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Postcard from Damascus

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Chidi Amuta

Unlike in the last twenty four years of his power and crushing majesty, Bashar al-Assad had a decision quickly made for him. The choice between flying out of Hmeimim air base in his super luxury presidential jet and a rugged military version of the Russian SU 35 duty jet was quickly made for him in the thick of darkness. The special squad of military intelligence officers detailed by Vladimir Putin and the elite squad of his own intelligence service to ferret him out of Damascus had no time for protocol niceties. Their task was simple: fly Assad and his family safely out of Syria and into Moscow where the grounds had been prepared for his life in exile. Roughly three hours of flight into uncertainty.

With his evacuation from the Presidential fortress in Damascus, Assad’s two and half decades of tyranny over Syria was over, thus ending over fifty years draconian dominion of the Assad dynasty over Syria.  This was an exile long and well prepared for. In spite of the elaborate arrangements laid out by Putin for his unexpected guests, the Assad family had made serious arrangements for this eventuality.

With an estimated loot of over $2 billion tucked away in Russian and other banks, the Assad family owns a series of super luxury apartments worth over $40 million located in Moscow’s eight tallest apartment block. It is of course unlikely that the Assad clan would quarter in these luxury abodes in the immediate. For security and diplomatic reasons, they are more likely to be housed in specially provided dachas made available by their ubiquitous host with all VIP security protection arrangements.

Russia’s pretension as an honest broke had collapsed. It has sustained its patronage of Assad under the guise that it could get Assad to give up its chemical weapons arsenal and neutralize elements of ISIS in Syria. All that did not happen. In the wake of the Assad overthrow, Russia has played up a narrative that it encouraged Assad to surrender to a peaceful transfer of power. That, too, is a bogus lie concocted in case Syria becomes ungovernable, necessitating an Assad return.

Back in Damascus, a virtual street carnival and mob sight-seeing has gone on for over a week and half. The mob is out on a a tour of the places that up until last week were hallowed ground of a despicable   and dreaded tyrant. Fear is gone with the tyrant and left in its place the dread of uncertain freedom. Common folk have gone sight-seeing and treasure- hunting in Assad’s palace. Common people are looting treasured art pieces, venturing into presidential bedrooms, savoring the remnant aroma from what used to be the presidential cuisine with alluring menus on wall display. On the streets, irate mobs have torn down huge posters and billboards of the fallen dictator.  Poor people and plain street urchins are trampling on Assad posters and even urinating on them!

More tellingly, the Assad prison cells have been thrown open. People who have been in detention for decades are being released for the first time. Some can hardly remember their own names or their precise identity. Even their relations can hardly recognize them. Taken together, the Damascus postcards are quite familiar in all places where history overturns the bastions of autocracy and power absolutism.

The images and footages are familiar. Images of tumbling statues and opened up palaces: The Caecescus in Romania. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcus in the Philippines, Haille Mengistu Mariam in Ethiopia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The postcards from the palaces of fleeing tyrants and triumphant street mobs carry a uniform imprint.

With the coordinated and mass supported rebel overrun of Damascus and the sacking of the Assad regime, the long drawn Syrian revolutionary flourish that gathered momentum following the Arab Spring of 2011 has made land fall. The Arab Spring was a spontaneous street based revolt against authoritarian rulers in most of the Arab world. The revolt brought about varying degrees of political change and even regime changes in countries as diverse as Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain. In Syria, the revolt was beaten down with maximum ferocity by Bashar al-Assad following in the footsteps of his late father. Multiple faction rebellion followed and a bloody civil war ensued.

Dissidents and rebels were hunted down, rounded up and killed, jailed, tortured or chased into exile. Those who survived organized into factional rebel groups parading diverse ideologies and waging mostly religious fundamentalist crusades.  But they all had one enemy- Assad and his autocratic regime.  He in turn dug in and entrenched his dictatorship.  He reinforced his military strength, tightened the levers of repression, and reduced the democratic freedoms of Syrians.

He reached out to Iran, Russia and Turkey as well as extremist terrorist groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories adjoining Israel. Assad alienated moderate Arab countries like Jordan which was presided over by his childhood palace friend, now King Abdallah, son of the late King Hussein.

