Why the North is failing

 “A large chair does not make a king”. African proverb

By the time you read this, the ancient Emirate of Zazzau may or may not have a new Emir to succeed the late Alhaji Shehu Idris who had been Emir for 45 years. It entirely depends on what the State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai decides to do. The process of selecting a new Emir of Zazzau has a fairly-innocent familiarity to it, although it is activated only rarely. Descendants of former Emirs from the four ruling houses who are interested in becoming Emirs submit themselves for scrutiny and evaluation by four Kingmakers who are known by their offices and the responsibilities they perform. Kingmakers then submit a shortlist to the political authority (in contemporary terms, the State Governor). He in turn chooses who becomes Emir from the shortlist, presumably after further vetting and scrutiny.

This is where the process loses its innocence. The decision regarding who becomes Emir is fundamentally political. From the beginning of the last century when northern Emirs lost out to colonialism, they became essentially its agents and props, serving at its pleasure and providing a cheap and effective mode of control over large populations through the elaborate structures it had used to govern pre-colonial communities. In sixty years of colonial rule, colonial ( political)authority made it clear who was in charge and what the roles of Emirs were, removing quite a few for disloyalty or incompetence in implementing major colonial policies. A few Emirs emerged owing only to tinkering with the process and flexing of political muscles, but generally succession was confined to royalty, and all the outer trimmings of power were preserved. Emirs (and Chiefs) wielded delegated powers and served the purpose of creating the illusion of continuity in periods of great changes.

The political elite that succeeded colonial authority was thoroughly grounded in a system that gave it huge powers largely because the Emirate system had been turned into a major political asset, but only if it served its interests. A few skirmishes here and there reinforced the superiority of the politician over the Emir in real terms. Emirs learnt to submit to political authority and preserve the comforting illusion among millions of peasants that they represented all that was decent and valued under an intensely divisive political system that had no room for neutral power or opposition. There was enough room for both, but Emirs had to learn to be good or even better politicians than the new political elite. The old North was a huge territory that was structured around ambitious politicians, politicized Emirs, a tiny but influential emerging middle class and a peasantry that was content to be left alone once it settled its obligations to the state.

Then the military marched all over a delicate system, carving out political territories that lowered the state’s span of control, the caliber of the politician and reduced the space for maneuver between the fortunes and desperation of the politician and the vulnerability of the Emir/Chief who is now more visible as a rival, collaborator or a threat to the politician. Political engineering resulting in more and more states created multiple centers of power and politicians whose  leadership qualities were constantly decreasing. Local Government Areas, intended to serve as vehicles for faster local-level development ended up as mere shells, deepening  the plunder of state resources and squeezing  lower-level traditional structures into irrelevance. Control of power and resources became the only goals of political competition, and fights for them became increasingly bitter. Most Emirs/Chiefs learnt to adapt to virtual irrelevance except as discreet or prominent cheerleaders of partisan politicians. The North has paid too much for stifling poor governance, its ungoverned portions increasing with a worrisome population size, insecurity  and poverty.

Late Emir Shehu Idris lived through the best and the worst moments in the history of the North. He became Emir on the eve of the infamous local government reforms; lived through the highs and lows of the military’s self-destruct forays against politicians and each other; witnessed faltering attempts to plant a democratic system in a desert of democratic values; watched his Emirate shrink as bits and pieces drifted away with rising influence of ethnic and religious politics in Kaduna State; took cover as Shiism took root and blossomed into a phenomenon in his Emirate; worried over the de-industrialization of Zaria; lived with the  suffocating neighborhood  of Kaduna city; welcomed the influx of educational institutions which formed the backbone of Zaria’s economy; played friends and foes with politicians; missed fellow  Emirs who had shared his fate for decades and one or two who got fingers badly burnt as they stood up to bullying governors; and, in his twilight days, kept his head low as he shared space with a governor who had little sympathy for tradition or even the mildest resistance.

Ordinarily, the people of Zazzau Emirate would have known who is their new Emir a few days after the death of Emir Shehu Idris. Ordinary would have been a situation in which Governor el-Rufai does not have the final say. When you have politicians like el-Rufai, it is advisable to prepare for the unexpected. There is a process in place, but it has no time limits outside those set by the Governor,  and is open to manipulation and even abuse by everyone, including  the Governor. And yes, there are also  consequences, but these do not really matter to the degree that they are what he wishes. He could choose to keep the public informed of the reasons behind the length of time the conclusion of the process is taking, but that would create an illusion that he thinks he is accountable to the public. To be fair, he did say he was reading some books on the history of king-making in Zaria. Other than this, the rumour mills are replete with talks of bribery, new long and shortlists and arm-twisting. And the people wait and fume and lament and quarrel. Someone will eventually emerge Emir, and those who lose and their supporters will choose how they react.

