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An Epidemic of Downward Mobility

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By Chidi Amuta

It is a sort of sinking feeling. Something like an uncontrolled slide into a dungeon down a slippery slope. You seem trapped as you descend into a hellish pit out of which you are powerless to climb out. The descent is often propelled by a force beyond your control. Government. The IMF. The World Bank. Policy makers in Abuja and other bastions of power.

Suddenly, your living standards plummet.  The things that you have long taken for granted slip out of your control and become privileged luxuries instead of casual entitlements.  You begin to learn a life style of subtractions, eliminations and substitutions. Subtract bread and replace with slices of yam; cut out butter for breakfast and do palm oil stew. Demobilize one car out of a fleet of two. Cut back on electricity consumption. Switch to fans instead of air conditioners etc.

It is time to quit cooking with gas and switch to firewood and charcoal. But someone from the government is paid to scream about climate change and deforestation. There is no need to go to the hospital for every little headache. Forget essential drugs. Just pray and hope for the best. It is time for every man to become a doctor in the house: ‘physician, heal thyself!’  Ours is after all a land of miracles. There is no need for man made medicines. Just call in the neighborhood pastor to say a little prayer and ‘ye shall become whole!’ Do not worry about what thou shall eat. Man shall not live by bread alone! Adults do not need three meals a day. That luxury should be reserved for children.

The elimination and substitutions goes on in nearly every aspect of your daily life. Beyond individual life changes, you see whole segments of the society sliding downwards. Government has changed and has introduced new economic policies. A new deity is in town. It is called “the economy”; it feeds on the things that make people happy and lives livable. The things that enabled a better life yesterday have suddenly been pulled off.  Downward mobility suddenly replaces upward mobility as the standard mode of social aspiration.

In nearly all cultures, the desire of citizens to move upwards in their circumstances is universal. We strive to move up in our circumstances. We toil so that our children will live a better life than us. In a sense, the dream of all humanity is that the next generation will, through education and skill acquisition, enjoy a better quality and standard of life than the present. In this sense, all national dreams have a meeting point: upward mobility. Details and cultural paraphernalia may differ but we all meet at the place of a better life for our offspring. The future is always a better place.

Some societies have a constant dream, an ideal that fires the aspirations and hopes of their citizens. The American dream is easily the most famous. It is best captured by ‘the pursuit of happiness’ through positive aspiration and grueling hard work. It is most graphically captured by the 2006 film ‘The Pursuit of Happiness” directed by Gabriel Muccinno starring Will Smith as a homeless salesman in search of a good and meaningful life.

In real life, the American dream remains alive as the powering impetus of the United States as the land of possibility and opportunity for those who seek it through hard work and perseverance. The son or daughter of a pauper can struggle through a life of obstacles and booby traps to emerge on the sunny side of life as a millionaire or something nearly as good. Not too many people, native born or immigrants, achieve the American dream. But they all embrace the spirit and struggle on. Hope eternal drives life’s struggles towards a national dream that fires every life.

This is why people of diverse nationalities keep trooping to America in the hope of realizing the American dream in one lifetime if possible. The material indicators of the attainment of the American dream in the lives of individuals include a good credit card, a house on a viable mortgage, a decent automobile, and access to weekend grocery shopping, sausage and egg on the breakfast table and the occasional annual vacation for self and family etc. These appearances decorate a pretension to partaking in the American dream.

No one has yet defined the Nigerian dream in any clear terms. No one knows exactly what the average Nigerian kid struggling through school should look forward to on graduation. It is a blind voyage into the treacherous darkness of chances and uncertainty. To the politically minded elite, the Nigerian dream is the realization of a truly united nation that is home to all Nigerians irrespective of creed, region or tongue. To the common folk, the Nigerian dream is a place to call home, to pursue one’s quest for 3 meals and a future that is better than the present. The Nigerian dream is never an entitlement to material contentment.

The Nigerian dream in terms of social and economic life used to be the pursuit of happiness and fulfillment through education, a career path and an ‘arrival’ at a destination where every child that goes to school and succeeds ends up better than his/her parents in terms of material and socio economic accomplishments. The sun total of the aspiration of every struggling Nigerian is to bring up their children through education so that they can join the elite who possess cars, decent living accommodation, a career etc. In sum, up to the time of the civil war and soon after, it could be said that the Nigerian dream remained a certain upward mobility in which future generations were expected to far better than those before them in material socio economic terms.

The clearest manifestation of the thriving of the Nigerian dream was perhaps the rise of a Nigerian middle class. All over the country in the span between 1972 and 2007, there arose in the urban areas a demographic mass of Nigerians who could afford cars, apartments, weekend shopping, occasional holidays, bank accounts, investment in stocks and indulgence in the trappings of middle class existence. The middle class was an enrollment into a productive role in national development.