Of course, Syria was a fertile ground for all manner of fringe religious fundamentalist terrorists. All manner of international interests were aligned with the various rebel factions. ISIS found a safe haven in parts of Syria. The over 13 rebel groups opposed to Assad were supported by powerful local and international power interests: The US was poised against ISIS remnants. Turkey was pitched to the north in support of separatist Kurds seeking autonomy to the north of Syria. Iran, Saudi Arabia were digging for support and foothold in a regional power bazaar.  Israel has remained fixated on the Golan Heights. A multi pronged civil war erupted and raged since the Arab Spring.

Syria’s economy which had before the revolt boasted one of the highest GDP per capita in the region was plunger into chaos and crisis. Poverty and mismanagement followed. The only feature of the Syrian state alive was the Assad presidency and its supporting military infrastructure.

What has united the rebel groups that have finally toppled and sacked the Assad regime is a simplistic hunger for a civil, inclusive, sovereign and peaceful Syria. From their pronouncements so far, this hunger is above their sectarian differences. They have to fight to restore Syria, to ensure the return of normal social services and to mend the broken heart of a nation that was once a promising destination in the Middle East.

Of all the rebel groups, HTS is easily the most prominent from the perspective of political influence. Led by Mohammed Sharaa (Al-Jolani), a known terrorist on whose head the US has placed a bounty of $10 million. In the civil war years, HTS,b supported by Turkey,  was in power in the Idlib province where the imprints of his more liberal governance was in evidence.

There is evidence that he ran a more liberal version of Islamic fundamentalism. Some women were allowed not to wear hijab. Men did not have to wear overgrown beards while professional women ran social services in health and education. Leading Western powers like the US and the UK who maintained a hard posture towards HTS and its leader now have to watch and see to what extent the moderation of factional leaders like Jolani can pervade the future government of Syria.

The defeat of the Assad regime has literally reduced Syria into a carcass for the hounds of international power. In a purported chase after remnants of ISIS and other trouble makers,  the United States has not let off in its serial bombardment and strikes targeted at ISIS related rebel forces still operating in Syria.

Israel is feverishly pursuing its own national security interests by exploiting the period of statelessness in Syria to weaken a resurgent Syria as a staging post for hostile activity against the state of Israel.  It is targeting chemical and biological weapons sites as well as military hardware locations. Israel is exploiting this period of vacuum to destroy whatever is left of the military capability of the Syrian state. It is carrying out multiple strikes per day. The strategic objective of these strikes is to weaken Syria and make it an unattractive destination for hostile actions against Israel. These actions are also aimed at whittling down the influence of Iran in the neighborhood.

The neutralization of a humbled Syria can only add to Israel’s depletion of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the virtual devastation of Hamas in Gaza to create a quieter neighborhood for Israel. Unfortunately, these developments can hardly advance the cause of Palestinian statehood. Whatever negotiations take place now on the matter will only have the Arabs and Palestinians negotiating from a position of demonstrable weakness.

As a strategic influence in the region, Russia has paid a price for its war against Ukraine. Clearly, the sacking of Assad is an indirect defeat of Russian influence in the region. Russia had lost the capacity to protect Assad regime in Syria given its exhaustion in Ukraine. With a casualty of over 350,000 dead Russian soldiers in Ukraine and the raging costs of the war on its economy with crippling sanctions, Putin had no difficulty reaching the inevitable conclusion that Syria was no longer worth the trouble. Continued Russian involvement in Syria would impress no one in particular and be of no immediate strategic or economic interest. It is better off negotiating with whoever comes to rule Syria to protect whatever is left of Russian military hardware in Syria.

In every place where power places itself above responsible governance and the pursuit of the common good, the collapse of the Assad dynasty holds lessons. It is at once the lesson of absolutism as a temptation of power. It is also the lesson of the narrow pursuit of self -interest over and above the common interest and the collective good.

The transience of power is the most obvious lesson that has since been learnt by even the most pedestrian Banana Republic autocrat. They know power is transient hence they spend their days in office preparing for the decades they will spend after office. They know the things they are likely to miss out of office hence they spirit those things away to their retirement hideouts.

Above everything and relevant to every clime, the destruction of Syria and the eventual collapse of the Assad dynasty shows how the prospects and promise of a nation can be destroyed by the limitless power appetite of one family and one man.

For the Nigerian state in its present state of creaking disrepair, the fall of Assad’s tenuous autocracy demonstrates how easily a state besieged by multiple threats can eventually fall apart. For those in doubt, the threats that confront and could fell the Nigerian state are not far too different from the ones that afflicted Syria and led to the recent collapse.

