PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

A “Newbreed” Apart

ndajika@yahoo.com

Until his recent denunciation of so-called New Breed politicians, former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, was arguably their greatest proponent. That was, until President Olusegun Obasanjo came along in 1999 and became their new champion. (There is an irony of sorts in this swapping of roles between the two long time cold warriors, as we shall soon see.)

The reader can readily recall General Babangida’s famous blanket ban of so-called old politicians half way through his eight-year transition programme because, in his eyes, they were too steeped in the old “politricks” of tribe and creed to be capable of playing the new kind of politics necessary for Nigeria’s stability and growth. He did unban them eventually but by then the so-called Newbreed were so firmly entrenched it was difficult, if not impossible, to dislodge them.

The general may, once upon a time, have been the greatest champion of Newbreed politicians as Nigeria’s supposed knights in shining armour, but he was not himself the originator of the idea. To the extent that anyone can claim originality for an idea that is probably as old as anyone can remember by merely operationalizing it, the credit for that belongs to Professor Omo Omoruyi,.

(In case you’ve not been around long enough to know or simply didn’t care, Omoruyi, a professor of political science who once taught Babangida as a student at the famous National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Jos, was in the inner circle of the eggheads the general loved to surround himself with for ideas.)

Back during the run-up to the Second Republic in the days of the Constituent Assembly (CA) that gave us our first presidential Constitution in 1979, as against the parliamentary Constitution of our first six years of independence, Omoruyi became one of CA’s more famous members when he successfully sponsored Clause 127 in the draft. The clause sought to ban all “old politicians” of the First Republic, including Zik, Awo and Aminu Kano, from contesting for office in the Second Republic. His argument then was simply that old dogs cannot learn new tricks.

The military regime under General Obasanjo disagreed and, quite rightly in my view at least, deleted the clause when it promulgated the decree that enacted the Justice Udo Udoma draft Constitution as the supreme law of the land. By then, however, the Newbreed/Olbreed dichotomy had become entrenched. 

When Babangida came along six years after Obasanjo left, he not only adopted the dichotomy as an article of faith, he did all he could to widen and deepen it. It is one of those ironies of life that Obasanjo, who rejected the idea during his first coming and hardly had anything good to say about Babangida as his favourite whipping boy, not took off from where the Maradona left off.

It is even more ironical that he sought to go one better than Babangida in entrenching the idea; according to probably his once most ferocious attack dog - speaking metaphorically, of course - Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, in an interview in the Sunday Vanguard of July 21 2002, one of the former president’s greatest “achievements” was his creation of “a new crop of leaders in the North-West” of the country who would have no truck whatsoever with their elders. You can stretch the logic of this “achievement” in Fani-Kayode’s list to include the class of the new rich and famous Obasanjo created in the rest of the country as, presumably, exemplified by wealthy Newbreed politicians like himself.

The flip side of our irony is that Babangida has lately changed his seemingly unshakable faith in the competence of Newbreed politicians. Predictably, he has come under attack, some of it plainly malicious, for stating what is pretty obvious; that the Newbreed have generally been a disaster since they took charge of the affairs of this country from before the Second Republic. For evidence you need look no further than the fact that to date our todays have always been worse than our yesterdays. 

Obasanjo, who raised our expectations in his second coming over a decade ago, only to dash them in to smithereens, may be an oldbreed, but any random survey of others in charge of our affairs at all levels of society in politics, business, industry, sports, the professions - just name it – would reveal that their average age is around 40, possibly less.

Obviously Babangida was right to have changed his faith in their competence. He - and Obasanjo - was, however, wrong to have tried to entrench the idea as if it were a commandment cast in stone when it was all along pretty obvious that age as such has little or even nothing really to do with competence or, for that matter, all the virtues of good leadership. That both of them used it more as a tool for political control than as something they genuinely believed in is obvious from the fact that they could so easily trade places over the idea once they no longer found it useful.

On the current showing of the Newbreed as a group, Nigeria’s prospect is truly bleak whatever anyone may think of Babangida’s new view of its members. Just listen to their debate about next year’s general elections. You search in vain for any edifying argument about how politicians should use power for the greatest good of the greatest number. Instead all you hear are threats and counter threats about which section of the country must be in power, especially at the centre, or else...

All of which brings to me to the kernel of today’s piece; the gentleman whose picture you see in the middle of the column. Politics, it is often said, is in the end all local. Malam Isa Kawu represents my constituency of origin – Bida North – in the Niger State House of Assembly. If half the stories I have heard about his record as a legislator and the things I have seen during my infrequent trips home the past three odd years were true of half of our Newbreed politicians, our country’s future would not have been as bleak as it is. Indeed we would, in the first place, never have found ourselves in the sorry state in which we are.

Kawu is young (probably in his late forties), has a university degree, is very eloquent and self-confident; in one phrase he is your quintessential Newbreed. Pretty early in the life of the administration of the self-styled Chief Servant of Niger State, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, Kawu demonstrated some the virtues of transparency and accountability so much missing among the vast majority of our politicians, old and new.

First, alone of all the 27 members of the state’s House of Assembly, he initially rejected the so-called Constituency allowance released to them because it fell short of what was budgeted and there was at first no explanation why. Again, alone among the legislators, he rejected the brand new jeep Government House gave him for official use because it was, he said, wrong morally and legally to collect the vehicle after the legislators had been paid four year’s transport allowance in advance amounting to four million Naira or so.

Third, even though he has expressed reservations about the propriety of the idea of Constituency budgets, given our Constitution’s doctrine of the separation of power between the three arms of Government, the records and testimonies of residents of his constituency show that the pattern of expenditure of his allocation is probably the most transparent and accountable in the state.

Again, almost alone among his compatriots, his lifestyle has remained essentially the same three years on from what it was before he became a legislator. He has not been an absentee legislator flying first class all over the globe at the expense of his constituency. He has not built or bought fancy mansions in choice locations in Bida, Minna, Abuja or other cities around the world, with even more fancy cars in their courtyards.

I could go on and on but these, I believe, suffice to show that Kawu is truly a breed apart from our Newbreed politicians. It shows that even in a lousy party like the ruling PDP with its abhorrence of internal democracy – alas! the opposition is hardly better - one can still be good and do good. Certainly it explains why he is probably the most popular politician today in his constituency and probably the most dreaded by the powerful Executive arm of government; early in 2007, for example, when the House faced a serious crisis of leadership and it looked certain that Kawu would become its next Speaker, the Executive pulled all strings to make sure he did not.

If only half our Newbreed politicians were like Kawu, General Babangida – and Obasanjo – would have been right to have put their faith in members of the group as Nigeria’s knights in shining armour. And Babangida would have been wrong to have changed his opinion about them.

Sadly they have been anything but.