Earlier in our history, investment in higher education was the best guarantee of enrollment into the Nigerian middle class. People pursued education as a means of guaranteeing their children a slot in the emergent middle class. Of course there were other not so legitimate routes to this dream. Short cuts emerged: fraud, corruption, robbery, ritual and cybercrimes. They could earn financial and material reward but not a place among the middle class.

The success of the economic policies of successive administrations could mostly be measured by whether the youth were moving upwards or were static or were regressing socio economically. Times changed and different periods redefined upward mobility and the good life.

Easily the most noticeable upward mobility in terms of an increase in the size of the middle class was under the Obasanjo elected government between 1999 and 2007. The banking sector ballooned, access to consumer credit grew phenomenally, employment in new growth sectors- telecom, banking and financial services, oil and gas, public works, the stock market etc. Most importantly, the sudden and phenomenal growth in cell phone ownership and use unlocked hitherto hidden economic powers in the hands of multitudes in both rural and urban Nigeria (and Africa). This coincided with the period when the international slogan about Africa changed from unrelieved doomsday predictions about “the dark continent” to an upbeat optimistic note about ‘Africa rising’ especially up to the 2010s.

In sharp contrast to the rev of upward mobility initiated under Mr. Obasanjo as elected president, the economic downturn under Buhari inaugurated a massive downward mobility that has only accelerated in the more recent months. National debt ballooned, inflation jumped, consumer credits dried up, retail and consumption shrank, unemployment grew as businesses struggled etc. From 2015 to 2023, we witnessed a phenomenal rise of downward mobility. The middle class shrank as living costs shot up. Inflation shot up. Retail and construction nose dived as the exchange rate of the Naira to major currencies worsened more than ever before.

In the fifteen months under Mr. Bola Tinubu as president, Nigeria’s downward mobility has entered a jet speed momentum. It is now an epidemic. On a daily basis, throngs of Nigerians are sliding out of the middle class. Multitudes are drifting into poverty. Even those that used to exist at the fringes are now at the peripheries of bare existence. In some states, schools cannot reopen for the new school year as a result of high fuel prices making busing of children to school impossible. Some former middle class parents have changed the schools of their children and wards to lower class schools because of higher school fees. Even the federal government has increased school fees in the Unity Schools from N30, 000 per term to N100, 000 a term. In Lagos state, boarding fees have escalated from N30, 000 a term to N100, 000 per term. No one has said how these higher fees will be paid by parents whose monthly wag is about N70, 000!

Nigerian youth who cannot stand the gravity of spreading downward mobility have opted to flee, swearing that this was not the homeland that they dreamt of growing up in. The more elderly are fleeing also in the hope of finding places where their old age medical costs can be covered by the welfare schemes of better climes. The only jobs they can find range from morgue attendants, care home attendants to grueling manual labor as factory hands. The favorite destinations of the japa crowd range from Canada to the United States, the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirate, South Africa and even some unlikely African destinations.

Some of the youth have set out with nowhere in particular as destination. Some have found themselves stranded in fatal crossings through the Sahara desert only hoping that their voyage would lead to southern Europe. Many have died of heat and exhaustion. Others have boarded boats on a journey of no return. Many have perished in the Mediterranean, leaving no trace, trail or message. For those who have stubbornly stayed at home, a different life has been defined by minus signs. Exclude one meal. Exclude another half. Exclude hospitals and make do with across- the- counter cheap drugs from Pakistani and India.

In the last one year, the rate at which Nigerians are being forced out of the middle class is unequalled in our history. Astronomical gasoline prices have chased many off the roads as car owners. Families that owned and operated two or more cars now make do with one. Inflation has reached 43% while unemployment figures among the young highly qualified has exceeded 4.5%. Food inflation has driven many Nigerians into an unplanned hunger republic.

In recent times, parents who manage to send their children to schools and universities are doing so in order to keep the children engaged and out of trouble. There is hardly any expectation that the children would end up better educated or socio economically better off. We are now in a precarious position in our socio economic evolution.

We used to lament that we the middle class of today are a ‘sandwich’ generation; we served and took care of our parents in old age. We ferried our children to privileged schools now only to have little time and resources for ourselves in retirement. Now, we are paying through our noses to educate children who are condemned to end up worse off than us and our fathers! Those we were expecting to take care of us in old age are themselves likely to remain dependent on us for the foreseeable future.

