Between Policy and Politics: Strategies for Moving Nigeria Forward.
Text of Convocation Lecture Delivered at the 13th and 14th Convocation Ceremony of The Federal University of Technology, Akure, October 30, 2002.
*Professor Ihonvbere is also Project Director, Constitutionalism in Post-Conflict Societies” Project with the International League for Human Rights in New York; Visiting Professor of Political Science, University of Lagos; Member Presidential Committee on Solid Minerals Development; and Member of the Tribunal Investigating the Management of African Petroleum Plc.
Mr. Vice-Chancellor
Senior Officials of the University
Faculty and Students of the University
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen
It is my pleasure to be here today. I thank the vice-chancellor and the convocation committee for considering me worthy enough to deliver this lecture. Our country is at a crossroad and we are uncertain as to how to move on. Nigerians are all experts at everything yet we have not moved forward as a nation in any significant way. Those of us that are critical of the system we operate do so because we know that things ought to be much better for our people. Unfortunately for Nigeria, analyses, interpretations, conclusions, and projections on our national predicaments have become diversionary, opportunistic, superficial, and escapist.
One of the major problems of statecraft and politics in Africa has been the inability to generate, package, and implement viable and effective public policy. With very few exceptions, it is embarrassing to note that there is no area of politics, economy and society where any African state could be said to have been successful. Even where the issues, contradictions, and needs are so glaring, the post-colonial state in Africa and its custodians have managed to snatch failure and confusion from the palms of success. In large measure, beyond the usual annoying suffocating and vitriolic propaganda on radio, television, and newspapers, African policy makers (if they can be so described) have managed to put the cart before the sick horse, ignore glaring realities, manipulate the people, and squander scarce resources on irrelevant and irresponsible projects. This is usually done in the name of helping the people, promoting nation-building, national unity and development. If we take a comprehensive look at the African condition today, one thing we cannot accuse African leaders and policy makers of doing in the last four to five decades is that they promoted any form of development. To be sure, failed policies have “developed” the pockets and bank accounts of a tiny class of political elites and their hangers-on. Foreign profit and hegemony-seeking transnational corporations have also made good for themselves and their home countries by taking full advantage of our poor policy making, monitoring and implementation processes. For the majority of Africans who are suffering from grinding poverty and hopelessness, what has passed for public policy since so-called political independence has been nothing but pain, hunger, marginalization, exploitation, domination, and impoverishment. Death by government or death by public policy has become the outcome of numerous half-baked and poorly thought-out policies that have been unleashed on Africans. Today millions of Africans may be physically alive but they are morally, spiritually and mentally dead. It is so bad that the entire GDP of Africa, with its 53 nations and about 700 million people is being compared with that of Belgium with a population less than Lagos State! The results of our superficial concern for planning, policy, and predictability have been clear:
Increasing instability, violence, uncertainty and insecurity. This has affected local and foreign political and economic relations, encouraged the establishment of unnecessary and very violent military and so-called security forces, and promoted a tendency to divert scarce resources to the defense and security of those in power;
Widespread infrastructural and institutional decay and dislocation that reproduce inefficiency, waste, corruption, and the gross mismanagement of society;
Poverty, hunger, disease, social atomization, crime, rural-urban migration, prostitution, social anomie, and cultural degradation have increased all over Africa as a result of failed policies and the insensitivity of the custodians of state power. It is so bad that many Africans look at the colonial days with some nostalgia while ordinary people, victims of bad policies are wondering when this “independence” would end;
The collapse or near collapse of educational and research institutions and the massive brain and brawn drain that has emptied African institutions of many of their most creative minds;
Bureaucratic inefficiency and dislocation leading to mass alienation from the state and its programs and agents evidenced in the privatization of the state and the development of a “parallel” or “alternative” state, especially in the area of provision of services- health, education, roads, electricity, water, security, communications, and so on;
The failure of political institutions and processes that have culminated in coups and counter-coups thus eliminating options for democratic development and political engineering. Coups have established a culture of intolerance, violence, commandism, and corruption as well as the criminal abuse of power;
Science and technology backwardness in every respect resulting in the lack of access to contemporary and strategic information, poor negotiating skills, inability to improve agriculture, and the backwardness of educational institutions in a rapidly technology-driven and changing global order. South Africa is to some extent the only African exception to this debacle, even then it is only a tiny proportion of its population that is involved in the utilization of its great technological capabilities;
The dislocation and delegitimation of the state, its institutions and custodians thus widening the gulf between those in power and the people. This has encouraged loyalty to alternative sites of power and opportunities. As citizens lose faith in the state and in political leaders, they begin to develop, nurture and reproduce alternative formal and informal relations that erode opportunities and possibilities for building a nation-state.
