PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

It’s the Attitude, Stupid

April 12-13, the National Orientation Agency (NOA) in collaboration with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) organised a seminar on the role of attitudes in Nigeria’s development. The most important conclusion of the seminar was that Attitude is the main reason why we seem unable to get it right all these 45 odd years of our independence from colonial rule.

Most people will agree that Attitude is important in solving our problems, but many may disagree that it is THE most important. Chinua Achebe, Africa’s most celebrated writer and one of its most profound thinkers, has said in one of his essays that Leadership is squarely Nigeria’s biggest problem. Others may think it is lack of Hard Work while others yet may think it is lack of Knowledge or the absence of Mother Luck.

For most Nigerian politicians it would seem the solution to our problems lies in getting our Constitution right. This must be why, at the first sign of trouble since the soldiers first shot their way into power in January 1966, we try to fiddle with our constitution. In forty-five years of independence, the on-going National Political Reform Conference (NPRC) would be the fifth time we have fiddled with our Constitution. Compare this to the Americans who have amended their constitution, whose clarity, simplicity and precision is hard to beat, only on couple of times or so in over 200 years.

So what really is THE most important factor among all these in solving our problems as a poverty ridden, insecure, and unstable nation? From his Welcome Address, it was obvious that Alhaji Idi Farouk, the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency, thought Attitude was important. Not so obvious was whether he believed it was THE most important. “There can be no doubt,” he said in welcoming participants to the seminar, “that Nigeria suffers hugely from the problems of negative attitudes and dysfunctional habits. These include our attitude to the State, our attitude to public poverty and our attitude to one another as Nigerians.” However in a list of problems bedeviling Nigeria, Alhaji Idi did not say that attitude was right on top.

As far as I can remember the most unequivocal statement to this effect came from John Onaiyekan, the Catholic Archbishop of the Abuja Diocese, in his paper on Christian Values and Social Development. “I was,” he said in the paper, “once reported to have called for a revolution in Nigeria. I admit that report because it is indeed a revolution of attitude that is required. Those who had hoped that the end of military rule would be an end to bad government are now rudely disappointed…I still maintain that rigging elections especially using the coercive instruments of government meant to guarantee a fair contest, is worse than a military coup”.

Clearly for Onaiyekan, Attitude is more important than the type of government we have as a solution to our problems. A civilian government may be preferred to a military government, but unless attitudes change, the civilians could even be worse the soldiers. This, to me, is the lesson of the dismal record of the last six years of the current democratic (?) dispensation at all three levels of government.

I have said it so many times on these pages that our Constitution is the least of our problems. I have said times without number that a National Conference, sovereign or not, is a solution looking for problems. The NPRC is of course now a fait accompli and so dismissing it would be a mere academic exercise, even though academic exercises do have their uses.

This is not to say that Constitutions do not matter. Of course they do. Unless the rules of a game or the rules of relationships are fair and equitable, you cannot expect the game to be orderly. However attitude is more important than the fairness and equity of the rules as a guarantee against disorderliness. For example, defective as our 2002 Electoral Law may have been, it contained enough safeguards to have allowed for a free and fair general election in 2003 if only those safeguards were respected. But as we all know, they were disregarded with the greatest impunity by almost all the actors with the biggest culprit being the ruling party at the center.

The same thing can be said of our Constitution. Warts and all, it still has enough safeguards against arbitrary and tyranical rule, if only we would respect its provisions. Unfortunately, as with the electoral law, those provisions too have only been observed in the breach.

The NPRC may improve on the defects of the current Constitution, but that in itself would not guarantee a more responsive and transparent government. Indeed, if the controversy surrounding the claims and counterclaims of the Presidency and the NPRC secretariat about the dummy draft constitutional amendments before the Conference is anything to go by, chances are we will end up with an even more defective constitution than the current one. Reverend Father Mathew Hassan Kukah, Co-Secretary of the Conference, has denied receipt of any draft amendments from the Presidency. But both Professor Jerry Gana, the President’s adviser on politics, and Pastor Kanu Agabi, the President’s adviser on ethics, have insisted that the Presidency has given the Secretariat the drafts. “The executive,” Agabi, for example, said on April 18, “presented a draft amended constitution and there’s no organ that is more qualified to do that than the executive.”