This is the crux of our present curse of raging downward mobility. Undoubtedly, our epidemic of downward mass migration has unmistakable political origins. It is inbuilt in a growing endemic culture of bad governance whose origins we know too well and whose duration remains unknown. Those who have descended from the middle class are not likely to return there any time soon. Those driven into poverty may be stuck there for the rest of their lives. The children now being thrust into poverty may be stuck there forever as more children are born into the poverty republic of the world. Everyone knows we are descending downhill but no one knows when the slide will end and whether an economic recovery is possible in our life time.

Yet, our only hope of recovery lies in the political realm. Democracy holds the key in the hope that the periodic changes of administrations will bring forth leadership that will redefine national progress and reverse our descent into oblivion. No one knows if Nigerian democracy will eve produce leaders of vision and courage that can reverse the curse of this generation.

When in one life time, we see the lives of the majority take a nose dive downwards, something uncanny has happened. Worse still, when in spite of our most strenuous efforts the life expectations of our children is condemned to end up worse than ours, we are in a bad place. No quantum of prayers and supplications is likely to rescue a nation mired in bad governance and misrule.

Dr. Amuta, a Nigerian journalist, intellectual and literary critic, was previously a senior lecturer in literature and communications at the universities of Ife and Port Harcourt.


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SPECIAL REPORTS

Tinubu: Hints of a Failing Mission

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By Chidi Amuta

The current mood of the nation is defined by a question mark.  Most people are not quite sure where the Tinubu presidency is leading us. You hear it in the market place, at airport lounges, on the streets and in boardrooms.  At first there was an optimism founded on the newness of the tenure. After all an election had taken place and expectations were high that the new thing would yield new beginnings and imbue new hope. The new administration even borrowed a name and a slogan from the prevailing air. Tinubu and his acolytes called their agenda: “Renewed Hope”!

These days, the name tag is won mostly by minions on the corridors of Aso Villa and straggling jobless party men and women who cannot find a better job out there. Everywhere else, the mood is bleak. The cult of optimists is dwindling. Those who feel that the Tinubu presidency will yield some smiles are getting fewer or going into hiding. Regime economists are falling back to the conditionalities economists usually attach to: “all things being equal”, knowing that in the real world of economic utopia, all things can never be equal.

Only some global economists lead the chorus of optimists about Nigeria’s prospects. The World Bank knows that election cycles and four year terms define our policy environment. They are saying Nigerian’s current reforms will yield positive results if sustained for long enough. In fact, the Bank has determined that Nigeria needs to sustain the Tinubu reforms for upwards of fifteen years to see results! No one knows where Tinubu would be in fifteen years’ time.

We only know that even with the best of electoral fortunes, there would be no Tinubu administration in fifteen years. And for certain, whatever administrations succeed Tinubu would look back at the man and his baggage as bad history or just not want to touch him with a long pole.

Nigerian political animals that support Tinubu nonetheless are less definitive than the World Bank or the Central Bank of Nigeria. Of course the apostolic certainty of the Central Bank is founded on matters of job security and tenure assurance. So no one shuld blame the CBN for being the most optimistic apostles of Tinubu’s reforms.

Nigerian political believers in the Tinubu reform are being politically correct. Their nuances are diverse. Tinubu needs time to deliver. Less than two years is nothing in the life of an administration. There is still time. The man needs more time to deliver. Give the man a break….

Tinubu’s foreign affairs minister, Mr. Tuggar has appealed for patience from Nigerians, insisting that Tinubu would deliver. He falls back to the usual lazy self-assurance that Nigeria is after all not alone in passing through hard times in today’s world. He even attributes current hardships to past policy missteps ranging from the 2008 global financial crisis and Nigeria’s failure to invest in more refineries to the 2020 Covid-19 emergency.

Vice President Shettima has been understandably vociferous in defending his administration’s policies and of course urging hope in the prospects of current policies. Mr. Shettima insists he is aware of the hardship all over the country but says that there are no alternatives to the draconian policies if the nation must return to the ‘path of growth’. He does not of course go beyond platitudes to identify the indices of the growth that his administration’s policies are aiming at returning us to.

Closer home, the sound bites are a bit more realistic. Mrs. Remi Tinubu is First Lady and a politician. She is nearest the temple. She has protested aloud that the problems of our current hardship were not caused by her husband. The problems have always been there. Her husband only came to help alleviate a bad situation. And he is doing it as a patriotic duty, not for financial returns. She has repeatedly reminded us all that her family has always been a wealthy family, not needing to fiddle with the national till.

There has been a more overtly political appeal for understandng on the Tinubu plight and the clear and present possibility that it could fail. My very good and respected friend, former Ogun state governor, Chief Olusegun Osoba, is not a frivolous man. He is a serious political voice whose views weigh heavily in the nation and in the South West in particular. Chief Osoba recently vowed that South West politicians will defend and protect the Tinubu presidency through two four-year terms as a Yoruba son.