The North has thousands of politicians and very few leaders. Leaders will do the right thing by their people, and they will attempt to convince the people who voted them into power why they chose which options. Northern leaders like el-Rufai give the impression that the public’s opinion of them and their policies are irrelevant unless they are voting. Leaders with power or influence sufficient enough to advise el-Rufai would convince el-Rufai to show respect and  sensitivity to a public that deserves to know. There are a few with this power, but they, like him, think the public is generally a disposable  nuisance. If the process had been subverted before it got to the Governor, he would have been duty bound to deal with it within the law. A sense of propriety would push him to take a decision that can never be perfect.

The North is failing because it is being superintended by politicians whose ego is much bigger than their mandates, and others who have no idea about just and effective governance, so they retreat behind opulence until the next elections or end of terms. The drama over the Zazzau Emir captures the reality that the North must revisit its foundations, rebuild trust around leaders and create alternatives to the system which creates the type of leaders it has today. In the meantime, maximum leaders like Gov el-Rufai need to be reminded that there are consequences to their actions, many of which are out of their control.

 

Teacup in a storm

 

“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they do not know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other” Martin Luther King Jr.

It would have been the height of naivety to expect that President Olusegun Obasanjo’s meeting last week with select groups of elders over the state of the nation and what can be done to improve it, would receive universal acclaim.These are elders who prefer to be identified by their regional, ethnic or religious garments. Predictably, it has run into a storm, the type that leaves a teacup in a storm very little room for survival. Truth be told, virtually all parties involved in this skirmish have lost their innocence a long while ago. Nor are they strangers to each other or to controversies. What is relatively new is the depth to which the nation has sunk, a reality the Buhari administration stubbornly closes its eyes at, and all leaders and elders bear responsibilities for. Nigeria desperately needs to re-invent itself, but it suffers from crippling lethargy, indifference and absence of a leadership that should inspire it to do so.

You have a former President weighed down by a well-deserved reputation for poking fingers at, and issuing red cards to other Presidents, most of whom would also prefer to avoid sharing a room  with him  for longer than an hour owing to his own baggage.Then you have a motley group of elderly men and women who have records for raising voices against this and previous administrations.These groups serve as major irritants to the authorities; provide popular targets for young Nigerians and influence peddlers who see them as  complicit relics  playing well after added time.They bear scars  from  fighting rival groups and each other in a manner that leaves you to marvel at the wisdom behind distinguishing old people from elders. Finally, you have an administration suffering from chronic deficits in governance and pronounced paranoia from prolonged absence of real friends and admirers.Its definition of enemies leaves it in a permanent state of  stressful combat, shooting and widely missing every idea, suggestion or criticism over its record.

It would take a while for the noise generated by this meeting to abate, but its significance will last longer in an increasingly frightening political context.The nation’s Chief Governance Vigilante, President Obasanjo had been surveying the scene for a long while and losing sleep  over widening gulf between communities and regions, a crumbling economy and rising levels of poverty and desperation, creeping encroachment of violent crimes into lives of citizens, seeming absence of any idea By the administration over what to do about the state of the country, and a palpable foreboding that the nation is fatally flawed and headed for destruction unless something serious is done by someone. Obasanjo characteristically stepped forward as the someone, and enlisted the support of others who are just content to let him show his hardened and familiar hand at doing something. He reached out to  groups of elders who own patents for raising their voices at all wrongs, and a record for openly (and unsuccessfully) campaigning against President Buhari’s second term and earning a place as permanent enemies of the administration.

It was either a calculated gamble or the price for  poverty in his options, but Obasanjo went for the elders as the foundations for his envisaged multi-facetted and comprehensive project of engineering a national consensus around a commitment to move from private lamentations and prayers to God, to more active involvement and some kind of a re-discovery of a mission that will pull the nation away from the brink. The elders’ groups themselves washed up from old and new skirmishes with each other and, with bags full of misgivings, they answered his call.

