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Lamido’s Unambiguous Adventure
There is no way the inaugural address by Jigawa State Governor, Sule Lamido, would not be the subject of comments, observations, newspaper editorials and similar interventions as is going on already. This is because the address touched on socially discomforting issues which the society, in apparent frustration with resolving them, has obviously come to accept as normal even though they are not. In that case, the reactions to the speech from various quarters so far cannot be understood in terms of approval, endorsement, condemnation or even antagonism but part of the debate about democracy in Nigeria.
There is no doubt that the governor has raised very fundamental issues in that inaugural address which must have emerged over time. The Sule Lamido that I know must have been writing the speech in his head, at the back of envelopes or just about any pieces of paper depending on where a certain point occurred to him. It must be the piecing together of these bits and pieces that emerged as a profound intervention in democratic discourse from Jigawa last Tuesday.
My own interested reading of the address is that the Governor was responding to the question of how to transform an agrarian state into a more modern one based on agro-industrial foundation. I do not see how anyone would quarrel with this, particularly that he accepts that to do this, private investors would be needed. And hence his clarion call to them to join him in Jigawa, promising to offer concrete concessions.
His point of departure from the so-called “Washington Consensus” and its local agents in Nigeria appears to be that social justice does not have to wait till industrial prosperity is achieved. Instead, he argues that there are social groups that must be taken care of in a redistributive sense immediately, identifying such groups to be the physically challenged, the girl child, the artisans and the peasants. Going through that address, one finds a deliberate, major concession to each of these groups in the context of social justice.
To the physically challenged, he offered a monthly survival allowance of N7000. Predictably, that is what is making the news in the Nigerian media where the offer has been reported outside of the context of social justice. We would come back to this point later in this piece. To the girl-child, free education is what is on offer, though delayed till next October, obviously on financial and logistical grounds. Free education is the governor’s response to the sad reality of most girls in our communities living perpetually poor, pregnant and powerless. To the artisans, there is the plan of refurbishing existing training opportunities or opening new ones while the peasants would have fertilizer as cheaply as anyone can imagine.
The address is thus a cm`k.,murious balance of concessions to all imaginable groups or classes, if you like: investment guarantee for the merchant class, governmental power for the petty-bourgeoisie and social concessions to the Talakawa.
The inclusion of the merchant class in the concession list should interest those who might have been tempted to think that Lamido is a socialist. Like all products of the radical populist tradition in Northern Nigerian politics, Lamido is not a doctrinaire socialist. His radicalism is a combination of sentiments from social welfarism in Islam, the rebellious self and a variant of Blackism- the sense of horror about the indignities that greets the Blackman everywhere in the world. And his usual poser is why cant we change this nonsense by doing what is right to our own people? Hence his obsession with Democratic Humanism as posed by its veterans such as Aminu Kano. This came out powerfully in the address where he declared categorically that the ideological background of his leadership is firmly anchored on the antecedent of Democratic Humanism as defined and epitomized by its chief exponent, Mallam Aminu Kano. That, he said, is the only ideological framework by which government could satisfy “the yearnings of the vast majority of our people whom poverty and misery have reduced to conditions unworthy of human beings”.
The only surprise now is his obvious determination to use executive authority to give vent to those sentiments that he harboured over the years and, by doing so, raise dust, especially on the issue of a monthly survival allowance.
The policy is being commended as well as criticized. Someone called it a gimmick while another one said it amounted to “paying beggars salaries not tied to labour when there are better options like job quotas in the civil service”. What is common to some of these criticisms is that the critics have not read the entire text and could not appreciate the grand vision behind the monthly allowance. Lamido’s essential argument for the policy is captured in these lines in the speech:
Responding to the initial criticism of the policy, Lamido also came up with an analogy: if those with two legs, hands and fingers intact are still barely surviving in Nigeria , why do people think we should not be disturbed about the fate of people who have no eyes, no legs or fingers?
His analogy cannot be dismissed. In fact, thinking about the whole thing after my discussion with the governor, I too wondered why no leader has raised the issue in this way before by way of state policy instead of charity? In any case, the physically challenged people are victims of underdevelopment and the resultant inability of the society to protect them from leprosy, polio, measles and so on. If this society could not protect them from attack of these diseases, why should it also not enhance their survival capacity in terms of something comparable to a living wage? This, I think, is the question the governor is asking, rather rhetorically. He is bound to become a hero for it even as he is also, by implication, a big public relation for the system in Nigeria.
For, that inaugural address contains nuggets of truths on the material foundation of inter-personal, inter-group and inter-class reconciliation very necessary everywhere in Nigeria . What Sule Lamido has done might be unsettling to the status quo but it is also revealing of the emerging conceptions of how society should be organized. This is in the sense that, at the federal, the President, Umaru Yar’Adua, is promoting a macro-version of reconciliation.
Add to these the promise of some of the new governors such as Murtala Nyako and Jonah Jang, just for examples, and there stares us the promise of some rebirth.
Murtala Nyako is mentioned here in terms of pedigree in productive private business and the national and international clout this has given him. That, in addition to his being a retired military elite and a very restrained individual, makes him a potential key player in the emergent cycle of governance.
Jonah Jang’s folk stature in the Middle-Belt would most likely propel him to big roles in the emergent politics, especially in the reconstruction of the relationship between the emirate and the non-emirate North. This relationship has been badly fractured in the last few decades. Hard line positions have taken over from the gestures of the Sardauna generation in inclusiveness and confidence building. Aggravated by poverty and misgovernance, the North has been virtually a battleground, dominated by purposeless violence in which the poor kill each other on ethno-religious differences. Instead of transforming this conflict through confidence building measures and good, democratic governance, the elite have unfortunately feasted on it. People like Jonah Jang would have a role to play here particularly in the context of the new Sultan and his impressive reach out so far.
Of course, Umaru Yar’Adua brings up the rear in this. Being at the pinnacle of power, he occupies the real vintage position to impact on the way many things are done, how they are done and by whom. He stands at a difficult but promising era in Nigerian history, with particular reference to this challenge of qualitative leadership.
Meanwhile, Jigawa stands the chance to reverse its present status of the poorest state in the federation, according to the CBN, to the status of the most prosperous. It is a pleasant promise in transformative politics especially if the other key players such as the bureaucracy, the traditional authority and the elite generally internalize the logic of the inaugural address. And if the development delivery and intervention scheme in which young volunteers would deliver life-saving services in some key areas is quickly consummated. This is because every grand vision requires its implementing army, trained in the skills to deliver. For instance, it is still a puzzle that government would buy a lot of fertilizer but in the heat of the farming season, the poor, lonely woman in the village would be going about looking for a mudu of fertilizer to buy. Only indoctrinated volunteers can break the vicious cycle of reckless racketeering and ensure that fertilizer gets to those who need it most and at the time needed.
Certainly, the Jigawa governor has raised issues in which key actors such as the mass media, civil society, international voluntary agencies, donors and even the Federal Government of Nigeria would have to be interested in terms of concrete or alternative options, support, consolidation and sustainability.
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