For, Tinubu is first and foremost a Yoruba president deployed to serve Nigeria. Osoba is not so concerned about Tinubu’s competence, effectiveness or policy relevance. For him, the equation is simple. Tinubu is a Yoruba son at the helm of national power. He must be supported to succeed. He has to be a successful Yoruba president even if he turns out a woeful national leader.  This is perhaps the closest we get to a tacit admission and hint that the Tinubu presidency might fail as a national institution.

Other South West leaders like Obasanjo and Bode George have found alternative dialects for communicating the looming Tinubu disaster. Obasanjo has opted for silence and generalizations and a bit of symbolism. Earlier, he had donned the Tinubu trade mark cap and innocuously visited Tinubu under the First Lady’s escort. Thereafter, he went silent on criticism of Tinubu’s policies. Mr. Bode George is in a class of his own. At some point, he was an arch PDP stalwart. At other times, he was full of bile for Tinubu and the APC. At other times, he harbours some hope in Tinubu and his presidency.

What runs through all these conflicting hints of trouble at the altar of the Tinubu presidency is a worrisome admission that the optimism that greeted the onset of the administration may be heading to a bad place. The two cardinal policies of the administration – fuel subsidy removal and currency liberalization -have literally overturned the fragile economy. Inflation is through the roof. Living costs are insane. In less than 18 months, what used to look like the semblance of a middle class has been wiped off. An atmosphere of insecurity that first fed on hardship and poverty has been aggravated by worsening hardship. Hunger has joined general poverty to expand the confines of hell.

Let us not make any mistakes about where this administration has landed us. It has set precedents in our national economic history. We have the highest rate of inflation at over 33%. We have the worst exchange rate in history at over N1, 700  to a dollar. We now rank as one of the worst performing currencies in the world. We have the highest percentage of poor population in excess of 78 million. We now have the highest electricity tariff in our history. Our streets and highways are at their most frightful in history as we inhabit one of the half dozen most dangerous countries in the world.

The clear question that haunts the nation is a simple one: Can the policy thrust of the Tinubu presidency produce a positive reversal of its corrosive effects? In other words, can we witness a reversal of the bad exchange rate? Will we return to an era of more affordable gasoline at the pumps? Will food affordability replace the present virtual famine? Will things get better or worse still?  There is an even larger question: has this administration’s tinkering with policy and a rudderless governance style plunged the nation into an even deeper ditch than it was in May, 2023? And why?

Judgments and verdicts on the Tinubu presidency are wrong headed in my view. We cannot judge what we do not know or cannot characterize. No one has as yet told us what this presidency was all about in the first place. What were the policy objectives of the administration? What kind of society did the new administration aim at? What vision has fuelled Tinubu’s long term political hunger and aspiration?

It is important to raise these basic questions in order to understand what vision Tinubu shared with his team at inception and on the basis of which he can possibly evaluate their performance. In terms of style, values, goals, performance targets and national character, what kind of nation did Tinubu aim at? The remarkable leader is that one who wakes up his nation and takes it along an unfamiliar road to that place where they have never been before but have been longing to go. Even in modern democracies with well-established presidential or parliamentary traditions, successive leaders come to power with the aim of re-creating the nation along definable lines.

Is Tinubu a visionary leader? In other words, has his political career been in pursuit of a vision of Nigeria that is yet unachieved? Is Tinubu a restorative leader? In other words, does he aim at recreating a glorious chapter of the Nigerian past and make it his? Is he, for instance, obsessed with the idea of nationalizing the Awo legacy and making it a Nigerian template? Is Tinubu a transformational leader? In other words, has he set out to transform Nigeria from static primordiality into bubbling modernity? Does he aim to change our ways and bring the nation up to the modern ways of nations of our age, and resource status?  A traveller who does not know where he set out to go cannot be accused of getting to nowhere!

Dr Chidi Amuta is a renowned Nigerian academic and writer. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria


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Rivers: An Emperor’s Road to Harakiri

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By Chidi Amuta

On May 17th 2024, this column published a piece with the tittle “An Emperor and His Nemesis”. It was a prognostic analysis of the impending political crisis in Rivers State because of the suffocating hold of ex-governor Wike on his surrogate, Siminalayi Fubara, the incumbent governor of the state. Recent events in the politics of the state, especially the just concluded successful local government election coup by the governor, indicate an inevitable nasty end to Mr. Wike’s untidy career as an overbearing political god father. We may indeed be witnessing Mr. Wike’s speedy race into political irrelevance and inevitable Harakiri.

