Who gains from Jonathan/Amaechi roforofo fight?
APRIL 29, 2013
Tolu Ogunlesi
The headlines have been awash with stories of how the Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Amaechi’s Bombardier jet (more on that another day) was grounded at the Akure Airport last week. You don’t even need to be a conspiracy theorist to know that this random act (of grounding the governor’s jet) is somehow connected to the ongoing battle between the President and the Governor. Which is a battle that encompasses a couple of larger issues: the politics of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum and of course, 2015.
The Nigerian Presidency is a powerful one, arguably one of the most powerful in the world. With access to unlimited slush funds and a patronage machine whose efficiency will put German and Japanese sensibilities to shame, the Nigerian President is designed to be godlike in potential and reach. This is why one hopes that Amaechi knows what he’s getting into.
But, of course, the mercurial Amaechi is himself no pushover. You couldn’t have spent eight years as Speaker of a state House of Assembly and now six years as Governor of one of Nigeria’s richest states, and contended with the calibre of militants that once turned the state into their fiefdom, without having picked up a few skills about fighting dirty and winning big.
It’s interesting to connect this ongoing fight to the concept of rage and the Nigerian psyche. We are an angry, pushy, forceful, even violent, people. Whether it’s in the Economy Class section of a Nigeria-bound flight (the fights here caused by overhead locker scarcity, or reclining seats), or on a queue at the Passport Office, or in bumper-to-bumper-traffic, we lead lives circumscribed by a ripe anger that is perpetually on the brink of violent confrontation.
And when it comes to the propensity for thuggish displays of anger, there are no big men in Nigeria. A bank CEO has no reservations about slapping an Executive Director, and nothing will stop a determined Governor from leaving his Secretary to the State Government with a Little Black Eye.
Recall October 2007, when a member of the House of Representatives slumped and died in the chambers, during a bolekaja session triggered by the release of a report alleging that Speaker Patricia Etteh had acted improperly in the award of contracts. Barely three years later, there was another such rowdy sitting, this time caused by the allegations of corruption levelled against Speaker Dimeji Bankole. No life was lost this time, thank God, but at least one lawmaker broke his arm.
Segun Adeniyi has his own testimony. In his book Power, Politics and Death, the former presidential spokesperson says that once, at the Presidential Villa, an angry state governor “charged at me. It took the intervention of the (National Security Adviser) and the (Director-General) of the (State Security Service) to separate the two of us.”
Now, that was the same governor who reportedly got into a fight at a hotel bar in Abuja a few years ago (and made sure to properly deal with the journalist who had the temerity to report the disgraceful incident).
What all of these eruptions of anger – verbal and physical (at the highest levels of power in the country) – have in common is this: They almost always exist ONLY at the level of naked, primal ego.
Now, ego is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. It’s a human thing, without it not much that is of value to humanity would ever be accomplished. And we, of course, cannot take away ego from political conduct – show me a politician without an ego and I’ll show you a crumbling tombstone.
But I think the fundamental difference between a dysfunctional state like Nigeria and a functioning country is that the functioning countries somehow manage to ensure that the battles their politicians fight are ALSO about the people they were elected to serve. In other words, the ego component is tempered to some extent by an ideology, a philosophical principle connected to a larger citizen-directed quest: for justice, freedom, national prosperity, among others.
Look at the ongoing gun debate in the United States of America. Of course, there’s often silly partisanship involved, and displays of obduracy that are driven by the basest manifestations of human ego, but what you cannot fault is that the overriding essence of that debate – with all the bitterness and rage – is about the safety of the American people, and the preservation of fundamental freedoms (the freedom to protect oneself clashing with the freedom to live a life that will not be cut short by a deranged gun-wielder).
That’s what one is hard-pressed to find in Nigeria. Days ago, a friend of mine, clearly unimpressed by the amount of time the newspapers had been devoting to the Jonathan-Amaechi battle, asked me why the country was obsessing over the fight. His point was simple: Should we really care that much about two Big Men fighting? Of what real relevance is this fight to the multitudes of Nigerians who are expecting more from the two politicians than they’re currently delivering in their various spheres of influence?
We all know this is not a fight over the best way to bring positive change to Nigeria. This is not even a fight about ideology. It is simply the egos of two very powerful men clashing against a giant backdrop emblazoned with 2015. So why should we care? Why should we take sides? This is not a fight that will increase the ordinary Nigerian’s access to a mortgage, or health insurance, or protection from armed criminals. When members of the House of Representatives are brawling, it’s never over the finer points of a bill designed to bring groundbreaking change, but instead over a contract award by some principal officer or the other.
The ordinary Nigerian will never be more than the suffering grass in all of these fights between evidently well-fed elephants.
And then again, this is Nigeria, where we take the “no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests” rule to ludicrous heights. This country creates more jobs for “peacemakers” than any other class of people (apart from grave-diggers). As we speak, a statesman (typically a former Head of State or a traditional ruler) is probably making plans to “broker peace” between the two warring South-South elephants. And then, we’ll see the papers awash with photos of backslapping and grinning men. What we won’t see are the hordes of confused supporters who, having taken sides in the roforofo fight, now struggle to make sense of the new status quo.
Only a few weeks ago, an angry Femi Fani-Kayode was insinuating on Twitter that presidential spokesperson, Reuben Abati, was the mis-talking product of a same-sex marriage. Weeks later, both men were pictured together grinning in the pages of the newspaper at the funeral of Oluwole Awolowo (a funeral that was almost disrupted by yet another silly fight between the Ogun State government officials and the Federal Government delegation, over front-row rights).
It is the Nigerian way. We get angry, fight, make up, and re-align with a randomness that underlines the emptiness of it all. All of the display of anger is devoid of ideology, devoid of principle, and totally disconnected from the impulse to advance the welfare of citizens or development of the society.
All we’re doing is fight for the sake of fighting; an endless and senseless scramble for power and wealth for the sake of power and wealth. And, a tragedy of inestimable proportions.
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