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 Daily
Independent Online.
* Monday,June 14, 2004.
Democracy has a wider meaning than going to the polls - Iroha
As a career diplomat,
Ambassador Joshua Iroha was at the height of his professional calling in
the 1980s and 1990s. During that period, he traversed almost the whole of
Europe serving as Nigeria’s ambassador to the European Community,
Luxembourg, Belgium and then Liberia. But today, the Imo State-born envoy
is retired from the glamour and allure of diplomatic life. Naturally, one
would have expected that he would pitch his tent with the comity of
politicians. But not for him, he would not touch politics with even a 10-foot
pole. Why? You ask him. He grimaces: “I don’t approve of the kind of
politics that is being played now. You only succeed in creating
unnecessary enemies, and politics is not all about creating enemies”, he
said.
Reminded that in the same
manner evil triumphs when good men sit on the fence, so also the country
would go to seed if capable hands and accomplished professionals shy away
from the political fray, Iroha says his case is different. Though he has
refused to play partisan politics, he nevertheless believes that he is
politically relevant. “We will keep preaching. As I have talked to you
now and you have listened, I am sure you would tell someone else,” he
says.
But in spite of his
preachment, Iroha has a rather troubling and pessimistic view of politics
in Nigeria. His pessimism stems mainly from his unflattering appraisal of
Nigeria’s five-year peregrination on the democratic boulevard. In doing
this, he makes a profound analysis of what democracy should and shouldn’t
be.
“Democracy has a wider
meaning than going to the polls and voting for somebody”, he started
rather gingerly, picking his words as carefully as he could. “I support
the practice of people deciding their own future by selecting through an
electoral process those who would govern them. I support it
wholeheartedly and that should be done on the basis of the people’s
appreciation of what the various contenders for power have told them or
are offering to them. That decision, whatever it is, must be respected.
As you do that, then you start approximating to what democracy is all
about”, he says in the manner of a pedagogue delivering a landmark
lecture on democracy to his students.
On the other hand, he thinks
democracy cannot be an arrangement whereby some group of people get
themselves organized purely to gain access to public treasury. “That is
not democracy,” he fumes. Unfortunately, he believes that the second
scenario is the prevailing circumstance in the country’s fledgling
democracy. Then waxing rhetorical, he asked: “Can you tell me of any
legislator you know who has told you what his party’s position is on any
issue that affects you?” Without waiting for an answer to the first
question, he raises another poser: “At times when they tell us they would
do this and do that, do they tell you where the money will come from?”
Asked if such tendencies
worry him, his answer was
curt. “Absolutely”, he said with deep furrows lining his brow. “It
worries me very badly because I want to know where the money is coming
from, how it is going to be spent because at least, there are people who
will consider me and say, maybe, I should know what is happening. So,
when they ask me, I want to be in a position to explain to them.”
Is the country jinxed
democratically? He is asked. The retired diplomat’s answer was an
emphatic no. “I don’t think so. Certainly, we are not because we do have
capable people who could do these things,” he says. But he equally admits
that in spite of the glut of human capital, Nigeria, democratically
speaking, remains a bundle of contradiction. “The only problem we have,”
he said in a rather mournful tone, “is that those capable people are not
given the opportunity to come forward and assist and it is simply because
politics for now is practiced to simply produce those who want access to
public treasury and, therefore, invariably these are people with the
highest nuisance value”.
So, how can the country be
pulled out of the seeming political quagmire given the fact that every
successive election has proved far more disastrous than the preceding
one? Ambassador Iroha again builds the castle of his political eldorado
on hope.
“Something tells me that the
next election might just be better for the simple reason that those who
have the power to nominate those who will run in the 2007 elections will
have no real interest beyond that of ensuring that somebody friendly will
succeed them. But that is as far as it goes unless of course we decide to
change the Constitution and do something else. So, I expect that that
will change things. I also expect that people will get bolder and in due
course appreciate that some of the little things they use in playing one
group against the other are really not important. We are not the only
multi-ethnic society in the world, so, we will overcome”.