The drama of unrelenting political bad behaviour in Rivers State has entered a decisive street corner. Incumbent governor Mr. Siminalayi Fubara has dealt what looks like a killer blow on his principal political adversary god father.  The Governor, pushed to the wall for most of his one and half year tenure, has managed to survive on political life support. It has been a combination of legal somersaults and political gymnastics.

Conflicting court orders and judgments have climbed on each other just as political strategems have wrestled with each other. But last weekend, Governor Fubara’s latest political ingenuity paid off. He organized a local government election with all candidates for the 23 local governments drawn from a strange APP –All Peoples Party. In a political quicksand, all but one of the local government council chairmanships were won by candidates of the strange party. By this masterstroke, Governor Fubara has further spinned the ever turning political wheel on his chief adversary, FCT minister, Nyesom Wike. This outcomes means that the grassroots political machinery of the state is now squarely in the hands of the embattled governor.

In the interim, all the political outcomes seem to favour the governor even though the aftershocks are still gathering storm.  But most of the significant political voices in the state and around the country have come out openly to condemn Mr. Wike’s long standing nuisance value in the politics of the state. While the Rivers storm continues to blow, most speculations are that Mr. Wike’s imperial reign over Rivers politics seems to be entering its final days.

No one can ignore the tragic aftermath of the recent local government elections either. At least three local government secretariats have been razed. Property has been destroyed while some lives have been lost. The credibility of the Nigeria police as an agent of law and order has been badly degraded as accusations of partisanship fly around. Predictably, the judicial battles are far from over. The Abuja Federal High Court has ruled in favour of the legitimacy of the pro-Wike opposition House of Assembly. Governor Fubara has since rushed to the Supreme Court to challenge this ruling.

In the aftermath of the post-Local government election agitations and violence, the partisans have reverted to their expected recourse. Governor Fubara has taken recourse to government’s responsibility to investigate the violent reactions and identify their authors. On their part, the disaffected partisans have continued to protest and prepare for further disorder and court mischief.

The Rivers political crisis is far from over. At best, the grassroots will be dominated by governor Fubara while the legislative power in Port Harcourt may be shared between the governor’s loyalists and his opposition legislators. The rest is a matter for political navigation.

Unfortunately, as the unfolding drama goes on, there is very little real governance going on in the state. If this turf war goes on and worsens, Rivers state may be another sad case of a state with immense resources but an arrested development. The ordinary people of the state may end up as the ultimate losers in this drama of an emperor with his ultimate nemesis.

The nasty wrestle between Governor Fubara and his mentor reveals the full gamut of intrigues that usually characterize the relationship between political god fathers and their surrogates. Mr. Wike did an untidy job of handing the baton of state governorship to his former state Accountant General. The illicit logic was perhaps that the critical challenge of all former governors in Nigeria is the extent to which they control the bag of nasty tricks played with public money while they were in office. Who better to guard your money secrets when you leave office than the chief book keeper of the state? That thinking seems to be what fueled the emergence of Mr. Fubara. The childish logic behind that calculation seems to have gone  up in smoke now that governor Fubara, has rediscovered that he is first and foremost a state governor and not an errand boy of a departed emperor. His recognition seems to be that he needs to be in both office and in power in order to command credibility no matter how they got to office.

The trouble is perhaps that Mr. Wike schemed to put Fubara in office and not in power from the beginning. The governor seems to have realized that the opposite is what he needs. He needs to be in both power and in political office.  The key hubris committed by Mr. Wike is that he did not allow Fubara to be minimally in office. He therefore reportedly surrounded the new governor with commissioners whom he himself chose. He reportedly dictated the portfolios, reporting line and created a separate line of reporting which ultimately ended with him in far away Abuja. Most importantly, all the state legislators were sponsored and loyal to Mr. Wike.

As it were, Wike was also to informally run Rivers State from his duty post in Abuja. He also put in place a coterie of local government chairpersons in all 23 local governments. Effectively, the entire political structure of Rivers state was in Mr. Wike’s back pocket. He himself openly boasted that he had paid the nomination fees of all political office holders in the state.

In order to keep his home base in tact politically, Wike maintained an eagle eyed watch over the state as an extension of his political manor. He had while in office either alienated or marginalized all major political voices in the state. An army of political jobbers and handpicked war lords maintained surveillance for Mr. Wike from inside the governor’s office, the state assembly and the local governments. An imperial rule was put in place over an entire state and has lasted for nearly 9 years.

But in pursuit of his imperial oversight over the state, Mr. Wike forgot a few rules of power incumbency. A man in a powerful political office such as that of a state governorship would want to be seen to wield the power of his office. Secondly, there can be only one captain on board a ship of state.  The commissioners were either serving Wike or Fubara. Similarly, the state legislators could not afford to be at variance with the governor who pays their salaries, allowances and sundry costs. Most importantly, the rule that governs the relationship of a political god father and his surrogate is ruled by distance. The political god father must keep his distance.