These include: spiraling insecurity, random and casual violations of human and citizen rights, unchecked sectarian divisions, unbridled corruption among political leaders and increasing regionalism of political discourse and contest.

The Syrian postcard is specific. But its images are universal and apply in every nation where power gravitates towards absolutism.

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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Stampede among the Opposition

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Chidi Amuta

Almost mid-way into the Tinubu presidency, the face of the 2027 opposition to his perpetuation is on display. An untidy opposition is nearly on full display but in a perpetual stampede. Key opposition figures are lashing out at surrogates of the ruling party from different angles in a most uncoordinated matter. In the process, they are all exposing their weaknesses and unpreparedness to assume power.

The major organized opposition party, the PDP, is in perpetual flux. Perpetually writhing from internal chaos fuelled by planted dissidents, the party still manages to host major opposition voices. Their mascot is former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, a perpetual presidential candidate and national lead grumbletonian.  He seems to have monopolized the enterprise of opposition rhetoric and thus kept Tinubu’s spokespersons busy.  In his latest bouts, Atiku has kept up the theme of accusing Tinubu and the ruling APC of trying so very hard to make Nigeria a one party autocracy.

On a weekly basis, herds of PDP members have been migrating into the ruling party. This is familiar Nigerian political behaviour. Unofficial sources insist that the Tinubu war machinery has a secret budget for fomenting trouble in the PDP and literally buying defecting members from all opposition parties. It is said that the PDP and Labour Party are pricier than defectors from other minor parties.  In turn, permanent trouble makers in both major opposition parties are on permanent retainer-ship to ensure that the major opposition parties remain perennially embroiled in crises, including fisticuffs and open wrestling at meetings.

Only last week, a meeting of the Board of Trustees(BOT) of the PDP in Abuja was so engulfed in open brawls that when the police arrived, they could only play the untidy role of fight separators instead of firing tear gas and rubber bullets for which they are better practiced and trained in such situations.

The unconfirmed narrative around the confusion in the PDP is that Mr. Nyesom Wike, FCT Minister and Tinubu’s resident political attack spaniel, has the unscripted job description of keeping the PDP in perpetual discord up to and beyond 2027. He has no business in facilitating settlement in the party or even ensuring that the party survives as one.

In his practiced role of opposition town crier, Mr. Atiku has recently upped the ante of his alarm bells. Only a few days ago, he screamed out against the arrest and detention of Mr. Yele Sowore and Prof. Usman Yusuf on baseless charges as evidence of a plan to incarcerate all outspoken critics and opposition figures all over the country. The ruling administration is yet to respond to this charge but has insisted on the criminal culpability of the affected individuals for the offences that led to their arrest and arraignment.

The Bauchi State Governor, Mr. Bala Mohammed has similarly been insistent in his solo criticisms of the Tinubu administration from a policy perspective. His attacks have focused on northern regional interests. He has been insistent that Tinubu’s troubled Tax Bill, for instance, is essentially an anti- northern ploy to keep the region in perpetual economic under development. Tinubu and his support cast of partisan governors have insisted otherwise but Governor Mohammed is unbowed and unbent. So far, he has targeted Nyesom Wike at the level of the opposition PDP, insisting that Wike is playing an untidy partisan script on behalf of Tinubu to permanently destabilize the PDP ahead of 2027.

The case of Mr. Peter Obi and his host Labour Party belongs differently. Obi has remained the most consistent and orderly voice of the opposition especially in the post-2023 election season. Mr. Obi has hinged his opposition voice on systemic irregularities in the Tinubu-APC regime. He has been insistent on harping on the neglect of funding and prioritization of healthcare, education and poverty alleviation in the policy mix of the Tinubu presidency. Not to mention the disastrous security landscape and dastardly economic management profile of the administration. The major headache of the ruling party with the Obi version of opposition is the role of the Obidient Movement in the Obi political factor. It is not the Labour Party per se.

While the Labour Party remains a minority party controlling only the lone state of Abia, the Obidient Movement is an amorphous popular movement with an intangible horizontal structure that has been difficult to track and control. The Obidients are everybody who disagrees with the status quo, every youth who rejects the politics of business as usual and the bogey of ethnic factionalism in Nigerian. There is literally no ward, local government, state or national structure to bribe, buy or systemically destabilize. The Obidients are a broad spectrum of Nigerians spread across the length and breadth of the nation in no particular pattern.  They are people with a shared belief and shared values. Those shared beliefs happen to run counter to the dominant doctrine and creed of the ruling party and traditional Nigerian political doctrine of “anything goes for as long as we win”.

