PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

Letter to Obasanjo

Almost exactly 17 years ago last month, I wrote an open letter to Citizen Obasanjo whose then newly published book, Constitution for National Integration and Development, had stirred a lot of controversy. My letter was essentially about the book which was his most definitive statement of his political beliefs. Recent political events prompted me to contemplate another open letter – the second since his return to power in 1999 - to the general because he has clearly shown that 27 years in retirement from the military, seven of them as a civilian president, has done nothing to change his imperial character. As part of my preparation for writing the second open letter, I dug up all the articles I had written on him since 1977 including this open letter of 17 years ago. Reading over the letter gave me a feeling of History sadly repeating itself. I crave your indulgence to read this little piece of History as a prelude to the next open letter to our president.

ON YOUR LATEST BOOK

(New Nigerian, March 13, 1989)

Dear General Obasanjo

Long time. But before you start wondering who I am to act so familiar, let me introduce myself. Until mid-February I was the Managing Director of the New Nigerian Newspapers Limited with over 16 years association with that paper, nearly 14 of those years as a reporter, editor and columnist writing on public issues and public personalities like you.

Indeed, sir, I have been writing about you since 1977, even though we’ve met in person perhaps only thrice. The first time was when I was selected as part of the team of reporters that accompanied you as Head of State to Jamaica in 1978. The second time was at Dodan Barracks when Malam Aminu Abdullahi, bless his soul, as editor of New Nigerian, took me along for the regular confidential briefing your second-in-command, Major-General Shehu Yar’adua used to give the press. You gave us lunch after that particular briefing.

I saw you next after you’d successfully handed over the store to President Shehu Shagari. This was in your huge ranch-like Otta farm. We’d started our popular New Nigerian Parley with movers and shakers of society and the New Nigerian management had sent me to persuade you to grant us an interview. I knew it was a tall order but I thought I could get Dele Giwa, bless his soul, whom I knew you respected a lot, to help me persuade you. And so it was that we drove to your farm sometime in 1984. But somehow we could not get you to accept New Nigerian’s invitation.

Since then we have not met, except perhaps on the pages of newspapers. I have followed your career, if you will, as a writer and social commentator with keen interest. Given your busy schedule you have possibly hardly been aware of the things I have written, let alone read them. However, I imagine you read a letter I wrote to you in the West Africa magazine of September 18, 1985: Dele Giwa, I remember, did tell me you complimented the piece even though you did not share my views.

You will recall, sir, that that piece was on what I called your “Ibadan Declaration” which was an explosive speech you delivered at the instance of Agricultural Society of Nigeria. It was a scathing critique of the Buhari administration at a time when it had virtually intimidated Nigerians into a silence of the grave yard variety.

One of the things you said in effect was that only fools contended about forms of government. You said Nigerians should “for the next generation,” concern themselves more with “the ability to perform rather than the means by which government is brought about” and added for good measure that we should no longer “regard military administration as an aberration.” I disagreed with you in my letter arguing that Hitler’s dictatorship was efficient but see the horrors it inflicted on humanity. I also contended that the dialectics between form and substance are so complex it is simplistic to separate them, other than for analytical purposes.

You probably remained unimpressed, if Dele was to be believed. You can imagine my surprise then when in a lecture last year you made a complete about turn and became an advocate of democracy. You may not have read it, but I did write in the New Nigerian to question your motives. Even then for me it was a very pleasant surprise to have someone of your stature join those of us who have an unshakeable faith in elected civilian government.

I have written signed and unsigned pieces about you since then, but this would be the second time in more than three years that I would write a letter to you. You can see then, sir, that it was in order for me to start this letter with “long time.”

This time around I am writing an account of your latest book, Constitution for National Integration and Development. I am yet to get a copy of the book, but thanks to Newswatch of February 27, I have read excerpts of it. And I think one can fairly critique the book on the basis of those excerpts.

Newswatch says the book is probably “one of the greatest intellectual discourses on our problem as a nation”. Sir, with due respect to you and to Newswatch, I disagree. The book may turn out to be as controversial as My Command and Nzeogwu, but as a political treatise, I am afraid it is anything but perspicacious, profound and original.