A god father who insists on having overriding influence over his surrogate and also sharing political visibility and the limelight with the surrogate is preparing for suicide. Wike wanted both control, influence and visibility. At the slightest opportunity, he was present in Rivers state, attending church events, child naming ceremonies and inconsequential political hangouts. He readily converted them into childish political sermons and an opportunity to visit key constituencies and holding sundry political meetings.  Confronted with such a god- father, the incumbent who wants to survive in office has only one choice: commit political regicide in order to regain his freedom and realize the object of his ascendancy.

Ordinarily, President Tinubu should have intervened to ease the political tension. Instead, the role of President Tinubu in the crisis is  a bit more problematic. He had a primary responsibility to ensure peace and security in Rivers state failing which he would be confronted with an impossible national security challenge. He needed to protect Wike who had become his political axe man in Rivers in order to use him to guarantee APC support in the strategic state.

Ostensibly, Wike had risked his political neck in order to guarantee both electoral victory and political support for Tinubu and the APC in Rivers. The President needed to play multiple impossible roles: impartial political arbiter as head of state, interested political leader of an embattled APC in Rivers, the protector of the political interest of his minister of the strategic FCT. That was the source of the early agreement that restored minimal co-operation between Wike and Fubara. But that respite evaporated soon enough because it was untenable and not founded in any sensible appreciation of the realities of Rivers politics. Tinubu’s earlier intervention was too heavily weighted in favour of Wike to be tenable.

But the grounds of that agreement were precarious and tenuous. It did not have understanding or control of the crucial factors that determine what happens in Rivers politics. The flow of money to oil the machinery of support cannot be controlled from Abuja at this point. There is no open campaign and so ‘political money’ cannot be used to buy support in the state. There is a limit to Wike’s personal war chest. He is not contesting an election in the state and cannot run riot with FCT resources as he probably could with state resources as Rivers state governor. Only Mr. Fubara has control over the money and power required to keep political support in Rivers State.

Most importantly, time has passed in favour of the governor and his consolidation of power. He has reached out to his Ijaw roots. They in turn have taken possession of their son in power. Fubara’s governorship is no longer a private arrangement between him and Wike. It is now an Ijaw governorship pitted against an upland conspiracy symbolized by Wike.

In recent times, Ijaw nationalism has acquired an unmistakable militancy which it has weaponized in pursuit of resource control at national and international levels. Niger Delta nationalism in pursuit of resource equity in Nigeria has become part of the international vocabulary about minority rights in the new world. The ability of the Ijaw to make life impossible for the rest of Nigeria is no longer in doubt. That capacity is even more enlarged in the context of states like Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta especially.

Therefore, Mr. Wike’s open threats to Fubara’s governorship reminded the governor that he is primarily an Ijaw son. As the political table seems to have turned in favour of Fubara, Tinubu has no choice than to retreat and find cover under the fire power of the changed canvas of the confrontation. He cannot afford to endanger the national oil and gas golden goose of the Niger Delta. He cannot also afford to back a minister who seems to be losing his support base very fast. It is safer to play and sound neutral and statesmanlike. This is why Tinubu has retracted to the “law and order” safe trench while leaving Wike to fend for himself.

Meanwhile, the crisis has altered the political landscape of partisan alliances in Rivers state. Key political heavy weights of the old PDP in Rivers have repositioned on the side of the governor and away from the ever belligerent Wike. Key political figures like Odili, Secondus, Opara, Omehia and some in the Amaechi APC have swung towards the governor. Unfortunately, there is no end to the number of political enemies that Wike made during his imperial over lordship of the state as governor. These have now become natural allies of the governor. Inside his own party, the PDP, Mr. Wike may not find the support to fight a local battle in the state. A state that had previously been celebrated as a PDP state is now so badly shaken that it is neither a PDP state nor an APC state. Wike has himself become something of a political bat, neither a bird nor a mammal. He is neither APC nor PDP.

At the national level, he is tolerated by the APC hierarchy as the president’s hatchet man and ‘friend’ but a risky political capital. If Tinubu admits him into APC, it will be a risk he took alone and may have to pay for later. The PDP at the national level cannot re-embrace Wike because he is a divisive figure who has grossly damaged the party and literally neutralized its national and state chances.

The interesting political spectacle that lies ahead in Rivers State is not the plight of Fubara. The governor has finally dug into the essential power nexus of the state and also eroded the grassroots power base of his traducer.

