Declaration of Nigerian Revolution

By

Yinka Leo Ogundiran

presidency_yk@yahoo.com

Introduction         The indecision of the profundity of my political verbalization and intellectual soundness of current Nigeria’s imbroglio was fast becoming incurable until few days ago when my eyes happened to light on an article titled “Obasanjo in the Mould of Abacha” by Professor Sam Aluko. It was a timely piece of fortune. For those who are quite familiar with Nigeria's contemporary events and history, whether in scholastic or political field, Aluko is a name that garners weight of credibility and authority. As far as political activism is concerned about Nigeria, there are two prominent Alukos. One is “Sam” by name whilst his counterpart is simply known as “Bolaji”. Sam and Bolaji have carved imperishable niches for themselves both as men of ideas and men of action. From their innumerable essays, monographs and contributions, the Alukos have spelt out with clarity and intellectual rigour, all of their major ideas from which spring their political and social actions. Funny enough, Sam and Bolaji are consanguineous: The former is the father of the latter. Hence, both of them are University Professors. Sam is an emeritus Professor of Economics whilst his son, Bolaji, ("always powerful Aluko" as I familiarly call him) is a Professor of Chemical Engineering. The older Aluko was an outstanding member of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) whilst the son, Bolaji, is the President of Nigeria Democratic Movement (NDM). Very recently, it was Bolaji that led Nigerians based in America to the White House who protested against the fraudulent elongation of Obasanjo's tenure in Office. He was also the brainiac behind the signature of the petition by Nigerians, which I was part of, that fettled the illogical Amendment of the Constitution. What is the reason of my indecision??? Unlike my biological father and Professor Samuel Adepoju Aluko, I am not a certified expert in the field of Economics. Conversely, Albert Einstein’s treatise, “Why Socialism”, which was published on May 1949, serves as the guiding impetus for writing this article whilst Prof Sam Aluko’s editorial is the pointing reference. About 60 years ago, Albert Einstein, the genius, said inter alia in “Why Socialism” as follows: “…we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society”. In Lord Robbins’ words, “Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses”. From the above definition by Lord Robbins, what really qualifies Economics as a social science is its inclusion of studies of human behavior. So, as a specie of human being, and just as Professor Albert Einstein rightly averred, it is crass folly for us to surrender our hands that it is only experts that have the right to express themselves on matters affecting all of us. In other words, all of us are eminently qualified to express our purview on matters affecting the contraption called "Nigeria".  However, in Nigeria’s political and Economic context, and due to unison of our political philosophies, Professor Sam Aluko’s timely treatise has verifiably provided me with the requisite scholastic and ideological base which will act as a springboard for the projection and vociferation of my thought of the malady affecting our nation-state.
      Without any dressed-up phraseology designed to appear debonair, I can, with an unassailable degree of surety, and just like everybody knows, avow that Nigeria is sick. Nigeria is today a sick-baby, requiring urgent surgical attention. The diagnosis reveals chronic Indiscipline and Complete Misdirection, and the only panacea is Proper Leadership armed with the dual weapons of knowledge and discipline. Unfortunately, at the present moment, Nigeria lacks the above-stated palliative panacea and its medication. The Obasanjo PDP-led government lacks the proclivity to sail this Country to a shore of sanity and safety. As a matter of fact, Nigeria’s sickness defies Medical and Sociological analysis and any policy prescription, not to even talk about potential solution. We shall now take each theme one-by-one under fine-grained dialectic analysis by espousing all our assertions with empiricisms. Here we go…