The apparent formlessness of the Obidients phenomenon is what equipped them to ambush the Tinubu party in the 2023 presidential elections. They shocked Lagos, shook Abuja, swept the South East, South South and almost took the North Central. The formlessness of the Obidients equipped them to stage these surprise political ambush operations which was a major upset in that election.  Therefore, on the scale of opposition threats, Peter Obi and the Obidients pose by far the more lethal and credible threat to the political status quo going forward.

In an attempt to penetrate the inscrutable mien of the Obidients, the Tinubu-ethnic high command floated a kite only a fortnight ago. Chief Bisi Akande, known Yoruba chieftain and Tinubu-APC political gadfly went on the social media to allege that the Obidients movement was behind the “EndSars” revolt of 2020 which shook Lagos and the rest of the country. According to this latest fabrication, the “EndSars” revolt was manufactured by the Obidients in faraway United States and ‘imported’ into Nigeria with the sole aim of ending Tinubu’s political career, hence the revolt made landfall mostly in Lagos and the location of the Lekki Toll Gate.

Yet, it is widely known that the “EndSars” revolt was a nearly spontaneous uprising of Nigerian youth against rampant nationwide harassment of and brutality against Nigerian youth by the SARS unit of the Nigerian police. Obviously, Mr. Akande’s recent fabrication is an attempt to criminalize the Obidients by tainting them with a subversive tar brush so that they could perhaps be branded a treasonous ‘terrorist’ organization by a pliant NASS and over compromised national security establishment.

 It is therefore proper that Peter Obi and other Obidients have risen to speak out against Mr. Akande’s myth making by challenging him to substantiate his claims. The task before the Obidients movement in the light of this is to deepen the sources of the strength that led it to dazzling success in the 2023 presidential elections.

Of late however, opposition to the Tinubu-APC hegemony has showed up in a more consequential quarter- from inside the APC itself. My friend Nasir El-Rufai, former Kaduna State Governor, has been quite busy politically of late. In addition to battling his local opponents in the state, he has openly attacked the APC hierarchy and political leadership at the national level openly. Specifically, El-Rufai has pointed at the intellectual hollowness of the APC leadership as the source of its policy incoherence and bad governance in the country.

Tinubu’s resident hounds have quickly accused El- Rufai of a ‘sour grapes’ mentality, insisting that he is being critical of the party and the government because he was unsuccessful in securing security clearance to get onto the Tinubu cabinet. The man has stubbornly stood his grounds. He has insisted that he will carry on with his opposition spirit but within the party. This is a clear indication of imminent cracks within the walls of the ruling APC party.

Soon after El-Rufai’s face off with mainstream APC, former Transportation Minister and first runner –up in the last APC presidential convention, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, spoke out at a democracy conference in Abuja. His contention was that Nigeria’s political culture is essentially Machiavellian in a rather devious and even violent manner. Nigerian politicians will kill, maim, steal to secure and remain in power. He indicated clearly that those expecting Tinubu to voluntarily hand over power to them are being delusional. He reiterated the standard Machiavellian dictum that power is never voluntarily given away  but must be violently snatched.

This assertion has thoroughly upset the Tinubu power establishment.  They have condemned Amaechi for advocating violence in politics. Specifically, Tinubu’s Minister of Defense and former Governor of Zamfara State, Mr. Matawalle, has come out to criticize Amaechi’s perspective. The federal government has also spoken out against Amaechi through the many minions in the Abuja state house.

An interesting response has emanated from the Tinubu camp on the swelling opposition currents against the administration in the count down to its mid term. Staunch Tinubu acolytes have reminded opponents of the man’s hidden strengths and track record of power absolutism. In a viral Facebook post about four days ago, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, an unrepentant Tinubu devotee, reminded those opposed to Tinubu’s second term of the man’s arsenal of political assets which include tenacity, ruthlessness, huge resources, preparedness and experience. What Mr. Igbokwe dared not openly mention is of course Tinubu’s stupendous wealth which implies an awesome war chest of cash that can be deployed to submerge any and every opposition in the country at any moment.

The present state of the exchange between the incumbent Tinubu power formation and the opposition indicates a less than clear picture. The opposition parties are in a flux and uncoordinated state. At the level of their own internal party dynamics, these parties are in a state of perpetual calamity. At the level of policy divergence from the ruling party, we can hardly identify the opposition parties as different or divergent in any substantial way from the incumbent calamity which has literally ruined the country.

