[size=14pt]Why Nigeria Is A Forged Product, by Kayode Fayemi[/size]
Jul 18, 2010


Kayode Fayemi
*’We must crack PDP for Nigeria to survive’
* ‘Nigeria made false choices’

The first salvo was caustic: “Nigeria is becoming a progressively worse country and we have gotten to a stage where the administration we just complained about yesterday or just got rid of is considered better than the new one.
“Just look at Goodluck Jonathan. The court gave a judgment on the Bauchi State Deputy Governor who was wrongly impeached and yet, the state governor, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, refuses to obey the court judgment. Even as bad as late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was, he would not just sit and watch the show of shame in Bauchi where you have two deputy governors. That is the sad story of my country”. Kayode Fayemi is of the Action Congress, AC, and was its governorship candidate in the Ekiti State governorship contest of 2007. His pedigree as an intellectual of global reckoning compelled us to seek his views. You will not be disappointed.
Excerpts:
By Jide Ajani, Deputy Editor & Anthonia Onwuka

Are things getting better in Nigeria?
Nigeria is becoming a progressively worse country and we have gotten to a stage where the administration we just complained about yesterday or just got rid of is considered better than the new one.

Just look at Goodluck Jonathan. The court gave a judgment on the Bauchi State Deputy Governor who was wrongly impeached and yet, the state governor, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, refuses to obey the court judgment. Even as bad as late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was, he would not just sit and watch the show of shame in Bauchi where you have two deputy governors. That is the sad story of my country.
When you returned to the country after the pro-democracy struggle, you were full of ideas on how to make Nigeria a greater country. How far with those wonderful ideas?
Well, for some of us, the Nigeria project is a life-long struggle and everyone who is a product of this country should have a significant commitment to this nation. However, I also recognize the limitations of nationhood in Nigeria. I understand that Nigeria is not where we want it to be. I came into the country 10 odd years ago, not oblivious of the challenges we face as a nation. My mantra at the time was that this was a transition without transformation and that what we had was not political reconfiguration but neo-militarism because it was an extension of military rule of sorts.


The man whom they brought in was an ex-military general, many of the people who surfaced in the National Assembly at that time were those we called Abacha politicians (or the parties late Chief Bola Ige referred to as the five fingers of a leprous hand) – an extension of military rule; and those of us who were in the fore-front of anti-military rule and pro-democracy movement were really, either on our own part, or by the system, sidelined.
Some of us never believed that that was the way to go because we genuinely believed that we needed a peoples’ constitution, that would be wholly driven by the concerns of the people but what we got was different: We got a military constitution; we got an election that was by and large structured, organized. We got directed democracy of sorts which was in itself never really a bad thing.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2010/07/18/why-nigeria-is-a-forged-product-by-kayode-fayemi/

Why was it not a bad idea?
You have to understand that there is never really a perfect time to join a system that was already rotten and that we were trying to clean up and compromises had to be made.
Take Apartheid, in its dying days. The likes of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki and the leadership of the African National Congress, ANC, had to do deals in order to get the country moving on. Those deals were objected to by certain elements in the party but ultimately, it has succeeded in putting South Africa on a sound footing and things are getting better for them.

Talking about compromises, Nigeria appears jinxed. Compromises are made with a view to moving forward and removing bottlenecks in some instances. First, what compromises were made in 1998/1999?

Even the idea of having an Olusegun Obasanjo as the candidate of an election was the product of a compromise because the feeling was that the south west had been short-changed by virtue of the fact that somebody won an election and he was denied the opportunity to become president that is Chief M K O Abiola. Though some of us did not even agree with that because Abiola was not a Yoruba president – he was voted for by Nigerians so I didn’t even agree with that type of arrangement.
Then the idea of even registering the Alliance for Democracy, AD, which did not quite meet the threshold set by INEC at the time, was a compromise to appease a very vibrant section of the pro-democracy movement and a vibrant section of the country by the powers that be. That was done.
An Obasanjo and AD as compromises have even become major albatrosses Nigeria is carrying. Obasanjo is seen by many as a failure and that he wasted Nigeria’s eight years; AD, which came with so much promise, is as good as dead. So, whereas South Africa’s compromises succeeded in moving that country forward, Nigeria’s own have become unmitigated failure? Negative outcomes!
That is what happens when you are left with false choices.

One, we did not get the kind of democracy that we wanted. We are talking about a peoples’ democracy. We were even prepared to have an interim government that would produce a people’s constitution that would lead to genuine democracy but the Nigerian state has always been a forged product – but that is also not unique to Nigeria.
In history, nations are firstly, imagined communities. There is no nation that is automatically there for the taking; they are products of compromises, of wars, of banditry – that is how nation states have emerged in history. So there is nothing so fundamentally different here.

But when you say countries have emerged through certain processes and that there is nothing new in Nigeria’s instance, why, after 50 years have we been moving backwards?
Good! The problem with Nigeria is that we as a people have always resorted to shortcuts. That is the problem of the 1999 transition: It was just a reconfiguration and not a transformation. It was the same old elements those who dominated the terrain in 1999 were the elements in Grassroots Democratic Movement, GDM; United Nigeria Congress Party, UNCP; National Centre Party of Nigeria, NCPN, and so on.

These were the people who all moved in to form the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. That thing they call PDP is not a political party. It’s been a business concern, an agglomeration, an election machine. That is what that thing is for.

And once elections are over, they turn against themselves, against one another within the same party and they become the strongest opposition to themselves because for them it is about power that is what unites them and it is not power to do good or for the benefit of the people but power just for its sake.
We really need to crack PDP in order to have a Nigeria of our dreams.


When you say WE, who are those who would constitute this WE?
Those of us who genuinely believe that another Nigeria is possible, we are the WE I am referring to. A Nigeria that would be interested in the progress of its people; a Nigeria that would be able to hold its head high in the comity of nations, a Nigeria that would live up to the promises. Everybody talks about the potentials of Nigeria but potentials are just potentials if they are not realized.