These are just a few of the consequences of the failure of what the members of the African elite have dubbed “public policy” since the 1960s. It is no wonder that at the beginning of the new millennium, Africa is the most technology-backward, most politically unstable, most crisis-ridden, and most foreign-dominated and exploited as well as the most marginal continent in the world. No matter how we stretch the statistics, the African continent has performed woefully. It is so bad that it is very difficult to imagine that since the 1960s, there has been anything like planning, strategic thinking, or public policy designed to serve the interests of the people, reverse underdevelopment and dependence, and reconfigure the region’s marginal location and role in the international divisions of labor and power. As Claude Ake once observed in his book The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa (Dakar: Codesria 2000: 46):
The average annual growth rate of per capita income in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1973 and 1980 was a mere 0.1 per cent; between 1980 and 1989 it was –2.2 percent. On some social indicators Africans were worse off at the end of the 1980s than they were in the 1960s. Negative growth rates over a long period translated to collapsing infrastructures, rising debt burdens, rising social tensions, intensifying poverty, chronic malnutrition for many and premature death. The failure of leadership in most parts of Africa had become life threatening to ordinary people.
Clearly, if public policy was the basis of socio-economic interactions since political independence, then it must have been backward looking. It is difficult to believe that there were “leaders” in Africa during this period. Yet, there were politicians, academics, professionals, and bureaucrats who were responsible for ensuring that conditions of living, infrastructure, social environments and political conditions did not deteriorate beyond what was inherited at political independence. Clearly they failed to perform, could not perform or were not allowed to do so even if they had wished to. Why did this happen? What exactly did they fail to recognize or concentrate on? Why did they fail so woefully in creating the required institutions, social relations, and enabling environments for promoting growth, development, stability, inclusion and democracy? Let us attempt to provide only a partial answer.
It is possible to argue that right from the beginning the political environment at independence was a set up. Africa was programmed to fail. The state inherited was non-hegemonic and lacked the capacity to create the sort of environment that would have allowed public policy to be rational, sustainable, and effective. The custodians of state power were equally set up to fail. They lacked economic power, their political power was fragile, and they were opportunistic and incapable of competing with powerful and fully entrenched profit and hegemony-seeking transnational corporations. Consequently, African policy makers and leaders moved from one error to the other further complicating the already precarious and distorted African condition. Indeed planning without facts or based on permutations and guesstimations became the order of the day. Because they were able to accumulate from the existing dire conditions, they resisted all calls for change. The struggle for power became coterminous with survival. They closed democratic spaces. They gave very little or no thought to reviewing the compact between the people and the state by putting in place the sort of constitution that would protect liberties and ensure that accountability, social justice, responsibility, and democracy governed the larger society. In fact, African elites did everything to by-pass the rules of politics, depoliticize the polity, de-ideologize politics, build dubious personality cults, intimidate the people and their communities, and divert attention from the realities of underdevelopment and unequal exchange.
The elites appropriated the voices of the people while enriching themselves. In less than a decade following political independence, irrational politics degenerated into war: the state became the means of accumulation and constitutions were abrogated, suspended, disregarded and discarded. In this situation, progressive, people-centered and holistic public policies were no longer possible. Ethnic, regional, religious, and personal considerations came to determine public policies from defense and education through agriculture and economy to social development and the provision of infrastructure. We contend that a genuine foundation for effective public policy was subverted by the elitist and opportunistic approach to the negotiations for political independence, the compacting of post-independence constitutions, and the style of political governance that relied on personal rather than democratic and collective rule. The failure to appreciate and utilize a people-centered and people-driven constitution making approach by the departing colonial state and by the immediate post-colonial power elite negated possibilities for responsive and responsible public policy in Africa.
The New Politics and Prospects for Change
Without doubt, there is a new wave of politics in Africa. While there are genuine reservations about substantive dimensions of the transition projects, it must be admitted that there is equally a new and robust enthusiasm for democratic politics in the continent. While the recent liberalization (as against democratization) of political spaces in Africa has generated some hope for the future, observers are equally taking critical note of some trends and tendencies that now appear to be compromising, even subverting the democratic project. If the actors have changed somewhat, the nature and impact of so-called public policies have not. In fact, in spite of new propaganda strategies and tactics adopted by the politicians, the nature, meaning, and style of politics and political competition remains virtually constant. In Nigeria for example, it does not appear that the politicians have drawn any lessons from past experiences. They still believe in lies, manipulation, corruption, violence, and appear totally incapable of understanding the meaning of governance much less how to construct viable hegemonic projects to ensure democratic consolidation. To the average Nigerian politician, politics is a business that is to be conducted without regard for formal and informal rules. No agreement is permanent and trust is so ephemeral within and between their organizations. The people are relevant only on election day; even then strategies for violence, intimidation, and rigging are perfected even before nominations are won. This is very unfortunate.
