'Yoruba Nation' and the Future of Democracy in Nigeria
By
Abdullahi Bego
[IRAN]
Unable to heal itself of the petulant affliction, which has worsen since the beginning of the current democratic dispensation, of ethnicising, and thus trivializing, Nigerian politics, the Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE) is out once again in its trademark hollering. In its response to issues surrounding the impeachment threat against President Obasanjo by the House of Representatives, the YCE viewed matters having to do with democracy in Nigeria as issues exclusively affecting the ‘Yoruba Nation’.
Warning, as it were, that the ‘Yoruba Nation’, however loose that is, “would violently resist any attempt to harm Obasanjo”, the YCE specifically chose to respond to comments made by the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), among other groups, which offered opinions regarding the impeachment saga. “By supporting the House of Representatives”, the Yoruba Council of Elders said in a statement, “members of the ACF had given out themselves as a group that wants to pull apart the unity of the nation”.
Describing the ACF comments as inflammatory, the YCE claimed, “It is the maladministration (misadministration) of your leaders (from the north) that created the problems which the Obasanjo administration is trying to solve”. Given that this is a usual refrain by the Yoruba Elders in their elaborate scheme to create scapegoats, this intervention will not seek to justify or otherwise sanctify members of the Arewa Consultative Forum as a group of impartial arbiters in the topsy-turvy terrain of Nigerian politics. The ACF is competent enough to defend itself.
For
the records though, the Arewa Consultative Forum was only insistent on democracy
taking its full course vis-à-vis the impeachment debacle. The recent Senate’s
decision to expand the briefing of its ad-hoc committee investigating alleged
breaches of the constitution by President Obasanjo to liaise with the House and
other Nigerians over the issue may not necessarily be a vindication of the ACF
but it does show that the people of Nigeria, as represented in the National
Assembly, want some sense made out of the disorder to which our national life
has been thrown.
More importantly however, the Yoruba Council of Elders’ statement has thrown up more challenges for and asked new questions about Nigeria’s democracy as the 2003 elections draw near. These questions need to be given some thought by all Nigerians genuinely concerned about the growth and survival of democracy in Nigeria. It is to these that I now turn my attention.
For minds detached from the sentimentalisms characteristics of ethnic, tribal or religious bigotry, making a sense of the confusion to which politics in Nigeria was thrown especially since the inauguration of the present administration over three years ago is surely an uphill task. At the Yoruba end of the political spectrum, Yoruba elites, in an exercise of self-delusion, have been making efforts, albeit unsuccessfully, to ‘privatize’ the return to democratic politics. The annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections in which a ‘Yoruba son’ was clearly the winner was an injustice, they rationalized, to the ‘Yoruba Nation’ and Nigerians were therefore ‘obligated’ to concede the presidency to the South West to ‘atone’ for this injustice.
The
subtle use of the so-called Lagos-Ibadan Axis mass media, the OPC and sundry
subterranean strategies and the desire of Nigerians for a return to a peaceful
and stable polity gave currency to the undemocratic concept of ‘power shift’
that eventually produced Obasanjo as President. But having thus conceded power
more in the quest for peaceful coexistence, Nigerians outside the South West had
to understand the ‘Yoruba-ness’ of the elected President. At least this is
the tragic reductionism to which President Obasanjo was subjected both by the
vocal Yoruba elites and their ‘democratic participant’ mass media.
The current attempt by the House of Representatives to invoke the impeachment clause against the President and the response of the YCE is an ample testimony to this assertion. Why should the ‘Yoruba Nation’ react ‘violently’, as it threatened to do, if the President was ‘harmed’? How does a democratic exercise collectively engaged by the elected representatives of the people in trying to address national problems amount to ‘harming’ the President? Also, considering the obvious fact of the Yoruba refusing to give their votes to Obasanjo during the 1999 elections because he was a ‘candidate of Arewa’, why do they feel more responsible to have to protect the Nigerian President from ‘harm’ now?
At the level of ideology, the YCE’s intervention in the attempt at impeaching Obasanjo gave away the vocal Yoruba elites as a bunch of impatient ideologues who would stop at nothing to gain an ascendancy of their viewpoints. But politics is all about negotiation, about normal political horse- trading, about the ability of an interest group to attract others through dialogue, friendship, diplomacy and goodwill. This is how democraries developed in Europe and America. It is not about chauvinistic emotional hollering, the ethnicisation of national issues or the alienation of an important segment of the voting public. Of this the vocal Yoruba elites are guilty.
It is true that such emotional gaffes will come to play in the making of many people’s opinions as they decide which candidates to vote in the 2003 elections. And this is an area where the President and his spin doctors would have to work hard if they are make any sense of what will happen at the polling booths. So far the President, aware of and beholden to the overwhelming support given him by Nigerians outside the South West during the 1999 elections, has not done much to belie the ethnification of the position he currently holds. Indeed many Nigerians hold the opinion that the President has been doing too much to appease a people who have stood boldly to block his path to Aso Rock.
And this is an area the President and well- meaning politicians, especially in the South West, would have to give attention to as 2003 inches closer. Nigeria is not about obasanjo or any individual for that matter. If and when individuals go, the nation stays.
Given the overwhelming verdict about the failure of the present administration in many critical areas that have direct bearing on the people’s life, Nigerians are desperately looking forward to detribalized and truly nationalist politicians who will come to clear the mess. These politicians abound in all sections of the country. Many of them are currently holders of different positions in the rungs of the democratic marketplace. The problem is that they are not always given the chance.
In my view, 2003 is the time to give the ‘good guys’ the chance to make a difference. Nigerians should not allow the day to be snatched by those blinded by ethnocentric hypocrisy and greed; those who want to be heard even if they have nothing to say; those who have turned the hand of the clock, not by pacific intervention to put things right, but by fanning the embers of tribal and religious hatred.
The next democratic dispensation should produce people who will put a stop to the madness and make drugs available in our hospitals, water run in our tabs and power supply uninterrupted in our homes and places of business…
Abdullahi Bego writes from Tehran,I R Iran (email abego5@yahoo.com)