Even as some continue to count the cost of last week’s strike action by the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, there is a concomitant downside which would do collateral damage in the political sphere. This report examines the possible political backlash of the events of last week for the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, President Olusegun Obasanjo, Vice President Atiku Abubakar, as well as the NLC itself. Especially as the race for 2007 intensifies, politicians with eyes on 2007 would need solomonic wisdom to know how to tread.
It is so simple, yet it is being made to look so difficult.
It has to do with the treachery; and insincerity is another major ingredient. Greed and the pursuit for power serves to spice up the entire scenario.
First, in fairness, it should be appreciated that there would always be a contradiction of sorts between attaining economic objectives of any administration and the needed political engineering for stability. And this is where style and approach come into play. It is the management of that contradiction which determines the success of any administration.
And when the argument of political stability and economic prosperity are brought into the picture, especially on the issue of which should come as a basis for the other, governments, specifically the ones with the right attitude, have been known to leverage on the understanding of its citizens.
But because there is a new found cliche about government not having any business in business, the Federal Government of Nigeria, FGN, has taken that cliche to heart and, therefore, continues from time to time, to chant the mantra of government having no business being in business, and in the process, throwing its citizens to those who claim Smithonian credentials than Adams Smith himself - the gods of Market Forces. However, it is all turning out to be a very grand fallacy of thought which is being transformed into a fallacy of belief because that is what the response of government is to the many socio-economic problems confronting it. In truth the world has really moved away from state controlled monopolies, most countries where well-thought out policies are in place still recognise the place of government in the sphere of creating safe-guards for the people.
Therefore, when last week the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, decided that it would go ahead with its strike action, even as the FGN mounted a last minute and belated court action with a view to stopping the strike at the eleventh hour, it was obvious that certain things would have to give.
For the vice president, a man who enjoyed so much public sympathy on account of the perceived raw deal which his boss continues to deal him, it was most unexpected when he declared that organised labour as represented by the NLC has become a threat the Nigeria’s democracy. And although labour was quick to admit that it was a threat, that threat, according to labour, is directed at dictators or a dictatorial government.
Between the Vice President and Janus
According to the Premium Suite 2004, the Encarta, by Microsoft, Janus (mythology), in Roman mythology, the god of doors and gateways, and also of beginnings. His principal temple in the Forum had doors facing east and west for the beginning and ending of the day, and between them stood his statue, with two faces, each one gazing in opposite directions. In every home the morning prayer was addressed to him, and in every domestic undertaking his assistance was sought. As the god of beginnings, he was publicly invoked on the first day of January, the month that was named after him because it began the new year. He was invoked too at the beginning of wars, during which the doors of his temple in the Forum always stood open; when Rome was at peace, the doors were closed. Janus has no counterpart in Greek mythology.
Now, for a vice president whose every move is monitored, his every utterances would be open to all manner of interpretation. But the way he lunched himself into the government/labour tango beat the imagination of even his worst cynics about his commitment to the Obasanjo Presidency. It was an obviously exasperated vice president, and representing President Obasanjo at an African privatisation summit, who declared that rather than strengthen democracy, the NLC leadership was in the process of truncating it. The Vice President, who first asked whether the NLC President, Comrade Oshiomole, was in the audience, launched his tirade thus:
“In the last few years, threats by the NLC have been more regular. If there is any institution that is threatening democracy, that institution is the NLC.. I work up this morning (yesterday) to read of another strike threat from the NLC. That’s not the way to go about it. Dialogue should be the way and not threats. But when the competition developed, prices started crashing; we are faced with a similar situation today. Those of you who come from the North will know that for about 15 years before the deregulation of the down-stream sector, we could not find petroleum products in petrol stations. But today, with the deregulation of the downstream sector, petroleum products are now available in filling stations”.
It was this declaration by the Vice President, to which Oshiomole had responded that labour remains a threat but to dictators, which set the stage for the true meaning and desirability of an opposition to the present administration.
Secondly, and this comes with a plethora of ramifications, the present administration had given Nigerians, many times over, a number of excuses for jerking up the prices of petroleum products.
But putting the vice president’s statement in political context would open it to some interpretation or misinterpretation. The first time petroleum products prices were increased just a month into this second term, to which the vice president claimed ignorance caused him enough problems to last a tenure or the cessation of another. The full consequences of this may not matter now but it would during an election campaign period. Therein lies the dilemma of the vice president: If he attempts to speak his mind, he is insinuated into disloyalty; when he aligns with an anti-people policy, his stature diminishes in the estimation of the masses.
For PDP, a loss of faith
When the campaigns were on, President Obasanjo hinted at the possibility of his administration increasing the pump-head prices of petroleum products. What, however, he did not hint at was the brazenness if not arrogance of his policy execution. It may not really matter much now that the federal government has allowed a liberalisation of the downstream sector of the petroleum sub-sector of the energy sector, a liberalisation which has only been occasioned by a consistent increase in the prices of petroleum products.
However, what would matter is the fact that the government of the day is (controlled?) by the PDP. And with the perception that the PDP, with its attendant internal wrangling, is not delivering enough democracy dividend, the compliance of most Nigerians with the directive issued by the other president, Adams Oshiomole of the NLC, it may just as well be a matter of time before what never really mattered begin to really matter.
For instance, after five years of an Obasanjo led PDP government, even those who were willing to avail him the opportunity of a benefit of doubt are now being forced to rethink the basis of their sympathy for his administration. Because there are many examples of how even very difficult reforms have been packaged for people - with an attendant willingness on the part of the people to sacrifice - the Obasanjo regime runs the risk of entering the history books as an administration which had all the opportunities to do good for Nigerians but was unable to deliver, largely because of the peculiarly untended approach of Mr. President.
How President Roosevelt carried Americans along
Again, an example of where governments have been used as a means of social and economic change can be found in the approach of Franklin Delano Roosevelt(1882-1945), 32nd President of the United States (1933-1945); said to have been elected for an unprecedented four terms, he was one of the 20th century’s most skillful political leaders. His New Deal programme, said to be a response to the Great Depression, employed government as a veritable tool for change.
As recorded in the Premium Suite 2004, “His first three months in office, known as the Hundred Days, were marked by innovative legislation originating in the executive branch. In a period of massive unemployment (25 per cent of the work force), a collapsed stock market, thousands of bank closings, and agricultural prices that had fallen below the cost of production, Congress, at Roosevelt’s request, passed a series of emergency measures calculated to provide liquidity for banking institutions and relief for the individual and to prevent business bankruptcy. For a president who does not see governance as “a popularity contest”, the tragedy of the Nigerian situation is brought to bear. If governance is not about being popular with the people who are being governed, then the people, at some point, would begin to re-assess the basis of their confidence in such an administration. As the hustle and bustle for 2007 intensifies, those with ambition as well as the political parties in the land would need to be a bit more circumspect in taken decisions or aligning with certain policy actions of government and party.