These altercation between the Presidency and the Conference Secretary is enough evidence, if one was ever needed beyond the government’s many acts of bad faith in the past, that attitude is central to all our problems. Here’s a government that claims it puts the greatest store by transparency and due process. But what does it do when it comes to amending the Supreme Law of the land? It puts together a clique of four or five presidential advisers and members of its kitchen cabinet, including Gana and Agabi, to sneak in profound amendments into the document and then sneak it unto the delegates to the Conference. What better evidence does one need that bad faith is central to all our problems?

Sadly those acts of bad faith are not restricted to the center but has become all too pervasive, as is suggested by what is going on in Adamawa State regarding the presidential campaign plans of Brigadier-General Mohammed Buba Marwa. The Adamawa State Government, it seems, is determined to frustrate Marwa’s legitimate right to contest for the presidency by stopping him from launching his campaign from his home state. Governor Bonnie Haruna may be infuriated at the suggestion, but many, if not most Nigerians, believe himself and Marwa, are mere proxies in the ferocious Cold War raging between President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the governor’s godfather, over so many things, particularly the 2007 presidential election.

If this is true it shows that Vice-President is no more a respecter of fairness and equity than his tyrannical boss. If it is not true, in other words, if Haruna and Marwa are only fighting their own war, it shows that the younger generation is no better at keeping faith with the rules of the game than the older generation.

The latest evidence in support of the theory that Attitude is our single biggest problem is the fund raising for Obasanjo’s presidential library in Abeokuta over the weekend. The unwritten universal rule is that you establish a presidential or governorship library after and not while in office. The President surely knows this and apparently believed in it. Otherwise he would never have confiscated the property and assets of the Abacha Foundation which was established while General Sani Abacha, his tormentor, was Head of State.

To now turn around and establish something similar suggests that the president has one set of rules for himself and another set for others. It also suggests that he believes that he is Big Brother who can do no wrong and that he has little respect for our intelligence as a people.

Back in 1992 when President Bill Clinton – who incidentally launched the fund raising for his presidential library a good five years after leaving office – first contested the US presidency, his unofficial slogan was “It’s the economy, stupid.” In other words, America’s main problem, he believed, was not any threat to its security from abroad, but the threat posed to its economy by inflation and joblessness at home. In Nigeria’s context you can, with accuracy, rephrase Clinton’s slogan and say that “It’s the Attitude, Stupid.”

The other factors I have mentioned – Leadership, Hard Work, Knowledge, Mother Luck, Constitution, the lot – also matter. Leadership is particular is very important even in its narrowest definition of only the men or women at the top because example from the top rather than preaching is the best teacher. However the broader the definition, the more important the factor of Leadership.

The broadest definition I know of are the Hadiths reported by all the leading authorities on the subject including, Al-Bukhari, Muslim, AbuDawud, Al-Tirmidhi and Ahmad. According to these authorities Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) once defined leadership to include even those at the lowest rung of society. “Everyone of you” he said, “is a shepherd, and everyone of you is responsible for his flock. The Imam is a shepherd and he is responsible for his congregation. A man is a shepherd among his family, and he is responsible for his flock (his family). A woman is a shepherd in her husband’s home and children, and she is responsible for them. A servant is a shepherd over the wealth of his owner, and he is responsible for it. Lo! Everyone of you is a shepherd and everyone is responsible for his flock.”

Of course the higher the level of leadership, the greater the responsibility. This is perhaps why people tend to focus on political leadership, self-imposed or not, as the main source of our problems.

However, important as Leadership is it can only be, at best, a close second to Attitude for the simple reason that respect for ones Leadership is determined by a leader’s behavior, or attitude, if you will. If you force your leadership on society or you do so by subterfuge, or both, people will only fear you not respect you.

So, it would seem as if in trying to find solution to Nigeria’s problems, the men and women at the National Orientation Agency and at the National Political Reform Conference have got their work cut out for them. The biggest problem, I believe, is Attitude, not the Constitution or any other thing. Unfortunately, the right attitude, like so many virtues, cannot be legislated. So perhaps the men and women at NOA and NPRC have not got their work so easily cut out for them, after all.