Democracy in Nigeria

 On 29^th May 1999, General Abdulsalam Abubakar transferred the mantle of leadership to a supposedly civilian President. Before then, Nigeria was perpetually governed under the clutches of Military rule. There after, the new form of Government after the Military was purported to be Democracy. On 29^th May 1999, many expectantly thought that Nigeria was on the threshold of a great and glorious future. I belonged to that category of people who believed that our Democracy under the command of Obasanjo would solve Nigeria’s chronic problems. We all misjudged.
     According to Lincoln, in a famous definition which is now generally regarded as the most scientific, “democracy is government of the people by the people for the people”. In the STATESMAN, Plato claims that Democracy is “in every respect weak and unable to do either any good or any great evil”. And Aristotle, writing in the same vein in his POLITICS describes Democracy as “the most tolerable of the three perverted forms of government in contrast to oligarchy and tyranny”. In the foregoing exegesis, according to Aristotle, it follows to say that Democracy is not the only form of Government. Down the ages, Democracy has had powerful rivals such as “Gerontocracy, Autocracy, Absolutism, Tyranny, Despotism, Fascism, Authoritarianism and Oligarchy”.
    For the purpose of brevity, clarity and scientific discourse, all forms of Government can be, just as Aristotle opined, grouped under three main heads namely: “Autocracy, Oligarchy and Democracy”. It is my intention to consider each of the three forms one by one.
        Autocracy is a form of Government in which political power is vested in one man. Oligarchy, on the other hand, is a form of Government in which political power is vested in a few people. Whilst Democracy is a form of government in which political power is vested in the entire people. From the foregoing definitions and what is currently obtained in today in Nigeria, it is without argument that the Government of Nigeria is Oligarchic in its form. In Autocracy and Oligarchy, there are no entrenched rules of the game regarding the modes of accession and succession to power. Most of the time, the Oligarchs accede to and remain in power at their own will without the pre-consent of the rest of the people – so do the Autocrats. This is happening in Nigeria of today. PDP crassly sees itself as the only party that has the dexterity to rule our Country. What an optical delusion of consciousness! The tommyrot enunciated by PDP and swallowed by some greenhorns that it is only a particular individual (an ex-PRISONER for that matter) that possesses the requisite ability to govern a nation of 150million people can never be regarded as Democracy by any reasonable observer. This crass advocacy is reminiscent to the villainous remark of the malicious French monarch, Louis XIV (1643 to 1715), who said “I am the State”.
 Once Oligarchs and Autocrats are in power, just as we have just seen above, they employ various devices and machinations to keep others out. The late Third-term agenda is an exemplar of this foregoing statement. Some of them make pretence to Democracy, by rigging electoral processes as a means of prolonging their tenure of office by a means called Voice stealing or larceny. Obasanjo’s government is culpable of these intrinsic vices concomitant in Autocratic and Oligarchic forms of Government. Yes, HE RIGGED ELECTION IN 2003! This is a personal testimony: On April 19^th 2003, I got to the polling booth to cast my vote and when the electoral officer looked for my name, it was indicated that “Adeyinka Ogundiran” had voted before my arrival! Yet, I am not a twin. Who could have voted for me??? Just like many other innumerable Nigerians, my Voice was stolen in that electoral process. In my View, and just as Professor Wole Soyinka also harangued, there are few deadlier social assaults to be encountered than an attempt to steal one’s voice and thus render one a political mute. This is the true interpretation of election rigging in Autocratic and Oligarchic forms of government, stealing the Voice of another person and rendering that victim something less than a social being. When we say, for instance that children should be seen, not heard, we are saying that children have not yet reached that stage of maturity at which their existence merits an opinion, a choice, a Voice. Now that is itself a debatable approach to upbringing, but let it pass for now. Its relevance to electioneering process is obvious: election rigging means simply that the political assailant is saying to the rest of the electorate: you should be seen, not heard! All these archetypal patterns contemporaneous in Autocratic and Oligarchic forms of Government are very rife in Nigeria today. Any doubting Thomas of this my account should take a leap into the recent electoral development in Anambra State. The same electoral mechanisms deployed by Chris Uba and Chris Ngige in rigging elections in Anambra were employed Nationwide by PDP.
    As we were saying, whatever the Autocrats or the Oligarchs do, human nature cannot attune itself to a state of affairs in which it is permanently excluded from the exercise of power. The result is that, wherever Autocracy and Oligarchy reign supreme, there is a built-in instability which erupts in unexpected violent change of power structure, which change is sometimes bloody, and occasionally bloodless. In a modernized day Democracy, checks and balances provide dynamism and level-playing-field in the dispensation and administration of the State. But in our familiar PDP form of government, which is vainly called “Democracy”, but in real sense, is Oligarchic in nature, the opposition has been technically eliminated. In any form of government, the corollary of this absence of opposition brings about degeneracy. This is very evident in Nigeria’s context.
    Democracy, in a normative sense, is about the supremacy of a nation's constitution and the rule of law; the independence of the judiciary and the equality of all persons under the law. In a Democratic rule, whimsicality and instinctive urges are sacrificially sublimed in respect to the attainment of popular will. This cannot be said to be in practice in Nigeria. A lambent example of this was the flouting of the Supreme Court verdict by PDP over the release of Lagos State funds. Justice Niki Tobi made an unassailable and unconditional pronunciation that the Federal Government should release the Funds BUT that Lagos State Government must not use those Funds in funding the newly created Local Government Councils. Regrettably, when the Pack of Dishonorable People called “PDP” interpreted this verdict, they averred that the verdict implied that there must be a reversal to status quo before the Funds of Lagos State could be released! It is interesting to note that one of the prominent leaders of this perfidiousness is a Constitutional lawyer known as Ojo Madueke and flanked by his petrified PDP cohorts. It was this same idiot called "Ojo Madueke" that was claxoning the advocacy of Abacha’s chauvinistic self-succession. Personally, I hardly get surprised by these theatrics and histrionics from members of PDP. This Yoruba maxim epitomizes it: “Ko si omo’re ninu ibon”. Meaning: “Nothing good dwells in the barrel of a gun”.      

