Guardian

LET’S start with creating justification for the headline. Usually in the university system, the course number is calibrated to underscore the class or year of study of students. For instance, Pol 102 may designate some course for first year students of the Political Science Department. Precisely, it may be a second semester course as denoted by the last figure (2). The calibration will drop by a point to 101 if it is a first semester course, with a likely title: Introduction To Political Science.

The point here is that understanding the Nigerian politician is an advanced political thought that cannot be adequately exposed and understood at the lower rungs of the academic ladder. The inherent complexities are most engaging and enough to constitute basis for scholarly inquisition at the doctorate degree level. This is why the subject matter of the Anatomy of the Nigerian Politician has to be aptly designated Political Science (POL) 701, not only to be studied by postgraduate students but those pursuing the ultimate laurel of a third degree.

What drives politics in Nigeria does not apply universally. If we define politics as the art and science of power acquisition, we automatically accept that politics is a process that entails scheming and manoeuvring. It becomes very bad when the process replaces the purpose of politics, which is the acquisition of power for purposes of public service delivery. In Nigeria, quite unfortunately, politics is more about the process and less about the purpose. If a purpose is ever highlighted, the interpretation is even more horrible. And because this is so, it takes a completely strange set of attributes to qualify as a politician in Nigeria. Even when such attributes are virtuous in their universal context, they assume a vicious colouration in their local application. While loyalty, for instance, is a virtue in all contexts, it is one of the attributes that is making politics look more like a cultic practice in Nigeria.

The political recruitment process is in the firm grip of a ruthless cabal of kingmakers. For a politician to launch beyond the wings to the mainstream, he must be seen to be loyal to the cabal. No politician climbs up to the next level without excellently scaling the loyalty test. Competence is not so much a consideration here, as the preference is for ‘good citizens’ who will obey the laws and show respect to the established hierarchy and not hot headed ideologues who will refuse to pay homage as at when due and will be spoiling at all times like Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State for a fight with elders.

At all level of political placement, the loyalty test is required. The local government chairman and even the councillor must be loyal. The minister, commissioner, aides and other political appointees must be loyal to the appointing authority. Competence is very secondary and it is the reason why a goat who passes the loyalty test with excellent scores will stand a much better chance than a Harvard trained technocrat, who has his/her head in cloud seven. Former chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr Audu Ogbe had his head in the sky and that caused him to write his resignation, some said, at gun point, to pave way for a loyalist called Ahmadu Ali, who had his head on the ground.

All legislators at the national level and in the 36 states are where they are because they are loyal men and women to the controlling cabal. Usually, before elections are held, the loyalty test is conducted, by the contending political parties to sift the promoters from the pretenders. In the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the final list must be approved by the big man who owns the party. It is not any different in the PDP, except to add that the considerations are slightly broader to the extent that the final list of loyalists will derive from a consensus of the party oligarchs. It is called imposition of candidates in the local political parlance. The practice offends the fundamentals of democracy as a government of the people by the people and for the people.

But that is a debate for another day. What is much more pertinent in the polity outside the security challenges posed by the Boko Haram insurgency is the crisis in the so-called Governors Forum. It is a loyalty test that has been poorly managed. Specifically, it is contest between President Goodluck Jonathan and Governor Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi over who between them commands larger loyalty among the 36 governors, which to me is most unnecessary.

Look at it this way: The 36 states are theoretically part of the President’s crowd and to that extent, he has a responsibility under the rules of engagement to secure his boundaries against infiltrators, which include Amaechi. By the same reasoning, Amaechi does not have, as they say in law, a locus standi in the matter at hand. He should be searching for loyal council chairmen and state as well as national legislators of Rivers State origin and not loyal governors. Is Plateau, Akwa Ibom, Delta or Ondo States part of Amaechi’s constituency as a governor? To say the least, the governor is interpreting his job description upside down and someone very close should tell him this and very fast too.

If he is eager to appropriate the NGF as part of his electoral constituency, he should patiently wait till he becomes vice president in 2015. After all, he is known to exercise good patience when it matters most and with a bit of goodluck on his side, he will surprise everybody when the time comes by ascending from the doldrums onto the podium as he did in 2007, when he became governor from a hideout. For now however, the position remains that he has broken a golden rule of the gang and must be made to pay dearly for it. Amaechi does not have a defence because he is a signatory to the protocol and he had been practising same most religiously. Didn’t he, Amaechi, run the chairman of Okrika local government area Tamuno Williams out of office for being loyal to the wrong person, First Lady Patience Jonathan? What about the recent sack of the chairman of Obio Akpor local council, Timothy Onwubueliri by the state legislators for being loyal to Nyeson Wike, minister of state for education, himself a defecting loyalist of Amaechi?

Oh, when it is within a state, it is ‘democracy in action’ and when it is between the Federal Government and the states it is ‘demonstration of crazy powers.’ Today in Rivers State, only few legislators both at the state and national Houses of Assembly are ranking. This is because Governor Amaechi saw in the 2011 general election an opportunity to get rid of all the troublemakers and load in loyalists at that level of the political leadership. Also, when the old board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) was dissolved midway into the four-year tenure, the governor did not waste the opportunity to drag in a loyalist who was his best man at his wedding as managing director. That is good politics overall.

What was then wrong if President Jonathan saw in the NGF election to choose a new chairman, a wide window to get off his back a troublesome gadfly that had been causing him anxious moments and bring in a loyalist who would strictly stick to instructions regarding the task ahead in 2015? In other words, it will help to keep this unending debate within the parameters of practical politics and avoid the temptation of introducing cold morals because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Let him without sin cast the first stone! Is it Governor Rochas Okorocha, who, reports say, has become a sole administrator without the balancing inputs of the legislature and judiciary in Imo state or the ACN governors who do not even have the magnanimity to accept a fellow progressive, Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State as one of their own? Enough to say that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Meanwhile, the answers to the great questions raised lie in designing a new character for the Nigerian politician; a transformation that will make the politician take a position as part of a process and not the process itself. For now, the Nigerian politician has an exaggerated rating of his worth in the socio-political dynamics, a situation that can be effectively managed if the controls are in order. The greater tragedy however, is that the controlling institutions are comatose and that also is a product of the murderous operation of the politician who sees the dismantling of state institutions as a mark of excellent politics.

While on one hand, the governors would want the judiciary and the police to maintain the full weight of institutional character in dealing with matters between them and the centre, they would wish, on the other hand, to act unrestrained if the matter were between them and council chairmen in their states. There is never a universal concept of justice. The truth is at once circumstantial and made elastic to accommodate the overflowing moral frailties of the politician, who manages almost always, to package and put across his inadequacies as a thriving national culture.

One of the vices that have been fraudulently sustained over the years as a virtue is called loyalty. And since it has been accepted, ab initio, that being loyal to a godfather, governor, president or one seemingly subjective interest in the techniques of civil governance is good and even imperative, the people can only seek to cultivate a corresponding capacity to live with mediocre leadership. No good man or woman is loyal in the sense of the Nigerian politician. Only fools are and so there shouldn’t be murmurings if we have fools in the saddle. Action and reaction are equal and opposite as they say, even in politics.