Barely looking at each other, they listened as President Obasanjo went through his opening speech, sparing no element of language to describe the sorry state of the nation and showing no shyness in assigning responsibilities. The elders were his foundational building blocks, and he had been encouraged by an emerging consensus around essentials and rapprochement that hinted at the potentials of closing ranks and answering the clarion call to retrieve the nation from failing. When the delegations of elders opened up, even Obasanjo himself must have wondered if he had not chosen the wrong first eleven to launch his campaign. They were bitter, resigned to the prospect that the nation is irretrievable under this administration (or ever), skeptical over his motives and chances of success or still smarting from recent  fights with each other.

To his credit, President Obasanjo pulled the meeting from the brink. Perhaps the elders themselves had no better options that the Obasanjo initiative, but a room full of very old and angry Nigerians finally settled down commending him, committing to the success of the initiative, proffering suggestions on next steps and congratulating each other for showing requisite levels of maturity and a willingness to look to the future and stop counting past grievances. Against feelings that the initiative could suffer from predictable damaging assaults from the Buhari administration, delegates pressed Obasanjo for assurances that he and they were not alone. Nerves were calmed when he assured them that leaders of Governors’ fora will be in attendance, and a very senior level of persons are part of the support group. He was satisfied that he had met the requirements of briefing President Buhari and leadership of the National Assembly of the plan and expected outcomes.

Two days after a meeting that was attended by three governors, it released its Communique. It said all the things elders should say:  our country is in deep trouble; we commit to work with other Nigerians to find solutions; we  will work with groups and interests to support processes for improving quality of governance, the democratic and  electoral processes and the economy, and contribute to efforts  to amend the constitution and restructure the nation. Not a word about the registered failures of the administration; just a commitment to work with others to fix Nigeria.

The Presidency’s spokespersons are also famous for preferring details to substance, so they could be forgiven for reacting only against Obasanjo’s elaborate prose in lamentation. They reacted with unrestrained venom, pillorying Obasanjo in language only  he would be comfortable with. The Presidency must be running out of adjectives to describe the elders’ groups, because its spokespersons now tags  them    as terrorists for criticizing the plan of the legislature to follow the hallowed path of spending a lot of money for very little in return. The Presidency had a few cheerleaders, but no one offered options to the Obasanjo initiative or what else can be done about insecurity, poverty and rising concerns over the workings of a violence-based electoral process and the elections of 2023.

Then the elders hit back, insisting that they will not be cowed by an administration that lives in deep denial while the nation goes through massive tensions and stresses which could prove fatal to its future. They will meet again and again, anywhere and with anyone who can contribute to moving the nation beyond this stage. Are we dealing with a stand-off then? Not really. Government cannot stop this initiative, although it can hurt it by reducing it to an Obasanjo provocation. The nation does need to close ranks and get the shrinking and hiding elite to re-engineer a consensus around the basics of what needs to be done to achieve key goals.

The Buhari administration will not move near this vital requirement, but it will lose the higher ground if it maintains hostility towards initiatives that can make meaningful inputs into constitutional reforms, improving security of the citizen and communities and electoral reforms. The optics of senior Nigerians working together, not against each other, is very useful. They can reduce the drift, provide secure cover for vulnerable groups and nudge politicians towards actions that reduce stresses and improve inter-communal harmony.

Nigeria should not fail, but it will, unless more Nigerians do more with each other to pull it back from the brink. Obasanjo and the elders lit a fire. This fire will die if others do not keep it alive. It should not die, for all our sakes.

When?

“If a leader limps, all others start limping too.” African proverb.

Tucked deep in this paper two days ago was a report on a group of villagers who are now sheltering at Jibia Central Primary School in Katsina State. Until a few days ago these villagers, now Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) had lived with frequent attacks from bandits, during which young women would be raped, sometimes by a gang, or abducted; men would be beaten mercilessly and those who resisted killed; and belongings carted away or vandalized afterwards. A young lady, Rabi, said eight men were killed when bandits invaded their village, including the village head. “Almost every middle-aged lady was raped in our village that night, either by one person or by a group of the bandits. They have beaten our men including even younger ones and took our foodstuff away...,” she narrated to the reporter. The villagers were quoted as saying, ”We are in a dire situation. We cannot continue to remain here (in the school) and we cannot go back to our former place if the situation remains like that.”