Democracy and Economy

 In formulation of Democracy, the principal aim is a just distribution of power. And if this aim is to be achieved, economic as well as political power must belong equally to all. Justice is only secured by collective ownership; economic power, like political power must be made a matter of democratic government. In order words, in economic and political planning, the popular will always prevails. This is unequivocally enshrined in both the 1979 and 1999 Constitutions.
 Section 16, of the 1999 Constitution provides that:
 "The state shall harness the resources of the nation and promote national prosperity and an efficient and self- reliant economy; control the national economy in such a manner as to secure maximum welfare freedom and happiness of every citizen on the basis of social justice and equality of status and opportunity; manage and operate the major sectors of the economy; Protect the rights of every citizen to engage in any economic activities outside the major sectors of the economy direct its policy towards ensuring the promotion of a planned and balanced economic development ensure that the economic system is not operated in such a manner as to permit the concentration of wealth or the means of production and exchange in the hands of a few individuals, or of a group and, ensure that suitable and adequate shelter, suitable and adequate food, reasonable national minimum living wage, old age care and pensions, and unemployment benefits, sick benefits and welfare of the disabled are provided for all citizens”.
 My dear Professor Sam Aluko also dealt with this in his evocative masterpiece.
Says he:
     “…I have dealt at length with the past reform programmes in order to show their similarity with the on-going reform agenda of the Obasanjo administration and to show that nothing is new in it. On the other hand, the Obasanjo reform agenda, as enunciated in NEEDS, NEPAD, PEER MECHANISM; AGOA, NEITI, and other IMF/World Bank sloganisations and shibboleths can only lead the country and its economy into a cul-de-sac and to increased pauperisation, criminalisation, corruption, and, deterioration. It is also to show that rather than reform the economy, the ongoing reform agenda will further deform all the economic, administrative and social equilibrium that existed before 1999.
It is in the pursuit of further pauperising the citizens that the World Bank/ Document titled, 'NEEDS', (National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy), was foisted on the nation. NEEDS lacks time dimension. it is without investment quantum. It stresses an undue dependence on the private sector that itself depends heavily on the public sector. Neither the elite nor the masses of our people participated in the formulation and articulation of NEEDS. In this respect, NEEDS is inferior to the Vision 2010 Document. NEEDS is supposed to have its state counterparts in SEEDS (State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy), and LEEDS (Local Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy). Neither NEEDS and SEEDS nor LEEDS had been articulated nor put in place to any known extent. On the other hand, the basic tenets of NEEDS, SEEDS, or LEEDS violate the provisions of Section 16 of our 1999 Constitution”.
     Left for the fact that these retrograde and pernicious Economic policies of Obasanjo’s administration are a vertex of antithesis to the progressive aspirations of the Nigeria populace, and hence quixotic in pragmatism, they are also largely in abeyance to the Constitutional provision. Like I have said in many fora, and I want to re-emphasize, that the causes of our national maladies are essentially Economic. It is very cardinal, therefore, for it to be borne in our minds that if we failed to find the right solutions for our Economic problems, we would never succeed in solving our lot political and social problems. In other words, we would only be dwelling on the plain of smug vacuity.
    About 2,500 years ago, Plato, the mastermind, said in “The Republic” as follows:
 “A State…arises out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants…
