Letter to Senate President
By Abiodun Komolafe
I remember October 1, 1999, when, on the occasion of the 39th anniversary celebration of Nigeria as an independent nation, President Olusegun Obasanjo said that Nigerians "have experienced, in the short span of 39 years, what many other countries have undergone in a hundred years and more, ... have continuously agonized over what should be the proper relations between the Federal Government and the constituent states of the federation", and that "there have indeed been times when many Nigerians have wondered aloud whether the very idea of Nigeria is a viable one." He there and then rekindled Nigerians' hopes with fantabulous promises of "My-Government-Will-Dos" and other wanna-bes usually associated with "Presidential Addresses." That was five years ago, when Nigerians looked forward to listening to them with candour and great hopes. But times and tides have changed and majority of Nigerians no longer have the effrontery to withstand the psychological trepidation or the physiological stupefaction that "Presidential Addresses" now bestows on "Fellow Countrymen." Not even now that the usual refrain on Nigeria Television Authority, NTA, is: "Obasanjo ... Obasanjo ... and ... Obasanjo."
Such was my plight on the eve of Nigeria's forty-fourth independence anniversary when, after a "call to prayer" by Ademola Oyeniyi, a senior colleague, that the president's address should be the one of peace, not of war, I still had to act the Doubting Thomas by hurrying to a nearby filling station to fuel my car, in readiness for - not in anticipation of, this time - whatever it might please His Presidentship to give as his anniversary gift to Nigerians. But, this time, the president chose a more rewarding option: instead of loathing us with the mundane reprimands of an Adolf Hitler, he eventually settled for the heavenly preachments of an Apostle Paul. A few days later, I watched on television how Senator Tawar Umbi Wada, Chairman, Senate Committee on Information and National Orientation, tried to smilingly explain away the rigours behind legislative duties as well as the oversight functions of the National Assembly and unilaterally came to the conclusion that our Senators actually deserved to be "clapped for" for doing part of what they are being paid to do. On a personal note, I doubt if Nigerians still need any soothsayers to tell them that, five years on, Nigeria remains at the crossroads, with the same old song and the same old, tired yet unretired drummers, beating the same old drums of poverty, inflation, high cost of living and violence.
While no one is denying our Senators the appreciation due to them, most especially, in the mortgaging of their possessions so that they could "help" the country in her lawmaking duties, my perception and experience about the Nigerian leadership style agrees with what Ovie Ughwanogho referred to as "selective deafness." Probably, because our leaders are on the other side of the rung where milk and honey obtain without stress, they tend to see what we do not see and hear what we do not hear. Forget about whatever any political office holder might have done to get to wherever he or she is at the moment. The sad truth is that, at forty-four, masquerades, sycophants, meanderers, grandstanders, bystanders and fun players have hijacked Nigeria's ethico-political and socio-economic landscapes. Of course, when a country is "blessed" with a government that does not take the plight of its citizens into consideration in the determination of what becomes as well as what ceases to become, the end result is better imagined! Little wonder then that our leaders have forgotten that reform is no reform if it is only built around individuals. Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, now talks tough; and Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, does not hold its breath. And the more the country boils, the happier our Sheiks become, probably in preparation for the earnest conversion of the spoils of an impending yet avertable war.
In his 'Second Treatise of Civil Government', John Locke wrote that "... whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any further Obedience..." He continued: "[Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society." How soon have we forgotten that a house divided against itself cannot stand? What can an Aminu Masari do if an Adolphus Wabara decides to dance, irresistibly, to the drumbeats of an Olusegun Obasanjo? Where lies the fate of conscience if a majority - the masses - could be crying to their graves only for a minority (the executive, legislative and the judicial arms of government, together with their other appendages, all which constitute less than ten percent of the country's population) to be dancing on the masses' graves. If I may ask again: are those bunkerers who have suddenly made a Minister of Petroleum Price Hike of President Obasanjo so inexplicably faceless that our security agents cannot unmask their identities? And, by extension, what steps are our elected representatives taking to caution Nigeria's policemen who have suddenly become arresters of pepper and tomato lorries as a way of shoring up their dubious "Family Support" base?
While commending President Obasanjo for admitting, this time, that there have been "tribulations here and there" and for "reassuring" us that his obnoxious policies are structured in a way to make us healthier and stronger at the end of the day, the question then is: if he so chooses to feel the way he now feels (and that is understandable, too), should our Senators puppeteeringly toe his lines of thoughts and actions? Should those who are supposed to be closer to us, and understand our predicament better, choose to act otherwise? How long will it take our distinguished lawmakers to realize that, for our being where we are, the government, of which the Senate President is an integral part, cannot be exonerated? Our underegulated romance with IMFnomics, the oil subsidy chitchat, our obsession for imported fuel, and the inability of the masses to predict the future of a country they call their own, are due to the failure of our leaders, expired and serving, including even the Eighty-Three-Day-Head-of-State Earnest Shonekan, to properly position the country for the future. South Africa has practically taken over the sourcing, funding as well as the monitoring of our economy. And, now, rather than graduate from the dictatorship of Babangida/Abacha to the democracy of Obasanjo, we are drifting from the democratization by President Obasanjo, to the monocracy of General Obasanjo.
For our self-inflicted woes, we castigate foreign powers. Whenever any of our sister countries is in socio-moral morass, we love being the Big Brother; but whenever socio-economic competence comes to play, we become amiss. We are the Paris Clubbers when it is time to canvass the rescheduling, conversion or forgiveness of our debts; but whenever it is time to struggle for a seat at the United Nations, however impermanent and unimportant, we go gaga, cap in hand and tongue in cheek, begging the unbeggable and wasting the unwastable even when we remain grossly unenlightened as to why our survival as a nation should be a factor of what we are able to become at the United Nations. Many thanks to the president for the introduction of the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, NEEDS, States Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, SEEDS, Local Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, LEEDS. I pray they would all succeed. If however they still (have to) go the way of their predecessors, why not try our hands on HEEDS, (Household Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy), which should come into being "out of widespread consultations with" fathers, mothers and children in households, both among Nigerians in Nigeria as well as among Nigerians in the Diaspora?
It was pathetic that while President Obasanjo and those who constituted the powers in Nigeria were wining and dinning over the failure of a nation, America's presidential hopefuls were being drilled in a Presidential Debate over what was expected to be as well as what was not expected to have been in that "God's own country." This reminds us of our own debates where the president is always the organizer, the debater, the debated, the moderator, and the audience. But for the grandiosity, gaiety and the I-Know-All mentality associated with Nigerianness, our president and those who cared would have once again learnt from America what humility, especially when it has a tincture of leadership efficiency, could achieve. The sadder aspect of it is that, in times like this, not even "Mr. Fix it" can any longer assist in fixing anything outside the purview of the big man.
Komolafe writes in from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State
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