When are stories of villagers that have acquired new status as IDPs after undergoing horrific crimes shock us enough to do something about them, and about  millions of other villagers who are as exposed to criminals as these villagers near Jibia were? Apparently there is no time frame. We hear daily about new and additional deployments of the military and police. At the same time, we also hear of audacious forays of bandits into villages and now,  even into towns and cities. We hear of encounters and killings of bandits from the air and of double-edged activities of vigilantes. Then we hear of chilling stories of atrocities of bandits who have the run of forests, rural roads, highways and entire territories. We hear of positive outcomes of negotiations for payment of ransom and release of kidnapped and abducted people, and of people who are murdered even after ransoms are paid. In truth, we do not hear of majority of kidnappings and assaults on villagers, as citizens have learnt to pay ransom quietly or bury their dead and learn to live with indignities and humiliations without recourse to the state.

When are women in particular going to raise voices against the dehumanization of quite possibly thousands of women who are raped right before parents, husbands and children? Where is the anger that trailed the abductions of the Chibok girls? Where are those voices that were heard all over the world after the abductions? Are they tired, or do they not care anymore? Where are care-givers, people who understand what it is for a woman to tell a reporter that she was gang raped along with half the women in the village in one night? Who is talking to men that ran and cowed before wives and children and are stripped of all dignity before being made to share bits of a primary school with raped wives and daughters? Who speaks to these IDPs, gives them assurance and attends to the sick and the traumatized?

When is all this going to stop? Who supports bandits with cover, communication, weaponry, intelligence, fuel, food, medication, drugs and spare parts for motorcycles? Who should we ask for answers? Do those who know the answers give them to those who need to have them? What do leaders do with answers? Communities are told not to fight back because that will merely provoke the bandit. They can and do raise vigilante, but these get blamed for inviting 200 motorcycles with 600 armed bandits to leave behind stories that will be told in whispers for many years to come. Young men who dare stand up for communities are fished out and murdered, and the story goes round that they were exposed by local informants. So everyone submits. Raped wives and daughters walk around with bowed heads and crushed spirits. Men are shamed and humiliated before wives and children. Villagers suffer wounds that will take many years to heal, if at all.

When shall  we stop asking questions? Would it be when peasants who have born the brunt of poor leadership for decades are pushed hard enough to stand up against criminals in a manner that pits illegitimate violence against illegal use of force? Will it be when citizens are pushed to a point where  they rise against leaders that are comfortable with blaming each other and retreating until there is no further space or excuses to offer? Will young men whose wives, sisters or mothers are raped take up arms against armed criminals, or will they join the  criminals to rape other peoples’ relations and plunder  other communities? When will women stop crying, and men walk with some dignity? When will farmers resume farming, and women stop begging for food to feed crying children?

When will this nightmare stop? Will it be when President Muhammadu Buhari finally figures what he can do differently? Will anybody be held responsible for lapses, collusion, subversion and incompetence? Does any Nigerian in leadership position  feel responsible and accountable for circumstances that leave poor defenceless citizens at the mercy of bandits, kidnappers and sundry criminals. Do leaders remember that they swore to protect citizens, and that they will stand before God to be judged for neglect and indifference over the fate of people they led? Do leaders realize the gulf that exists between them and citizens; the levels of disenchantment with a political process that produces leaders who amass more power and wealth and leave citizens poorer than they were; and the fate of the democratic system that breeds only hate and anguish?

When will the nation hear from President Buhari whether it should resign itself to living with more IDP camps, more raped women and murdered and humiliated men, more gangs of armed criminals and wider spaces available to the criminal? When will he tell the nation what he will do that is new, if he intends to do anything new? When and how can we give governors and citizens powers and responsibilities to protect themselves? How much can parts of the nation tolerate before they begin  to question the utility of sharing the same roof with regions that have suffered from an insurgency for a decade; banditry, kidnappings and armed robbery for nearly a decade; an unstable arrangement to keep a lid on militancy, piracy and kidnappings as parts of routine existence for longer than a decade; crimes that abridge the freedom of citizens to move even outside  homes; corrupt law enforcement that is more liability than asset; and leaders who assume power under thoroughly questionable circumstances?

When will the IDPs at Central Primary School Jibia and many other locations go home and resume the humdrum of wretched existence? When will President Buhari visit an IDP camp, any IDP camp, to let citizens know that he cares? When will the nation raise its voice to atrocities in many villages in the North?

When will bandits be made to stop raping girls and women; stop beating up and humiliating men; stop stealing everything poor communities have kept; and stop behaving as if there are no governments in Nigeria?

When?