Before going into the substance of the book, permit me sir, to discuss the style. As someone who has decided to be a best-selling author, along with being a big-time farmer and statesman-at-large, I take it that you are familiar with such basic rules of good writing like never to overwrite or use fancy words when simple ones will do. If you are, it seems to me you chose to break them this time. For unlike, say Nzeogwu, which you wrote in simple and straight-forward English, Constitution, was rather ponderous, wordy and complicated in syntax. In paragraph after paragraph, the reader is compelled to reach for his dictionary or spend time trying to unravel convoluted sentences. For instance, in the opening chapter on “The Way We Are,” I started counting such fancy words like aggrandizement, tokenry, prebental, ersatz, ethno-nationalist, epiphenomena, existential reality, and hiatus, but quickly gave up after the seventh paragraph. Again, I wondered if you needed to use over one hundred words, many of them fancy, to make the point, in the fifth paragraph, that elites all the time exploit the masses only to seek to soften what they do through charities and donations.

It seems to me, sir, that you wrote this book partly to impress the intellectual community with your diction. The result, I am afraid, has been a book which is lacking in clarity and which many readers will find hard not to put down long before they are half-way through.

Which would be such a great pity because a book by any soldier who voluntarily relinquishes power, for whatever reasons, and by a leader who is well-regarded at home and abroad, such a book ought to enjoy widespread readership and understanding. So before your next book, I suggest sir, that you acquaint yourself with the subject of writing well, if you haven’t already. If I may, I would even suggest two books for you which I think are the best on the art of writing well, namely The Elements of Style by Struck and White and On Writing Well by William Zinser.

To return now to the substance of the book. As I have said, I disagree with Newswatch that it is “one of the greatest intellectual discourses on our problem.” Certainly I have read far more profound and original pieces by the likes of Chinua Achebe, the late Billy Dudley and even your Chief of Army Staff, Lt-General T. Y. Danjuma who has never made any pretensions to being a writer, much less a great one.

I say Constitution is hardly profound and original because it is too cliché-ridden, full as it were, with populist sloganeering that is not backed with empirical evidence or powerful logic. I shall illustrate with two over-arching subject matters in the book, namely the politics of the Nigerian elite and the party system.

Sir, you argue that the Nigerian elites are thoroughly exploitative and you are quite right. But then you hardly went beyond clichés to analyze this phenomenon, with the predictable result that you suggested the wrong prescriptions. You say, for instance, that there is religious conflict in the country because religion is not regarded as a private affair. No analysis could be faultier. Ironically the Newswatch which excerpted your book contained on page seven what I thought was a fitting answer to the cliché about the necessity to consign religion to our private rooms. Said Bishop Barbara Harris in her first sermon as the first woman bishop ever. “Temptation urges us to privatize our faith. If Jesus had played it safe, I would not be standing here in crochet and chimera.”

I have my reservations as a Muslim about a woman shepherd for the flock, but I totally agree with Bishop Harris that if Jesus and all the other great prophets had privatized their faith, the world would not have been the civilized place that it is today. Of course poverty, illiteracy, pestilence, all these persist. But this is precisely because powerful forces remain that insist religion must be a private affair, even though it should be obvious that this argument is so much dangerous nonsense.

The good life is about competence and know-how, true. But, when all is said and done, the good life is even more about right and wrong. And nothing better defines what is right or wrong than religion. Religions may differ in doctrine and worship but they agree basically on what is right or wrong. So that whereas the State should not for instance, fund mosques and churches or subsidize pilgrimage beyond the welfare of pilgrims, it cannot dispense justice outside the religious values and systems of its people. If poverty, illiteracy, pestilence, the lot, if these persists, it is largely because Man imagines that he can organize society without religion.