   Then as we have many wants, and many persons are needed to supply them, one takes a helper for one purpose and another for another; and when the helpers and partners are gathered together in one habitation, the body is termed a State. And they exchange with one another, and one gives, and another receives, under the idea that the exchange will be for their good.”
    He then declared, rightly and unassailably in my view, that, ‘the true creator of a State is necessity which is the mother of our invention. The first and the greatest of necessities is food,…the second is dwelling, and the third clothing and that sort of thing’.
    It is clear, therefore, that the sole justification of a State is the Economic advantages which division of labour and exchange can confer on the inhabitants of the State. Groups of families, or of individuals if you like, do not just aggregate and unite in one community just for the love of one another. The compelling motivation is Economic whilst political arrangements are necessary, only in order to lay a firm and stable base for Economic growth and prosperity, and regulate Economic relations and intercourse between the inhabitants of the State. If we take away Economic motivation, the natural legitimacy or justification as well as the automatic and self-sustaining cohesion of the State will habitually disappear. Ideally, the overriding impulse of governance is a proliferation of levering gravitas that abets the attainment of Economic prosperity in a society. So, for a government to come into power and diametrically assume that it is the concentration of the very nucleus of the Economic power into the hands of the Private sector that will suddenly resuscitate the battered Economy is beyond me. In a lecture delivered under the auspices of NISER, and published in his book entitled Lectures on the Theory of Socialist Planning” some years ago, J.G Zielinski, discusses the general principles of efficient planning under any Economic system. He poses and answers an important question as follows:
J.G Zielinski:
  ‘Are there principles of efficient planning general enough to be valid in any country engaged in national economic planning, irrespective of vast differences in socio-political setting and in level of economic development attained? My answer to this question is “yes”.
 Dr Zielinski also enunciates some observations and conclusions. It is the first observation and the first conclusion that are germane here. Says he:
First Observation: ‘There is a certain critical size and composition of the public sector, below which effective planning is impossible. The “critical size” of the public sector necessary for effective planning is usually defined as a requirement of concentrating in the government’s hand called so-called “Commanding heights” of the Economy. In an article, Professor V.B. Singh of India formulates this requirement as follows: “The history of planned Economic development reveals that planning cannot be successful unless and until the “Commanding heights” (that is: basic industries, transport, communications, banking and finance) are in the Public hands’.
  Conclusion: ‘If a developing country wants to engage in effective economic planning, its public sector has to embrace certain strategic spheres of Economic activity. Otherwise there is a serious danger that its planning remains mainly on paper’.
The above quotation by Dr J.G Zielinski is eloquent and indubitable. Nigeria is already seeing the inimical effects of submission of what Professor V.B. Singh graphically termed the “Commanding heights” to the exclusive control of alien private sector. Therefore, with the abstinence of Public sector from this “Commanding height”, it is a pinnacle of idleness and absurdity for Nigeria to hope for satisfying success in our development plan let alone such success as will benefit all Nigerians without exception or discrimination. We shall quickly see the effects of these Privatization and Deregulation policies on Nigeria presently. Few days ago, I got this following statistics from my friend, Engineer Sokore Collins: