violence in the 2011 Elections would require a volume of books; a thorough examination of the place of violence in Nigerian politics historically would require a library of books.
One of the things I pointed out (perhaps not as clearly as I would have wanted) is the connection and (oddly enough) disconnection between political VIPs and the armies of thugs that wreak violence in the name of politics.
The violence in Akwa Ibom was ostensibly "PDP" against "ACN", but (as noted in the post) it had little or nothing to do with Goodluck Jonathan (PDP President), Nuhu Ribadu (ACN Presidential candidate) or Bola Tinubu (ACN Supremo). It was a turf war between local warlords, ex-Governor Victor Attah and current Governor Godswill Akpabio. Attah may cloak himself in ACN colours but he does not take orders from Tinubu; and it is politically weak Jonathan who needed governors like Akpabio to "deliver" states like Akwa Ibom for him and not the other way around.
That blog post referenced incidents of violence
ostensibly involving all the major parties, PDP, ACN, ANPP, CPC and APGA. I say
"ostensibly" because each violent outcome was the product of local and individual specifics, local and individual quarrels, local and individual VIPs, local and individual Big Men, local and individual political, economic and social dynamics.
Atop this post was the picture of a bruised and battered woman. Her name is Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani. She is a Kaduna State politician who was viciously beaten up by thugs on the orders of Barrister Musa Soba, the Kaduna State Chairman of the ACN. I do not like Bola Tinubu. I do not like Nuhu Ribadu.
Actually, I do not like any Nigerian politicians. But the honest truth is neither Tinubu nor Ribadu had anything to do with Musa Soba's decision to beat, batter and bruise Hajiya Tijjani.
None of the national ACN leaders asked him to have her beaten. What he did to her was "normal" politics in Nigeria. Go to that blog post and click on the link to the Daily Trust article on the story -- there are examples of other such "muscular" political acts (and bear in mind, most political thuggery doesn't get reported by the media;
read this blog by journalist China Acheru about journalists being intimidated into silence in 2007).
But, while the respective VIPs of the different parties do not necessarily give the orders authorizing the violence of their underlings .... they do not publicly or privately condemn those underlings, nor do they lift a finger to try to stop them or their armies of thugs. What they do instead is criticize the violent underlings of all the other parties, while pretending not to notice the violent underlings of their own party.
In my prior blog post on this issue, I included links to pre-election articles quoting President Jonathan condemning violent CPC thugs, and candidate General Buhari (rtd) condemning violent PDP thugs.
Neither man mentioned or acknowledged the thugs from their own parties. I don't recall Shekarau saying anything about ANPP thugs; Tinubu was silent on ACN thugs; and Peter Obi barely acknowledged that a world existed beyond the borders of the electoral constituency he was trying to manipulate in favour of Dora Akunyili (in part by using thugs of his own).
These "grassroots" political machines go by different colloquial names in Nigerian discourse; a news media pundit or beer parlour discussant, for example, make talk about Chief/Alhaji XYZ's "
structures on the ground", when discussing his electoral chances. The local warlords, comparatively low-level bosses who run these "grassroots" machines, are more often than not the direct or indirect employers of the various armies of political thugs who are used for the purposes of intimidation, protection, "manipulation" (i.e. rigging) ... and violence.
Each national government on Earth encompasses so much more than its army, but near-every government on Earth feels it strategically necessary to have an army to defend its domain against encroachment by other national governments.
It works the same way with these "grassroots" machines or "structures on the ground". They are much more than just their violent thug branch, and do much more than rote violence. Nevertheless, each machine or "structure" feels it necessary to hire a gang of thugs lest they become the victims of violent encroachment (or takeover) by a rival machine's thug army.
By the way, the preceding paragraph does more (so much more) to explain 12 years of violence in the Niger-Delta than the unfortunately unexamined claims that the "militants" are fighting to stop the exploitation of the Delta's peoples. Each of the so-called "militant" groups started as the violent branch of a local politician's "structures on the ground"; they fought against each other and terrorized the civilian population in order to secure territory for their respective political sponsors. In between elections, when money from politicians dried up, these "militants" would turn to the financially more lucrative work of blowing up pipelines in order to siphon vast amounts of crude oil for sale in illicit international markets. When election season returns, they go back to working for the politicians who kept the Police and Army from disturbing their oil bunkering operations.
Yes, I know the army struck against specific, particular bunkerers, but it was one of those Ribadu-type things, where a single person who has fallen out of political favour is targeted while the numerous people who are still in favour are allowed to continue business-as-usual. Of course they protected their once-and-future allies. Be serious. This is a
"Human" political phenomenon that is not restricted to Nigeria.
In any country in the world, be it a democracy or a dictatorship, people in power are indebted to whoever put them in power and go through a great deal of effort to keep those "constituencies" happy so as to assure their continued support; if the army put you in office, you spend a disproportionate amount of the budget on the army; if unions put you in office, you pass laws that allow union bosses take something to their members when it is time for the next election for union leadership; if corporate money put you in power, you cut taxes for corporations.
The key to understanding why these "grassroots" political machines act with criminal impunity lies in this musing from my prior blog post:
Would the bosses of "grassroots" political machines wield such power without the patronage and protection of the Big Men? Or is it the Big Men who would not wield the power they control without the backing of the machine bosses? Either way, the two groups work hand in hand to dictate political outcomes.
In Nigeria, these "structures on the ground" are the decisive chess pieces wielded by the VIPs and Big Men. Unlike checkers (a.k.a. "draught"), chess is not decided by who has no pieces at the end; you can
checkmate an opponent, even if he has "structures" still in play. However, as with chess, you can look at the "structures" available to each candidate, study how those "structures" are arrayed on the board, and come to a conclusion as to who has the higher probability of
check and
mate.
Insofar as the ACN "structures" are controlled by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the electoral fortunes of ACN candidate Nuhu Ribadu were entirely in Tinubu's hands; had Tinubu sold his candidature to the CPC per the long-running negotiations, that would have been the end of Ribadu as a presidential candidate (and even now, pundits are speculating that Tinubu cut a last-minute deal with Goodluck Jonathan, by way of explaining why ACN-dominated states went en masse for the incumbent rather than the ACN candidate).
But I digress.
Political VIPs and Big Men rely on these local warlords to "deliver" communities, LGAs, senatorial zones, states and regions on election day.
They know what these warlords do. They know what will happen when the warlords go to work. The VIPs and Big Men know what the short-term, medium-term and long-term effects of this type of politics are. Unfortunately for the Federal Republic, the Big Men and VIPs perceive the likelihood of their directly benefiting in the short-term to be sufficient enough to warrant blithely consigning the country to seriously negative medium- and long-term effects.
This is the complicated back-story to the outbreak of violence in the North of the Federal Republic in the aftermath of the Presidential election.
Supporters of Goodluck Jonathan, blame second-place finisher General Mohammedu Buhari (rtd) for the violence. My opinion of Buhari is the same as my opinion of every Nigerian politician, Jonathan inclusive -- I am
NOT a fan or supporter. However, the accusers seem to imply that Buhari
ordered his supporters to kill their fellow citizens and spread anarchy across a handful of northern cities. This is most certainly a lie. Buhari gave no such order. If anything, Buhari has as much (or should I say as
little) control over the thuggish wing of his "structures" as Jonathan has over Akpabio's violent "structures" in Akwa Ibom, or Bola Tinubu over Attah's "structures" in the same state.
On the other hand, they are right to criticize Buhari for his hesitation to fully and properly criticize the violence. With that said, they are quite hypocritical in doing so, because
they too hesitate to criticize the violence of
their structures too.