But in order that his
optimism does not turn out as mere wishful thinking, Iroha insists that
to overcome the debilitating hiccups that have made the task of nation
building most arduous in Nigeria, the government should limit itself to
only three activities - education, security and rule of law. “If any
government does these three things, the rest will fall in line”, he
avers. How? He makes his explanation as succinct as possible in a slow
and deliberate manner. “If people are educated, nobody is going to tell
them that because you come from this place, this person is your enemy.
What problems do you have with people from another area? You don’t have
any personal problems. So, education will take that away. If we have a
proper police force that is people-friendly, that know their job and
everybody now knows that if you commit a crime, there is a high degree of
your being found out and if found guilty, you will be dealt with, then
all these things will stop. There are laws against asking for gratification
before you do your job. So, why is it that we are not applying them?”
Listening to Ambassador Iroha
speak even in retirement, one comes out not only with the impression that
he is well heeled diplomatically but also that he does not think highly
of Commonwealth. Yet, he does not subscribe to the view held by some that
the organization has outlined its usefulness. “That would be going to the
extreme, but I think that everybody must know what is possible. We must
know what we can do, what is within our powers”.
While admitting that
governments in Nigeria wittingly or unwittingly court public umbrage, he
nevertheless educates Nigerians on the difference between constructive
criticism and acts that would tantamount to outright undermining of one’s
country. “Nigerians tend to criticize or even malign vehemently their
governments without offering any solution to the problems,” he says
before quickly adding; “I will also admit that at times our governments
do get careless by not listening to criticisms. Others moderate their
language and the criticism of their government in public. I am not saying
don’t criticise your government. It is important to criticize, but those
very nasty criticisms that will create problems later, we should apply
restraint and talk to those in government and our governments should also
listen to people because those who criticise them are not necessarily
those who hate them”.
Ambassador Iroha’s angst with
the Commonwealth stems from the treatment meted out to Nigeria by the
association in 1995 following the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of
his Ogoni compatriots on November 17 of that year by the government of
General Sani Abacha. Nigeria was suspended from the organization. But the
diplomat faults the suspension. “The Commonwealth was applying double
standards. I can tell you authoritatively that at the time Nigeria was
suspended, there were no such laws within the Commonwealth to suspend
anybody, and it is sad that Nigerians encourage this kind of thinking.
“I can tell you frankly that
right now, what Nigerians are doing is sufficient to suspend them from
the same organization. At that time, Zimbabwe was the chairman and they
were leading the pro-suspension cohorts. But today, what is happening? If
they had stood up for the truth and say, look, we may not like what had
happened, but we don’t have such laws, I wouldn’t have had any problem
with that.
“Of course, every government
or people have the right to say, I don’t like what you are doing. Fine.
You can protest and I will support you 100 per cent, but you don’t invent
laws that never existed because you don’t like my face. That is wrong and
that was what happened.
“In any case, this phrase
that Nigerians like to use that oh, Nigeria became a pariah is also a
misnomer. Pariah from what?
Were we not at the UN and OAU? Where weren’t we? If you are
talking about Commonwealth, we were simply suspended from the activities
of the council, which in real terms, in terms of benefit meant nothing.
What do you gain by being a member of the Commonwealth? It is on your
passport but what happens when you go to the British High Commission, or
that of Australia or Kenya High Commission? They keep you waiting. Is
that the spirit of the Commonwealth? That wasn’t the spirit when it was started.
If it were, I don’t think that our fathers would agree to be members. It
was started for all of us to share and have common interest, learn from
one another and help one another. But what do we have today? None of
those things.”
Not even the fact of
Saro-Wiwa’s execution would sway Iroha into supporting the suspension. In
fact, to him, the fact of the execution was a non-issue since it was
judicially sanctioned.
