How God, Foreigners Fight Nigeria’s War By Okey Ndibe

Too many Nigerians are
notorious for seeking to
outsource their most
important tasks to foreign
entities, often divinities. We
delight in shipping off our
jobs to God. We abide rigged
elections – on the woolly
excuse that the polity should
not be overheated, or the
equally spurious contention
that all power (including the
fraudulently obtained) is
assigned by God.
Many of our expectations, it
seems, are counter-intuitive.
Too many of us forget the
costly struggle we waged to
dislodge the military’s hold
over our political lives. We
ignore the fact that hundreds
of fellow citizens perished,
and many had their
businesses bankrupted, in the
fight. Why invest so much
energy to enthrone a system
that empowers us to vote if
we’re to look the other way
when our votes are routinely
discarded or stolen? Why did
our fellows sacrifice so much
to realize the right to vote, if
we’re content to let a few
among us to operate as if we
were serfs without a voice, as
if we were the cowed
subjects of an all-powerful
potentate?
Let me illustrate with two
examples. Many know that
Iyiola Omisore’s name was
mentioned as a suspect in
the assassination of Bola Ige,
Nigeria’s former Attorney
General and Minister of
Justice. Yet, whilst in
detention, Mr. Omisore was
somehow able to sign papers
that enabled him to be a
senatorial candidate in Osun
State. And he not only took
the seat in the election, he
“performed” superlatively in
Mr. Ige’s hometown. Many
enlightened citizens were
outraged, but many resigned
to helplessness. It was said
that former President
Olusegun Obasanjo badly
wanted the man in the
Senate, and that was that.
The other example is, for
me, closer to home. In the
build-up to the 2007 general
elections, it became clear to
many in Anambra State that
then presidential aide, Andy
Uba, was roller-coasting to
Government House, Awka.
Many people in Anambra
would say in private
conversations that the man’s
qualifications for the
governorship were highly
questionable, to put it mildly.
Yet, the same people would
say there was nothing they,
or anybody else, could do.
The conventional wisdom was
that Mr. Obasanjo had
decided to “reward” his
trusted aide with the
governorship of Anambra,
and there was supposedly
nothing the people of
Anambra could do about it.
Such pliant, submissive
attitude galled me. I wrote a
series of articles pointing to
pertinent questions about the
candidate. My efforts earned
a call from a longtime friend
who, like me, is from
Anambra.
“Ol’ boy,” he said, “why
waste your time writing
articles to oppose a man who
can only be stopped by God?
Do you have enough power
to stop President Obasanjo?”
“I don’t, but the voters of
Anambra can,” I said. Then I
reminded him that Mr.
Obasanjo could not vote in
Anambra.
He guffawed in reaction,
called me “politically naïve,”
and then advised me to
abandon a lost cause. “It’s
only God that can stop
Andy,” he concluded. I
thanked him, made clear that
I rejected his counsel, and
affirmed that I would
continue to speak, write and
act like a proud, free citizen,
not Mr. Obasanjo’s slave.
Encounters like the foregoing
point to two profound
deformities. One is in the
idea of Nigeria itself, a polity
polluted by toxic values and
run by or for contemptible
interests. Nigeria’s problem
does not lie merely in the
fact that most elections are
massively rigged even in the
Attahiru Jega era. Nor is the
crisis primarily about the
pervasive culture of
corruption. The space called
Nigeria is not animated by
any lofty values; it is not
driven by any clearly defined,
widely embraced set of noble
aspirations. As a cultural
phenomenon, Nigeria is very
much a vacuous space – with
the vacuum invaded by such
virulent maladies as
corruption, power abuse,
electoral fraud, an
undiscriminating worship of
wealth, and a cult of
banditry.
The second deformity is the
absence of any articulate
idea of what it means to be a
citizen. The so-called Nigerian
citizen is, in reality, a fiction.
All the instruments of the
state are arrayed against her/
him. The police can arrest
and detain any Nigerian at
will, especially when the said
citizen has committed no
crime. The courts are, at
best, indifferent to the plight