Aside from his failure to enforce the criminal laws against violent pro-PDP "structures", I have not forgotten the unseemly quickness with which President Goodluck Jonathan exonerated MEND from culpability in the Abuja bomb blasts before there had been even a cursory examination of the evidence, much less a full and conclusive investigation. Unsurprisingly,
"militant" leaders in the Niger-Delta have pledged their unflinching support for him and (ominously) warned against any plot to undermine his government. Look at the list of those making the pledge: Chief Government Ekpemupolo (a.k.a. Gen. Tompolo), Chief Ateke Tom, Alhaji Asari Dokubo, Chief Bibopre Ajube (a.k.a. Shoot At Sight), General Ezekiel Akpasibewei, Farah Dagogo, Africa Ukparasia, Paul Ezizi (a.k.a.Comdr. Ogunbos), Pastor Reuben Wilson, Joshua Macaiver, Ferdinand Amaibi (a.k.a. Busta Rhymes, Tamunegiyeifori Proby (a.k.a. Egbele), Kenneth Opusinji (kula Community), Kile Selky Torughedi (a.k.a. Gen. Young Shall Grow) Bonny Gawei, Aboy Muturu, and Hendrick Opukeme.
This is a list of men who should be in prison for VIOLENT crimes committed against Nigerian citizens, Nigerian infrastructure, and against institutions of the Federal Republic like the Army and Police. Yet, here they are, as free as free can be, making veiled threats, while our jails are full of innocent citizens who "await trial" for years on charges for which there is no evidence (
like the 13-year-old boy arrested and accused of "attempted murder" by way of throwing a sachet of pure water at the car of the Imo State governor).
There is a point I am trying to make.
You see, I understand the way we have been taught to think. There is a 9 in 10 chance that any Nigerian who has read this blog post up to this point is about to accuse me of being an apologist for the extremists who wreaked violence in the North after the election or of being an opponent of Jonathan (or supporter of Buhari) who is trying to tar Jonathan with the same brush as Buhari.
That is how we have been taught to think.
And that is one of many roots of the problem ... but I will not digress from what I am trying to say.
You see, this is NOT about Jonathan as an individual, NOR is is it about Buhari as an individual. Attacking either one of them as an individual is POINTLESS.
This is about the POLITICAL SYSTEM AS A WHOLE.
The Federal Republic of Nigeria is now, and has seemingly always been, governed by a political process in which violence is a NECESSARY part of the system's functioning. If your body is alive, your lungs are going to breathe; if the Nigerian political system continues to exist as it does today (and always has), there will be violence.
All the finger-pointing at this individual or that individual, at this ethnic group or that ethnic group, at this region or that region, at this religion or that religion .... is entirely besides the point.
Somalia is violent despite being a country of uniform ethnicity and religion. Rwanda has been violent for decades despite being mostly Roman Catholic. Cote d'Ivoire has been a semi-disaster for 20 years despite once being known as a West African miracle. Point being,
if you do the things that make violence inevitable, then violence will be inevitable
Be honest with yourself. You know, and I know, that if the Independent National Electoral Commission had declared anybody other than Jonathan the winner of the election, the Niger-Delta "militants" listed above would immediately have started blowing up oil pipelines again. Violence is inherent in our system.
As if this isn't bad enough, the VIPs and Big Men are not as much in control of their respective "structures" as they like to pretend. They don't want to reform, restructure and transform the Police and security agencies. They don't want to reform, restructure and transform our political system. And they don't want to destroy their "structures" in case they may need them. And so, when local warlords go on the warpath, the response of a sequence of governments has been noticeably limp. They first wait to see if the violence will subside on its own, and if it doesn't they send in the Army to frighten the thugs into a ceasefire by means of blasting everything in sight. A few token thugs are taken into custody (though I have never heard of any of them being convicted) .... and life goes on exactly as it did before, with the GUARANTEE of a repeat of the violence in a few weeks or months depending on the circumstances.
In fact, one of the most annoying things about government in Nigeria is the fact that everyone in the country has a firm grasp of where/when/why communal violence will break out, yet there is never any sign of the government/police/SSS/etc doing anything to pre-emptively or pro-actively responding to forestall repetitive crises.
Keeping with my earlier metaphor, forestalling violence for them is like you or me trying to hold our breath. We might be able to do it for a while, but eventually we are forced to gulp down huge mouthfuls of air. The same is true for our political system; when the violence gets out of hand, they use the Army to put a stop to it, but ultimately they are all utterly reliant on a brand of politics that makes violence a predictable and inevitable result ... so they open the door, and allow it to happen because they see benefits for themselves in the short-term.