“People have not really been
dispassionate in their analysis of what happened. The most critical thing
that happened during that time was the death of Ken Saro Wiwa. But peel
off all the propaganda, and look at it objectively. Abacha’s government
did not enact the law under which he was convicted. It existed before
that time. That law had been used on a number of occasions against other
people and nobody said anything. Ken Saro-Wiwa was not convicted because
of his civil rights activities, but that is the propaganda that everybody
likes to believe, that oh, here was a man who was campaigning for
environmental rights. There is no law in Nigeria that says you should get
convicted for campaigning for environmental rights, or any civil rights
campaign. No. Didn’t he oppose and ask his people not to vote during the
1993 elections? He never went to jail for it, nobody even invited him for
questioning. Ken Saro-Wiwa was convicted for the murder of some Ogoni
people.
“The law does not say that if
you are a writer, environmental or a civil rights campaigner, that you
should go about killing people. The law doesn’t permit that. So, let us
get the propaganda out of it and address the issues. Then, you would see
that in a sense, it is an attempt to give the dog a bad name”.
If there is any Nigerian
Foreign Affairs Minister that Iroha is enamoured with, that person is
Chief Tom Ikimi whom Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, former military Vice
President, introduced to him in the mid-1980s when he was Nigeria’s
ambassador to Belgium. Aikhomu is a well-known friend of Ikimi who
seriously influenced his emergence as the chairman of the defunct
National Republican Convention in the early 1990s. Iroha’s acquaintance
with Ikimi started over a decade before the latter became foreign
minister, and he knows that some Nigerians don’t quite think highly of
the Edo-born architect turned politician.
But Iroha vehemently
disagrees with those who hold Ikimi in contempt. “Tom Ikimi could be
described in whatever way you want to describe him. You can review his
life or his personality. Whichever form you want to do it, you will come
out with the picture of someone who believes in perfection. If you don’t,
you will have some problems with him. So, those who have problems with
him, I think are usually those who don’t appreciate doing things in a
proper form”.
The diplomat insists that
Ikimi is a victim of transferred aggression, arguing that those who
deride him are simply extending their hatred for the Abacha government in
which he was a prominent member to the person of Ikimi. This, he argues,
is patently unfair. “If you say, many people don’t agree with the manner
in which he presents his views or some of the manner in which he carries
out his assignments, then that is another matter entirely. And of course,
you must look at everything within the context it happened. So, those who
don’t agree with Ikimi are those who seem to have problem with the
government he served in, I think that it is what you might call extended
aggression.
“You don’t like the regime or
the circumstances in which the regime he served came into being and,
therefore, you think that anybody who served and served faithfully is
equally guilty, but I am not too sure about that. The jury is still out
over that.”
Reminded that not a few
Nigerians saw Ikimi’s era as foreign minister, which some uncharitably
have dubbed the era of “Area boy diplomacy” as an unmitigated disaster
for Nigeria, Iroha again rises in full defence of his friend of over two
decades. As a foreign minister, Iroha thinks Ikimi’s role was rather
ennobling. Hear him: “He (Ikimi) carried out the policies that were
entrusted on him very efficiently. I must tell you, those of us, who had
the privilege to work with him, are very happy that he managed the briefs
very well and what he did
was what the government he served demanded. He couldn’t have done
otherwise. If you serve a beleaguered government like the one he served
as foreign minister, you start to appreciate the problem that we are
talking about. We had a situation where the government didn’t find favour
with a lot of people because of its circumstances and Ikimi had to defend
Nigeria. Governments come and go, but you must defend your country. And
he defended the country creditably. You may not like his presentation
because he didn’t agree with yours, but there is a difference between
disagreeing with a policy and disagreeing with somebody.”
And suddenly, it was time to
go. But not until the last question was asked. Now that he is retired and
has come back home for good and since he has vowed not to join the
political fray, what next? He pulls a wry face, as he dramatically throws
his hands in the air. “I am just on my own trying to find my feet. It is
not easy, but we will try and keep hope alive,” he concluded, suddenly
smiling with smug satisfaction.
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