The possibility of an internal split within the ruling APC is a latent possibility. It is clear that the Tinubu faction that is the incumbent authority in the land is a conservative prerenal money-grabbing faction of the APC. It has no intellectual or ideological content or focus. The more enlightened social democratic and progressive wing of the APC is the arm with people like El-Rufai, Amaechi, Osinbajo, Oshiomole etc as main voices. They were excluded from the power centre soon after the Tinubu victory.

The only option open to the opposition political forces in the country ahead of 2027 is a serious structural and electoral coalition. This should consist of elements of the PDP, Peter Obi and his Obidient Movement and the alienated progressive arm of the APC. The Labour Party should be discounted. It does not exist as an objective political reality except as a weak link in the destabilizing arsenal of the incumbent authority. The new opposition coalition must however aim beyond 2027.While it can upstage Tinubu and his rabble in the immediate 2027 contest, the coalition must redefine Nigerian politics in a manner that incorporates more serious Nigerian technocrats, academics and civil society leaders as party members and think tanks.

The current stampede in the opposition camp is a positive development. It should point opposition politicians in the direction of the task ahead. For them to sit back and think that their isolated noise making will end the Tinubu infamy is the height of self delusion. The work ahead is serious and tasking.


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Limits of the American King

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Chidi Amuta

Barely one week into his refurbished presidential tenure, has America’s Donald Trump seemed poised to set new precedents in the model of the Presidency as the pinnacle of America’s democracy. An elected president of a republic is strutting and pronouncing like an emperor. Ordinarily, an American king would be a freak oddity. But here comes Donald Trump, an emperor in business suit.

From a bumbling and bigoted first term, the newly minted Donald Trump seems to be a refurbished version of his original version. A combination of sickening egotism and perennial television consciousness has now become an urgent desire to be historical. He has relentlessly branded his return to the White House as the ‘greatest political come back’ in modern history. He has spent the week touting his America as the dream nation, the “ golden age of America”, forgetting that the triumphs he is already claiming are indeed the achievements of his immediate past predecessor whose record he has been so viciously shredding.

Right from his inauguration, he has unleashed a slew of wild changes in both the presidency as an institution and indeed the place of the United States as a nation. Against the backdrop of his landslide electoral victory, he stepped onto the podium of presidential power with an air of absolutism which is unlikely to help the presidency as an institution governed by the constraints of constitutionalism. Trump has an addiction to saluting and dressing himself in superlatives. In his mind, he is the greatest thing that has ever happened to the American presidency.

Nonetheless, his predecessor’s lack luster style and business as usual Washington manners created a backdrop of anxious expectation and excitement about the return of the more dramatic Trump. Unlike his first inauguration which was greeted by a divided nation, this time around there was a veneer of unity of purpose and reconciliation in the Capitol Rotunda where the inauguration took place. A cross section of his predecessors and the Washington political elite conferred a certain air of unity on the event. Moreover, Trump was surrounded by some of the richest business elite especially the leaders of the tech industry.

Right from the inauguration ground, Mr. Trump launched what he himself called a sane revolution. His dream of the new America is one in which the nation reassumes a supremacist position among nations. It is a new America that looks out first for itself and relates to the rest of the world from a nationalist almost isolationist perspective. It is: “America First” in real practical terms once again. In relation to the rest of the world, Trump’s America is a somewhat isolationist, ultra nationalistic nation.

Trump has boasted that he would slam all manner of prohibitive tariffs on nations as close and strategic as Canada, Mexico and China. Under his new hostile foreign policy posture, he has renamed the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America, He is looking to forcefully snatch Greenland from Denmark and to retake the Panama Canal from Panama. The king can literally see no obstacles to his absolutism. The king is the state and this one state is the king of all nations!

He has since magisterially pronounced to the World Economic Forum in Davos that nations and companies who want to do business with the US must be ready to move their manufacturing operations to the US or face the penalty of hostile imperial tariffs. He would increase the mandatory contribution of NATO nations for their joint defense fund from 2% to 5%. Europe has heard him but is keeping silent for now.