Still on the politics of the elite, you say that there is an “imminent generational conflict and war” which you see as potentially more dangerous than other conflicts. You see the youth as being suppressed by an older generation that has refused to relinquish power. You say that this youth will either react violently or slide into crime and drugs. Sir, with due respect, I think you exaggerate. There may be some generational conflict, but your own experience should have advised you that it is merely skin-deep. If you may recall, back when you were preparing to relinquish power to civilians, there was a lot of noise about generational conflict and “New Breed” politics. Some of us, including you, thought it was only so much noise: you acted wisely and refused to ban “old politicians.” I say you acted wisely because the assumption that the quality of politics was necessarily a function of age was wrong. In any case politicians old or young will always find common cause to cooperate and organize in their various groups for good or bad. And so it was that even though the youth were overwhelming in their number during the Second Republic as ministers, senators, advisers etc., they more than cooperated with the “old” politicians in pillaging the country.

In its own wisdom, the present military administration, has decided to ban “old politicians” in the belief that without their bad examples, clean politics will prevail in the next Republic. Sir, it seems to me that you share this belief. But I remain convinced that it is thoroughly mistaken not because the “old politicians” are not part of our problems, but because the ban assumes that rapaciousness and corruption is a matter of age rather than of the system and values that rule society. To put it in other words, you can be sure that ban or no ban, the politicians, young and old, will have common cause to cooperate and organize to either pillage our resources once more if we let them or to behave properly this time if we put in place the checks and balances that will restrain them.

Sir, if I may now move from the politics of Nigeria’s elites to the second issue of party-system for the Third Republic. You say a one-party state is the solution. Given your own experience, I find his suggestion truly amazing. You said that back in 1979, you had three reasons for not decreeing a one-party system. These reasons, you said, were that (1) you didn’t want to make any major amendments to the constitution, (2) you feared a North/South, Muslim/Christian divide and (3) you believed a party-system should, in any case, evolve rather than be decreed.

If I may ask, sir, what has changed since 1979 to now make a one-party system the only solution? The Second Republic lasted only four years and politics, strictly speaking, has remained frozen since 1983. In any case, how can anyone expect a party system rooted in society to evolve in a matter of a few decades? The logic of a federation of various regional groups in any non-Communist society is a multi-party system. The United States which is in many ways similar to Nigeria in the variety of its people and which is perhaps the oldest federation is up till today a multi-party state in theory even though not in practice. True, only two parties dominate the country, but there are other parties some of which do not seek for office beyond the state level, while some organize only to fight issues.

You argue against a multi-party system on the now worn-out grounds that our history and tradition has never known official opposition and that in any case given our developmental problems such an opposition is an “irrelevant luxury.” But sir, the very concept of a party-system is itself not part of our history and tradition. Should that then mean that we should have no party at all? Obviously, no.

On the one-party system itself where in Africa or the developing world, has it brought about “life more abundant”? In Kenya? Zimbabwe? Tanzania? Zaire? Ivory Coast? Where? The truth is, far from bringing about life abundant for at least most of the people, one-party systems are the rationalizations of the ruling elite bent on permanently holding on to power. I am therefore amazed that you will advocate it, especially when you have argued correctly before that party-systems, being organic, must be allowed to evolve.

Finally sir, you will pardon me if I leave the substance of your book, and dwell a little on your credentials to denounce the Nigerian elites in the strong terms in which you did. Your reputation for not flaunting your wealth is now almost proverbial. Yet it’s difficult for one not to see you as part of Nigeria’s problems, because whether you flaunt your wealth or not, the fact is that you are a very wealthy farmer with widespread interest in commerce and industry. You may have worked hard for such vast wealth but, sir, I do not think you have worked any harder than the peasant farmer who may have been turned into an even more disadvantaged farm labourer by your land acquisitions. I find it hard as a worker, even a privileged one, to accept that in your position as a wealthy capitalist you can speak for me or that you can possess the kind of insight that can solve my problems of existence.

In other words, I think, sir that by definition, your diagnosis and prescriptions for Nigeria in your latest book cannot even begin to cure Nigeria. If I sound rather harsh, I am sure you will pardon me, for did you not say elsewhere that your legs are strong enough to take any kicks from those who would leave the ball and go for the player? Not that I am inclined to do so, but you will agree with me that there are times when it is as fair to tackle the player as it is to tackle the ball.

All said, even though I do not think Constitution will make much difference to Nigeria’s fortunes, I do sincerely hope it will generate the kind of controversy that will.