of the savaged “citizen.” The
Nigerian military would be
willing to storm a community
with tanks, gunboats and
fighter jets and massacre
innocents at the president’s
say-so. Officials of the State
Security Service (SSS) would
not question the legality of a
president’s order before
executing it. A university
lecturer might decide to fail a
female student who refused
him sexual favors, and the
student would have no
recourse – save God. When a
state governor steals public
funds, the residents and
taxpayers of his state – in
other words, his dispossessed
victims – know that the
Nigerian constitution protects
the thief with an odious
clause that offers “immunity
from prosecution.” They
know that the state
commissioner of police, who
dines with the governor and
receives a healthy monthly
handout, would never, ever
entertain the “crazy” idea of
questioning the thieving
governor. They know that the
justices who receive illicit
gifts of cars and cash from
the governor would not lift
their gavel to order a refund
of stolen funds.
Nigeria, then, is caught in a
bind. An incongruous space
has produced uncertain
values and questionable
citizens that reinforce and
reproduce a diseased space.
It all translates into a country
that is messier and more
beat than many of its citizens
realize.
That explains why, after
making the bizarre choice of
accepting rigged elections,
we begin to whine as soon as
it becomes evident that the
bandits we permitted – or
even encouraged – to hijack
electoral offices have settled
down to the business of
fattening themselves at the
expense of the rest of us. We
forget that our monsters
grow from the soil we
fertilize; that we conceive and
nurture them; that they
represent our deepest, most
misshapen values.
Unable or unwilling to take
on these monsters we help
create, we telegraph prayers
to heaven to, a, change the
hearts of these monsters that
have hijacked power or, b,
remove them for us. The
collective wisdom of Nigerian
anti-corruption agents,
prosecutors and judges could
not establish that former
Governor James Ibori of Delta
State pinched one naira from
the public treasury. Yet,
British law enforcement and
prosecutors worked so
assiduously and gathered
such overwhelming evidence
of Mr. Ibori’s money
laundering that their quarry
opted to plead guilty rather
than risk being unmasked in
court.
How did many Nigerians
react? Instead of wondering
why their system would let
the likes of Mr. Ibori walk
free, they began to entreat
the UK to please, please
arrest and prosecute other
corrupt Nigerians. It’s again
that syndrome of outsourcing
work we should learn to do
for ourselves – a job that is
far from rocket science, but
we fail at it because we have
accepted a space animated
by awful values.
Many Nigerians are excited
about a recent
announcement that the US
government wants to hold
American banks to a higher
standard of scrupulousness in
disclosing information about
their foreign customers. The
measure is meant to curtail
the practice of shady
characters, including Nigerian
public figures, laundering
looted funds through US
banks. As the [Nigerian]
Guardian reported on
Sunday, the Asset Recovery
Program of the US Justice
Department recently “seized
some of the stolen loot and
assets of former governors
D.S.P Alamieyeseigha of
Bayelsa State and James Ibori
of Delta State, and is
planning to go after more of
their assets in the U.S.” The
report added: “On the
strength of its ability to seize
some of the loot, the Justice
and Commerce Departments
are now trying to enforce
stricter banking rules that will
for instance make the use of
shell companies less useful to
looters of public funds in
places like Nigeria.”
Anything that will make it
harder for Nigerian officials
to stow away their loot in
foreign countries is welcome
news. The best antidote to
corruption and other crises
bedeviling Nigeria is one
that’s home-grown and
home-nurtured. It’s
ultimately counterproductive
to farm out the fighting of
our battles to the US, the UK,
or God. If Nigeria is not to
remain a hollow idea, then
its enlightened people better
commence the task of
founding it, defining its
values, and negotiating the
terms of its existence.

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okeyndibe

#CONSENSUS 2015