On his first day in office, Mr. Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization. He has also claimed credit for the tenuous ceasefire accord between Israel and Hamas over Gaza. On his much trumpeted bluster to end the Russia-Ukraine war in a day after assuming office, he has merely scorched the snake of Russia’s authoritarian and ambitious Putin. It seems that he has just reminded Messrs Xi Jiping and Vladimir Putin that they are both at the helm of an authoritarian counter weight to the West. He is likely to hit a brick wall of resistance to his absolutist posturing if he fails to embrace diplomacy and tact over the Ukraine war. Russia and China will be only too happy to puncture his balloon of bluster. Taken together, the utterances and actions of the comeback Trump clearly indicate a clear imperial absolutist slant which will put democracy to test and also place the new global order under a severe stress test.

Inside America itself, his stiff position against illegal immigration has already kicked off with raids on illegal immigrants in major cities. Combat troops and immigration goons are scouring major cities in places like churches, hotels, hospitals and schools in search of undocumented immigrants.  His executive order banning automatic citizen rights for children born in the United States has already been blocked by a judge as a violation of the constitution. The possibility that more court actions will challenge a number of his imperial executive orders that infringe on citizens rights is clear and present. The judiciary is more likely to temper Trump’s bravado and absolutist pretensions in due course.

Either in terms of his domestic or foreign policy activism, everything about the new Donald Trump rings of power absolutism and even naked imperialism. He is proceeding as though the electoral mandate that returned him to the White House is a blank cheque to carry on in office as he alone deems fit. That would be putting his new mandate to too much test and pushing the chances of his elevated office to the limits.

American democracy is the result of an outright revolt and rejection of royalty and absolutism. Everything in the American constitution is a rejection of an imperial order. In real practical terms then, the powers which American democracy confer on a president are every inch subject to the limits placed by the US constitution and the institutional guardrails of American democracy: the judiciary, the media, the popular pressure of civil society etc.

Even when a president’s party has an overwhelming majority in Congress as Trump indeed now virtually does, the responsibility of Congress to curtail and limit the absolutism of the president often transcends partisan frontiers. That is what has prevented the United States from degenerating into an absolute monarchy in the last over 200 years.

The institutions of American democracy may sometimes be tortured and mangled by changing political exigencies but they remain in place as checks and balances against those who may be tempted to usurp the advantages of electoral political advantage to disfigure the liberal democratic essence of America’s ultimate republican order.

Even though it is still quite early in the day of his rowdy return, Trump seems poised to push the American presidency in illiberal directions. He may want to arm twist his partisan majority to derive advantages that may force those opposed to his imperial views and tendencies. Yet the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of Americans to freely disagree with their president and his party cannot be casually eroded. We cannot expect what obtains in illiberal states like Russia, Turkey, Rwanda or Hungary to happen in the United States.

Perhaps the strongest guardrail against the rise of presidential absolutism in today’s America is the sanctity of the constitution and the power of the Supreme Court to uphold the constitution against the absolutist ambitions of an individual president no matter how popular he may be. Mr. Trump’s personal idiosyncrasies may tempt him towards absolutist and authoritarian flirtations but the powers of the constitution, the Supreme Court and Congress remain as perennial barriers to extremes of power absolutism.

On the international plane, the global order in the post Second World war era is a complex of interconnected international relations held together by a network of alliances, alignments and interests. No nation, no matter how strong its military and economic power, can pursue its interests in random violation of the interests of other nations. Therefore, when Mr. Trump adopts a rhetoric that appears to threaten other nations in the international community, he risks alienating America’s allies. Worse still, the powers of any one nation cannot block the ability of other nations to enter into and pursue fresh alliances in order to protect and advance their own national interests.

In the post Cold War era, the world has rapidly shifted from a unipolar world to one in which the polarity of international power is now scattered among centers of power both old and new. Broadly, we are now looking at a new world order in which the triumphant Western bloc is being actively counter balanced by a new authoritarian center of power led by China and Russia with nations like North Korea, Iran, Hungary and Turkey in fellowship. In addition, other minor coalitions and blocs have risen as we see with the birth BRICS nations. Therefore, the possibility of Individual national leaders emerging as absolutism leaders has been reduced to nearly nil. More impossible is the prospect of absolutist nations to lord it over other nations. Over time, Mr. Trump will come to a realization of the naked reality of the new world order and the limits it poses to absolute unilateral power.