In the temporary excitement over the new and loud political gyrations of the so-called new democrats, it is easy to confuse appearances with substance. Of course, the visible involvement of Western governments, international NGOs, and the lending agencies in defining, shaping, and even implementing the liberalization agenda facilitated the encapsulation of the process and its reduction to procedural contraptions that failed to alter the structural foundations of the African predicament. Indeed, the role of the West, even where it was well intentioned, failed to fully appreciate the history and historical experiences of Africa; the undemocratic distortions and disarticulations that negate democracy and good governance; the manipulation of political process and institutions by entrenched interests; and the essence of democratization and democratic transformation, as against mere liberalization and elections. This is why the hope that policy and politics would not continue to collide with the new liberalized environment has been tentative. There is so much superficiality and fakeness is the entire project and this expresses itself in uncoordinated, shallow and elite directed programs and policies.
The consequence of the above is that we are only just discovering that many of our human rights organizations, prodemocracy groups, new political parties, new leaders and so on are not really democratic; that they lack the capacity to push for true democratization; that women are still invisible in their structures; and that they lack ideological clarity, courage, and vision. We are just beginning to realize that many of the so-called civil society groups were never really interested in change for transformation or true reformation, but were interested in change for the restoration of a repackaged status quo. Thus as soon as they captured state power, like the nationalists of the 1950s and 1960s, they whitewashed the instruments and structures of domination, marginalization, exploitation, and repression and continued with business as usual. The lessons from Eritrea and Uganda where the so-called democrats are closing democratic spaces and entrenching illiberal democratic values should alert Africans to the limitations of the so-called “third wave.” In Nigeria, the behavior of the elected and appointed leaders, driven by assassinations, intolerance, corruption and impatience with the rules of democracy equally demonstrate the weak foundations of the so-called “third wave.” Hence, their response to “no business as usual” is impeachment and stalemate. They shamelessly ape the prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank and lack ideological originality while they are quick to abandon declared policy and political objectives for a share of power with the “devils” they had been fighting. Finally, they are unable to reach accommodation with each other hence the proliferation of political parties, prodemocracy movements, and presidential candidates. The recent presidential election in Zambia where eight opposition candidates ran against Frederick Chiluba’s anointed successor demonstrates that it is not the enthronement of democracy that drives these so-called opposition leaders but a hunger for raw power. Of course, again and again, they lose to the incumbent or the old guard. When the old guard comes to power, it simply whitewashes the political canvas and politics and so-called public policy remain the same. In Togo and Kenya, election after election won by Gnasingbe Eyadema and Daniel arap Moi respectively have not altered the poor quality of governance, leadership and bad public policy. The story in Cameroon is the same with the growing power and influence of Paul Biya and the ruling party.
Public policy remains essentially the same with minor shifts or tinkering here and there. Not one African country has carried out a radical or revolutionary overhaul of the bureaucracy and policy making institutions and processes. In fact, while many new governments have appointed a few new faces to critical or strategic positions, the context or environment in which they operate remains virtually untouched. Thus after a few months of enthusiastic engagements with the status quo, they are reduced to regular bureaucrats pushing a lot of paper but no policy and no impact. Most painfully, we would see not just the continuing oppression and exploitation of children, women, and the poor, but also the shameless mortgaging of Africa’s future to imperialist agents and agencies in the name of political reform, structural adjustment, privatization, commercialization or globalization. Some of our so-called “enlightened”, “younger”, “educated”, and “revolutionary” leaders speak, sound, and look more like the same political opportunists that mismanaged political independence, the last four decades of development planning, and precipitated our current predicaments. In Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Rwanda, and South Africa, the failure to carry out radical transformations of socio-economic and political relations have led to a steady re-establishment of the old order and a return to the devastating political and policy cultures of the past. Nigerian politicians did not even give the system any room for transformation or reform. The complaint everywhere is that the president is not releasing money. Money is important but it is not the basis of change. The monetization of ideas and creativity in Nigeria has commercialized our souls to a level that every policy now begins from how much the policy maker would be able to corner. In the end, the nation and its people suffer. To be sure change cannot come overnight and we need to be patient with the reform process. But what is going on in Africa hardly requires patience. Save in a few countries, and this is because we wish to be generous, politics is simply coterminous with accumulation and violence. Incumbency is now a prescription for madness. The old guard, in spite of its shameless failure all round, believes that the domination and control of power is its preserve. New voices and new ideas are suffocated without remorse. Public policy continues to visit pain, disrespect and disregard on the people. This is the only way to understand the lack of vision and political courage; the continuing disregard and disrespect for women; and the continuing subservience to foreign dictated economic and political programs. The lack of change in the inherited status quo is also evident in the inability to build new networks, encourage new discourses, and commit society to the construction of new political values; the tenacity to office and the privatization of power; and the frequent and irresponsible resort to war and other forms of violence within and across borders over mundane issues.