What lies ahead is the fate that lies ahead of Mr. Wike. His home base is degraded. His political solidarity in the state is splintered. What remains of it are merely mendicants and lightweights, people who rely on Wike for handouts to keep afloat. Most politically consequential Rivers people have moved on away from Wike. His national partisan affiliation is doubtful. His continued political relevance now hands mostly on his relationship with President Tinubu and his nuisance presence as FCT minister. If he loses the confidence of Tinubu or loses his portfolio as FCT minister, he might as well find himself an exile home in Abuja. What remains of it are merely mendicants and lightweights, people who rely on Wike for handouts to keep afloat. Most politically consequential Rivers people have moved on away from Wike.

He has to face the many tragic possibilities that await a political god father when they run out of relevance and options.  First, he could be chased into involuntary exile by his erstwhile surrogate. The man he created and installed could make life impossible for him by eroding all his leverage on resources and patronage. He might even need the written permission of the incumbent to visit his home village in extreme cases. The god father could be literally “killed” politically by being denied political followership and relevance in his erstwhile power base.

In all these gruesome possibilities, what we witness is the previous man of power, a deserted emperor walking towards a deserved Harakiri.

Dr. Amuta, a Nigerian journalist, intellectual and literary critic, was previously a senior lecturer in literature and communications at the universities of Ife and Port Harcourt.


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How Country? (2024)

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By Chidi Amuta

It is that time of the year again for our ritual roadside assessment of the state of the nation from the perspective of the common folk . It is the last quarter of the year, that time of the year when nearly every Nigerian household takes stock of their fortunes in the year that is about to elapse. Above all, it is the first year and half of a new government. After one year of honeymoon, the new Tinubu government will soon run out of excuses on the promises it made to the electorate during the election campaigns early last year. It is time to ask again: “How Country?”

The “How country?” test is my ancient method of measuring the mood and state of the nation hardly ever fails. It is at once a casual greeting as well as reaching out to neighbours in normal Nigerian street parlance. It is just a simple greeting cast in the mould of a universal non- committal question: “How Country?” You throw it casually at people you encounter at the roadside, in barbers’ shops, in the drive way of the super market  as you walk in. You don’t expect any in- depth answers.

All you usually get is a reflex response. The respondents hardly have time to reflect on their answers. But it quite often gives you a quick snapshot of the way things are in the country on the go. It is a sort of everyman’s instant state of the union address on the go. No partisanship. No colourful choreographed answers. Just straight from the hips knee jerk instant response. The answers you get reflect everything from the misery index, the state of security, the ease of finding work, paying your bills or just getting by on a daily basis. Most importantly, the answers are a measure of how ordinary people are faring and how they generally view the prospects of our commonwealth.

 ‘How country?’ hovers between bad English and pidgin, dangling between serious enquiry and a casual perfunctory greeting.  You therefore mostly get answers in mostly hybrid lingo as well. In normal times, you get: “We dey!” In times of political turmoil, you are likely to get: “Country bend small!” In times of economic hardship, you are likely to get:” We dey manage!” When economic hardship joins political confusion and uncertainty, you get: “God dey our side”.

It has always worked for me in journalism as an illicit public opinion sampling technique. It is at once a way of expressing cordiality and fellow feeling, a reaffirmation of shared feelings as members of a national community of feelings. What irks me probably pains you. What pains me gnaws at your innermost feelings. Thrown at a troubled soul, the question suggests that perhaps there is someone out there who shares your pains or feels your hurt even without your telling them.

But in the end, “How country?” becomes a way of restating that we are partakers in a community of feelings, caring about each other in a common patrimony whose state of health resonates in our individual circumstances and can be measured in our spontaneous responses to casual greetings. Our private states come shinning through our spontaneous responses to simple greetings.

As compatriots, we share something intangible, a common concern for the state of the nation and the state of the state that presides over us all.  The state of things comes to us in the simple things of life that make life worth living. How easy is it to get to work? How adequate is the minimum wage to get us to and from work? How affordable is junior’s school fees? Do we have enough to share a cup of garri or rice for the neighbor next door?

Deploying the ‘how country?’ informality, I usually use a crude sampling method to get a rough idea of the state of the nation or the feelings of ordinary citizens. This is something that neither my training in the humane letters, social sciences or media studies specifically taught me.

On a given day, I would throw the friendly greeting/question at a cross section of ordinary strangers irrespective of class, ethnicity, circumstance or countenance. By the end of the day, I am likely to have greeted a cross section of fellow countrymen and women ranging from my gate man, cook, steward, secretary, driver, managers, policemen at the checkpoint, laborers at a building site or my customer, the woman who roasts corn or unripe plantain (year in, year out) at the roadside on my way from work.