Beyond the limitations of power and politics at the individual national level and even among nations, a new determinant of power has emerged. Technology has emerged in recent times as a major determinant of national power and precedence. Information technology was until very lately the major determinant of gradations of power among nations. Even that has now been superseded by the graduation into Artificial Intelligence –AI. The race among great nations is going to be a race to lead the AI race in the next few years. It is perhaps beneficial that Mr. Trump has gathered the world’s most powerful technology oligarchs into a future AI conglomerate. Whether his rowdy personal ego will allow him to maintain the harmony among the tech oligarchs to work harmoniously for America’s global superiority is going to be the determinant of the road ahead. It can only be hoped that Mr. Trump does not mistake his transient enabling political advantage for a blank cheque to absolutism.  He must not allow this political moment to blind him to the contradictory nature of power absolutism in a fast changing world. Economic reality and diplomatic compulsion are likely to work together to tame Trump’s present idealism and absolutism illusions.


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What will May Bring?

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Chidi Amuta

Our presidential political calendar indicates May 2025 as the mid- term of the current presidential tenure. Every May 29th is some form of birthday for our democracy. Next May is mid-term. Mid-term is wake up time, a rude reminder that time is ticking and that what began as a ceremony of innocence will soon turn into a mixture of  omissions and commissions with far reaching consequences.  In school calendar, mid-term presages the outcomes of the year end.

Ordinary Nigerians ended the year 2024 with an unusual sense of equanimity and even optimism. There was even a seeming understanding across the populace that people seem to appreciate the difficulties of a new government trying so hard to find its way around a maze of obstacles and difficulties. In spite of severe hardship, people plodded on. In spite of extreme deprivations, people refused to explode into spontaneous revolt. What Nigerians have been through in the last one year would send most other nations into endless revolts and street uprising. But our people have understood and endured. When you ask them: “how country?” they shake their heads, look up in the sky and just manage to hold back the tears! Hunger rumbles in their stomachs as they trek unimaginable distances to nowhere in particular. They are not even sure they will get to their uncertain destination as danger now lurks in every street corner. But our people still keep enduring the bad days.

Even a nationwide mobilization for a mass protest against hardship and grinding poverty did not quite garner the kind of incendiary groundswell apocalypse that was feared.  Instead, only a handful of miscreants and urchins and destitutes gathered in a few places to mouth predictable abuses at officialdom. They were quickly dispersed by the goons of state. The police did the predictable. They dispensed already issued teargas and bullets. Many fell. There were arrests of under age kids and hungry homeless people found loitering around. Those arrested were herded into detention and subsequently arraigned before jobless magistrates and confused judges.

But overall, the generality of Nigerians ushered in 2025 with uncharacteristic hope and optimism. It is not an indication of love at first sight for Tinubu and his gang. Rather, it is a growing understanding by our populace that democracy takes time to deliver its dividends. In effect, the Tinubu government would seem to have gotten more than usual tacit support from Nigerians than most of its predecessors. May be, our people are beginning to understand the sluggish pace of democratic fulfillment!

At the beginning of the New Year, there were prayers and loud supplications for some reprieve from the prevailing hardship in the New Year. If anything, there would indeed seem to be a worrisome national consensus that the Tinubu government was yet to indicate a justification for coming to power. Nigerians were united in expressing the verdict that the government had in fact merely succeeded in creating more problems than it could possibly hope to solve. Buhari flogged us with the kobo of hardship and ignored us while we wept in pain. Mr. Tinubu has brought scorpions and poisoned darts!

However, underneath the many wishes for better conditions in the New Year was an expectation that the ruling politicians would at last begin to govern and begin addressing the urgent human welfare issues that beset us instead of playing more politics.

Unfortunately, the political class seems to have lost the message in the equanimity and calm of the populace. They seem to be used to politics as a full time game and not a means to the end of solving human problems. Both the means and the end of politics are in the back pocket of the politicians.

The majority of our politicians in both the ruling party and the scattered opposition, are beginning to sound as if the 2027 campaigns have already begun.  The government of the day has been most untidy in its policies and programs.  It has mistaken uncoordinated and sporadic measures for a reform program. Incoherent pronouncements on nearly every subject are being mistaken for the expression of the collective will of a determined government. The president has made it a point of duty to be present at nearly every Boys Scout meeting around the world. People doubt whether he in fact has a Minister of External Affairs. Tinubu has accumulated more air miles than his immediate predecessor who himself attended quite a few unnecessary meetings where he hardly knew what the hell was on the agenda.