Finally, if the lack of efficient and effective common rules precipitated the present disaster, why have the so-called new wave democrats not attempted to directly engage the problems of corruption, mismanagement, inefficiency, concentration of resources in a few locations, the manipulation of ethnicity, language and identity, and the almost insane fixation on raw power? We have seen enough of the politics of illusion and the arrogance of power. The new culture of annoying propaganda and diversions continue as leaders engage in promoting sycophancy and personality cults. We have seen the trivialization of the rights of people: they give it on one platform and abridge it on another. We have seen the arrogance of power: power that should belong to the people but now appropriated and privatized by one “big man” and his ethnic jingoists or cabal of crooks! Public policy that originally focused on huge defense expenditures and security for the leaders remain in place. This sort of irresponsibility that is costing already poor countries a lot of foreign exchange and innocent lives continue to precipitate conflicts, displacements, refugee movements, and the diversion of scarce resources from development. It can be asserted that it is only the continuing courage and determination of civil society groups and leaders, especially movements of students, women, workers, environmentalists, professionals, and human rights that has prevented the so-called new leaders from going overboard. In this new democracy business, it is like political abracadabra: the more you look the less you see. You are told today that democracy is the answer. The very next day, you are told that democracy is alien, it has to be controlled, and you have to wait for the “big man” to approve when you can practice democracy! While the leaders scream democracy at every opportunity, especially in the presence of donors and lenders, all their actions and public policies hardly have any semblance of, or relationship to known democratic values and practice. The leaders have gotten away with this undemocratic basis of governance and policy making because there is no established political or power map, there is no “political rule” book and no agreed compact on how to organize and play politics, select leaders, deploy power and resources, organize policy making, and reproduce the political system. Where such rules exist they are unknown to the populace and they were usually put together by some so-called expert or consultant or by a handful of politicians. Even then, they never saw the light of day or served as guide to politics and governance. Every policy relied on the “big man” and his whims and caprices. In fact, Africa was a continent that was largely governed without rules. It was no wonder that public policies that emanated from such arrangements easily precipitated disillusionment, instability, poverty, inefficiency, civil wars, waste and the reproduction of dependence and underdevelopment. Obviously, I am making reference to the absence of constitutional governance and a culture of constitutionalism.
The Constitution and Public Policy
The constitution is the number one law book of any nation. It guides socio-economic and political behavior. It establishes the rules of political interaction. The constitution guides the strategies for gaining and retaining and deploying power and sets the broad rules of political and policy action. Indeed, without the constitution, anarchy, despotism, and violence would prevail. Power would be appropriated and deployed by wicked cabals of crooks and criminals. This is why despots that seize power through coups and counter-coups quickly suspend the constitution and rule through decrees. Indeed, without democratic constitutions life would easily become nasty, uncertain, brutish and very very short. Yet, just having a document called the constitution is not enough for it to be relevant. The apartheid state, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Gnasingbe Eyadema, Arap Moi, Sani Abacha and other despots in Africa have or had constitutions. These documents were legal but not legitimate documents and so could not protect the people, their communities, institutions or determine public policy in the interest of the people. The reason was simple: they were conservative and elitist in their origins and content. The masses of the people, professional bodies, civil society groups and other non-bourgeois communities were not involved in the making of the constitution. Legitimacy was not built into the process and ownership of the document could not be claimed by the people. They were generally elite documents, written by the elite and for the elite and so had little or no meaning to the life of the people.