When I come home in the evening and in the quiet of my privacy, I would recall and rewind from the barometer of memory the findings of the day.  I get a rough idea of the way things are at least from the eyes and gut responses of ordinary people, uncoloured by partisanship, self interest and the arrogance of position.

On the guiding question of “how country?”, the answer you get at any given times has kept changing with successive regimes. Most times, however, it is a function of what policies touch the people where it matters most. Let us take the contrast between a past administration and the present one for illustration.

Under an elected Obasanjo presidency, the introduction of the GSM cellphone revolution gripped the public imagination. The new technology suddenly put a lot of power in the hands of the masses. Ordinary people in the villages, in the farms, in the markets, simple artisans and the army of youth on campuses and street corners suddenly found themselves armed with this powerful tool of communication and infinite possibility. Nothing like it had happened previously. Added to it was a policy of financial inclusion through the  banking consolidation and the popularization of the stock market. Market women and simple traders in the markets were encouraged to measure their net worth not just in the quantum of cash under their mattresses or in their bank accounts.

More common people began to operate bank accounts and to invest in shares and the bond market. Telecommunications and banking expansion provided the two growth sectors under Mr. Obasanjo with infinite multiplier effects that sucked up a sizeable percentage of the unemployed. Apart from sporadic and isolated disturbances such as Odi, Shagamu and Zaki Biam which were decisively put down with a level of ferocity that offended the human rights community.

These incidents did not however graduate into nationwide insecurity. Nor did they douse the momentum of economic upliftment that swept the nation and put smiles on the faces of ordinary people. If you asked most of the people in the bus stop crowd then: ‘How Country?’, the resounding answer was most likely : ”We dey kampe!” or they simply showed you their new cell phone with pride ans a smile. This was a reaffirmation of confidence in national stability and the abilities of the national leadership of the time and the possibility of hope in the horizon.

Fast forward to the period between 2015 and the end of the Buhari administration. The prospect of a Buhari return to power as an elected president brought mixed reactions. There was the resurrection of all sorts of populist myths in the popular imagination. The man was a disciplinarian, would punish corrupt people and erect honest people as role models. Buhari’s appeal was essentially retrospective.

When the hour came for the famed man of steel to unleash his magic, the nation met with a solid silence of an eerie silence. He was either perennially away on sick leave or touring the world.  In the face of grinding national headaches, he was aloof and indifferent. His officials literally too orders from themselves as minimal accountability took flight. The rich were free to multiply their wealth while the poor multiplied in numbers. The man divided the country. He embraced his kith and kin and left the rest of us to find our way. In the end, a nation that had looked forward to Buhari for some salvation could no longer wait for him to retire to Daura.

Barely five years into the return to the Buhari myth, Nigerians knew better. In a video clip that was then doing the viral rounds in the social media, the newly elected Buhari was heard bragging, fortuitously, that Nigerians would sooner than later know the difference his return to power would make. By the time Buhari was handing over power to Mr. Tinubu, most Nigerian had become speechless in consternation as hardship and mis-governance joined forces to create a nationa that looked forward to change in whatever guise. By the end of the Buhari administration, the most popular response to “How country?” was solid indifference or stony silence.

Now a year and half into the Tinubu administration,  only very few can find the courage to ask anyone: “How country?” Practically all the indices of daily living have jumped through the roof. Gasoline, electricity, food prices, rents, school fees, cost of medicines, air fares, transport fares etc. The cost of everything has jumped through the roof. Taxes have piled upon levies; tariffs have been heaped on hidden charges all for services that are hardly ever rendered.

To worsen the matter, an overwhelming majority of ordinary Nigerians have delivered the unanimous verdict that the Tinubu government is not good hence a nationwide protest a month ago against bad government. An indifferent executive has joined forces with a most cavaliar legislature to run riot with state resources with multiple budgets dedicated to spending on sundry items of luxury and waste ranging from mansions to luxury SUVs, jets and, some say, even yachts and lavish unnecessary junkets with overloaded delegations.

In the present circumstances, it has become hard to even pose the casual question: “How country?” The answers are benumbing. They range from ‘which country?’ to a studied long sigh and silence of the cemetery.  When you throw “How country?” at common folk these days, you would be lucky to get a response. They just look at you, shake their heads and move on. At other times, you could get a loud sigh followed by a look that suggests that you are probably an alien or a retort question: “Which country?”

It all takes us back to Chinua Achebe’s last moment memoir: There Was Once a Country. The question meets yet a bigger question: When again shall we have a country?

Dr. Amuta, a Nigerian journalist, intellectual and literary critic, was previously a senior lecturer in literature and communications at the universities of Ife and Port Harcourt.


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