It is a simple matter of either being brave or having a brainwave.
Some people may insist that President Obasanjo is a brave leader, judging by the doggedness with which he pursues his reform agenda, the New Economic, Empowerment and Development Strategies, NEEDS.
But the reality on ground, since he commenced his second term, and since putting the pursuit of his reform programme in overdrive, relates more to a brainwave.
Today, Nigeria marks her 44th year as an independent nation.
Between October 1, 2003 and today, all of 365 days, what has changed?
That much has changed is not a matter open to any form of disputation.
To which extent the change has come about is the issue.
So much has happened. From the absurd to the ridiculous.
When President Obasanjo delivered his speech on Wednesday, October 8, 2003, deriding labour for its proposed strike action, he did not know that he was perhaps, setting the tone for what would be a season of agitation.
Since the last independence day anniversary, Nigeria has been treated to a buffet of agitations.
In that speech delivered by Obasanjo on Wednesday October 8, 2003, he declared:
“This new alliance appears designed to attain power through undemocratic means. The leadership of the NLC has engaged in series of subversive activities, deliberately misrepresenting government policies to the public and its members, and using every opportunity to blackmail the government and others who hold contrary opinions or views. What the NLC leadership must realise is that it has no mandate from whatever source to mobilise, much less call for anti-government action, the Nigerians who are not dues-paying members of its affiliate unions. If the NLC decides to run its own transport company or engage in petroleum importation or refining, it is free to do so and sell to its members and whoever it pleases and at whatever price it deems fit. A strike that plans to rely on intimidation, blackmail, deceit, thuggery, violence and other coercive methods cannot be an expression of democratic practice. A strike that seeks to humiliate a nation in the presence of August visitors and compromise the dignity of our great country in the eyes of the international community is a direct attack on the new patriotic spirit that binds the Nigerian people. It will not be allowed.”
Since then, a labour bill, which sought to incapacitate labour has been passed by the Senate, just as a court judgement has declared that the NLC does not have the right to call workers out on strike.
But all these relate to a leadership which seems to suffer a hemorrhage of strategies in dealing with the multi-faceted problems of the country. Already, the NLC, which recently lost a battle in court in a bid to retain its autonomy as the rallying labour movement, acting in concert with some 29 industrial unions, has given the Federal Government of Nigeria a 14-day ultimatum to revert to the old price of petrol which sold at N43 per litre. A litre now sells for N53.
The ultimatum expires on Monday, October 11.
The latest in this streak of agitations is the confrontation of the Nigerian state by Alhaji Asari Dukubo, a past president of the Ijaw Youth Council, IYC, and leader, Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, who is seeking to force the Nigerian state to agree to his terms and conditions.
Whereas he had threatened to begin the bombing of oil installations by Friday, October 1, if the oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region do not stop production, there appears to be a thaw in the frosty relationship between him and the state as talks were said to have been on by Wednesday evening between Dukubo, who is now regarded as a rebel leader and the government of Nigeria.
In fact, as at mid-week, the political gyrations within Nigeria between Dukubo and the Nigerian state had impacted on the international price of crude oil, raising it to the psychological price of $50 per barrel. During the week, the National Council of State, a body made up of past heads of state and top elected public office holders in the polity has given President Obasanjo special powers to quell any form of insurgency. It was also a year which saw the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, led by Ralph Uwazurike, and seeking to ensure an equitable participation of Nd’Igbo in Nigeria, had called on Igbo in all parts of Nigeria to observe a stay at home order issued by MASSOB.
The stay at home order, effected on Thursday, August 26, witnessed Nd’Igbo locking shops and staying at home for the entire day, in observance of the order.
It was their own way of protesting the perceived and real injustices visited on Nd’Igbo, the redress of which forms the kernel of MASSOB’s agitation.
There is also the case of the Taliban in Borno State.
Between October 1 2003 and today, so much has changed in the life of the Nigerian nation so much so that this question has again become pertinent: Which Way Nigeria?
The last 365 days has been a momentous period in the life of Nigeria even as the nation marks her 44th independence anniversary today.
It was also a year which saw the declaration of emergency rule in Plateau State, a declaration which also saw to the sacking of the state governor, Joshua Dariye. President Obasanjo also sacked the state house of assembly. This was on May 18, this year. Today, as Nigeria celebrates her 44th independence anniversary, the president insists that there is light at the end of the tunnel; and Nigerians are getting more agitated, waiting to see the light. But in context, the problem confronting the Nigerian nation can not be divorced from the problem confronting the larger African continent.
It is a simple problem of leadership.
In his seminal work, Democracy and Development in Africa, the late celebrated academician, Professor Claude Ake, put the issue in proper context. According to him, the issue of development is often confused and misleading.
“However, the assumption so readily made that there has been a failure of development is misleading. The problem is not so much that development has failed as that it was never really been on the agenda in the first place. By all indications, political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development.”
And then, there is this conflict.
“This conflict has stalled the development project by leaving African leaders trapped in the dilemma of choosing between an endogenous agenda that they cannot find the means to implement and an exogenous agenda that they cannot bring themselves to accept, between what they want to do and what they must do.”
However, there is a third and disastrous leg; that which makes African leaders gravitate towards the option of best convenience. And that is why policies formulated in most African countries are policies of best convenience.
And as Ake puts it: “Strategies and policies are made and managed by a government in office and a political elite in power in a historical state and under a particular configuration of social forces. One cannot understand development policies and strategies, let alone the possibility of development without referring constantly to the nature of the state and the dynamics of the social forces in which it is embedded.
“Instead of being a public force, the state in Africa tends to be privatised that is, appropriated to the service of private interests by the dominant faction of the elite.”
It is the dominant faction of the elite that has, for instance, thrown up those whose business it is to import petroleum products for other Nigerians to consume, while the government of the day, having collected donations for prosecuting elections from those who import these products, among other concessions, wrings its hand in utter helplessness. It was also a period which saw the allegation of attempted assassination: as in the Orji Kalu/Anthony Anenih saga. The issue may have been resolved but there are those who still see in the present travails of Kalu the consequences of his absent mindedness when he chose to attack the ruling PDP government of Obasanjo.
While the executive at the federal level did as it wished, those in charge at the state did not particularly fare better - although there were flashes of brilliance in some instances.
Whereas some states chose to increase the number of the local government council areas in their states, the executive at the federal level pooh-poohed the move and even went ahead to sanction such states. Lagos State is yet to receive allocations for its council areas for months now because of the increase in the number of council areas.
In all of these, to say President Obasanjo does not know what he is doing is to be grossly unfair and uncharitable. But Obasanjo’s problem is as a result of his approach to the issue of governance.
It is still true that he remains the only leader who can foster ( and is fostering) the type of change which Nigeria really needs. His problem, however, is his approach.
The sadness of this is that Nigerians no longer suffer him as they did during the first term of four years. Today, it is the channel he uses in passing his message across that serves to befuddle his goodness. And for so long as he chooses not to change his approach, for so long would he be seen as a leader whose style of governance exhibits a total disregard for the feelings of those he is ruling. At the end of the day, the reforms he is putting in place only continues to impoverish the people, rather than replenish.
