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.