While the May Mid-term remains far, politicians are busy with politics as if 2027 is by the door. Alliances and alignments are being floated and speculated. Politicians are crisscrossing the country in search of allies and alliances. Most of them are already rehearsing their campaign themes for 2027. The vast majority of utterances and pronouncements by major politicians since the last quarter of 2024 have sounded more like campaign preps for 2027. It is as though the war has begun.

The ruling party is ramping up political promises, sounding apologetic for its serial failures to fulfill too many promises. The fractured opposition is aiming barbs at the ruling party’s rudderless governance and confused policy medley. The alternative perspective being offered by the opposition parties sounds more like cries of the mortally injured. In a political landscape with over 80 registered political parties, the one ruling party, the APC, is only being meekly countered by only two parties, the PDP and Labour Party. Even the Labour Party which is present in one miserable state house has been reduced to the flurry of tweets by its presidential candidate in the 2023 Presidential election, Mr. Peter Obi. In due credit to him, Mr. Obi is perhaps the only opposition figure in the political landscape in terms of his consistently serious attacks of the serial profligacy of the ruling government.

From the content and temper of the major political actors, the campaigns for the 2027 elections may have indeed started. Mouthpieces of the incumbent have begun to dig in into an aggressively defensive position. The hardship all over the land is being deferred to a future date that is politically convenient. The possibility of reprieve is in turn being outsourced to divine intervention. At some point recently, the idea of a nationwide prayer crusade was floated to enable Nigerians refer their predicaments to the divine. Promises that were made during the 2023 elections are now being reviewed to see which ones can be amended or deferred.

The administration’s ‘renewed hope’ agenda is itself being reviewed and renewed. A series of policy stumbles that remain uncoordinated and incoherent are being mischievously called an ‘economic reform agenda’. In the interim, a litany of hellish consequences are daily being visited on the people.  Hunger is pervasive all over the land just as the sheer cost of daily living has for many shot through the roof. A barrage f taxes, tariff hikes, charges, levies and price increases have reduced the national economy into a playground of free for all price increases, a war of everyone against everybody.

We are waiting for May and for a midterm report. It is in the nature of the four -year presidential tenure that we will soon approach the mid-term break signaled by the month of May. Like in a school calendar, Mid-term is a time for assessments and re-assessments.  It is a time to be graded but also to grade our leaders in the polity at both national and state levels. In the realm of politics, mid-term is a season of rehearsals of the politics next term.

Already, Governors elected in regular term are dissolving their cabinets and making fresh appointments from the pool of party faithful who can no longer wait for their turn at the gravy queue. The president had since rejigged his own inchoate collective of ministers and sundry appointees.

By the nature of the four -year presidential term, the assumption is that half the promises that were made in the 2023 campaigns should have been delivered by now. By all accounts, we ought by now to have begun to have a foretaste of the goodness that was promised us. Or, better still, a good number of the ills and headaches that afflicted us under Mr. Buhari should by now have started receding.

For good or for ill, the Tinubu government is literally two and half years away from its terminal date. By its very nature, a four -year presidential term has its schedule of expectations and possible attainments clearly established. The first year is time to set up an administration and set in motion a credible agenda of governance. The second and third years are for operationalizing the administration so that its definitive character is known. That is when the identity of an administration is stamped and the foundations for its possible legacy are laid. The fourth and final year is time for waging a succession campaign and winning or losing a re-election campaign. This is the year of political battles. If the administration secures a second term, it is a tenure for legacy consolidation.

By this political calendar progression, Mr. Tinubu and his gang have a little over one year to deal with the many real issues of governance and development that assail today’s Nigeria. It is a year and half to resolve so many issues that presently haunt most Nigerians. In effect, the president has a little over one year to restore a sensible exchange rate, to chase down inflation, drive away hunger from most homes, to reduce the unemployment queues, resolve a rampaging insecurity and restore the hope of Nigerians in the future of our country. Forget affordable petrol at the pump. That has gone with the wind.

My fear is that so much time has been lost in the brick bat between the ruling party and regime opponents. As we speak, the nation is yet to appoint envoys to all countries where we are represented. A number of strategic government departments are yet to be filled. The administration does not as yet have a defined foreign policy thrust. There are too many states that are yet to be visited by the president or key ministers. The economic policy and programs of the administration are still a patchwork of borrowings, interest rate jockeying , taxation gambles and tariff hikes.

In all this, there are too many new worrisome questions that Nigerians are struggling to find answers to. What does the Tinubu presidency stand for? What will this president be remembered for? What is the defining character of this presidency?

What will the month of May bring for Nigerians?

 


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