Let me make bold to say, with full prejudice to the efforts so far made in Nigeria that any constitution that is not made through a process-led, people-driven, consultative, participatory, transparent, inclusive and bottom-up approach is useless and cannot be a guide to the nurturing and reproduction of democratic values. Our national Assembly is only postponing the evil day by tinkering with and panel beating our legal but illegitimate and grossly undemocratic 1999 constitution. From the prescriptions that have come to light thus far, they appear only interested in how every one of them would have a chance at becoming president and have access to the national treasury. In fact, we have demonized and reified the presidency in this country to a level that our legislators appear to forget that this is a federal republic. Rather than focus on refederalization, political restructuring, decentralization, a popularly made constitution and strategies for ensuring good governance and accountability, they are more interested in one-term presidency, rotational presidency and\ zooming: always seeking dubious shortcuts to power. The truth is that only a process that privileges the full and robust participation of the people, their communities and constituencies can give meaning to pro-people issues-the environment, gender equality, human rights, community development, social justice and the rule of law. Indeed, for a country like Nigeria, only such a popular process can address the national question- language, identity, region, religion, citizenship, power- and lay a credible foundation for relevant and accountable public policy. Nigeria needs to learn from other third world, especially African examples before it is too late. Our public policy looks confused, superficial, ineffective and often irrelevant because the leaders are unable to carry the people along and the constitution grants conflicting powers to different arms of government thus encouraging the arrogance of power and political rascality.
Constitution making at the end of the day is about state reconstruction, the promotion of social justice, collective articulation of the rules of politics and power, and the empowerment and mobilization of all citizens for robust involvement in the political process. This political process is conditioned by public policies. A viable process, involving the people, would promote mobilization and massive political education. Such a process would identify and bring forth progressive and committed leaders. When such leaders are elected or appointed to public office, power and position would be used to the benefit of the people and public policy would reflect a new philosophy and strategy of growth, development and democracy. At the moment public policy simply reflects the narrow and undemocratic interests of a tiny class of political opportunists, largely ignorant of developments around the world, criminally fixated on primitive accumulation of wealth and ready to tear down the foundations of the country to satisfy its crippled and confused ideas and interests. They failed to sustain a national airline. Look at the educational system, it is almost in shambles. All the paper mills are stagnant and in debt. Of the four sugar factories in the country, only one is producing at ten percent capacity. The burnt brick industries are virtually dead. What about the car assembly plants? Remember the Catering Rest Houses? Government owned hotels are decayed, in debt and ramshackle. It beats me why some state governments insist on running laundry marts, transport services, even newspapers. Take a look at all government owned newspapers around the country and check for quality. What about the so-called automobile factories? Even the servicing of assembly plants was too much for our policy people in Nigeria. I can go on and on. Nigerian policy makers and policy implementers have disgraced the state and made the market look like the only alternative. Everything that government touches ends up in disaster- heavy debts, unpaid salaries, decayed infrastructure, and disillusioned workers. Public projects today serve more as informal schools in the art of corruption, petition writing, rumor generation and dissemination, and the subversion of all laid down rules. If you disagree, kindly tell me what else the hundreds of thousands of workers at the projects I mentioned above do on a daily basis and why we are not better off today in spite of their efforts.
The Obasanjo Government: Moving in a New Direction?
Nigeria is one country where public policy has been more of a joke than anything else since political independence in 1960. I call it a joke because public policy is supposed to reflect a strategy or agenda, to precipitate change for the better and to culminate in improved and sustainable standards of living for the majority if not for everyone in society. Clearly this has not happened in Nigeria. True, this country has some of the most creative and brilliant minds in the world. There have also been a plethora of wonderful project and policies that ought to have moved the nation forward. Unfortunately, they all failed. Evidence can be found in deteriorating public institutions, bureaucratic inertia and confusion, abuse of power, misplaced priorities, continuing corruption, and the general privatization of the state and is resources by the power elite. At any level, Nigeria has hardly recorded any success that can be described as sustainable and designed to improve the conditions of the people. Urban centers are dislocated, infrastructures are decaying, the rural areas remain impoverished and neglected, political institutions are fragile and leadership remains insensitive, corrupt and irresponsible. Very few Nigerians rely on the state for basic services: the rich use the state only for primitive accumulation while constructing a parallel state to provide basic services from education and security through water and electricity supply to banking, communications and air transportation. The failure of the Nigerian state is also evidence of the failure of public sphere to mobilize the people and push them to productive and creative heights.
No matter how one feels about it, the sincerity, patriotism and commitment of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to the Nigeria project cannot be questioned. Even with all the efforts in the national assembly to challenge his style and authority, no one has tasked his morality, credibility, honesty and sense of dedication. No one has accused Mr. President of looting the treasury. This is certainly a new development in leadership direction in Nigeria. The fundamental “mistake” of the Obasanjo administration was the talk about “dividends of democracy.” It is a catchy, refreshing, and captivating phrase. But it is thoroughly misplaced in the context of our political reality. It built up unnecessary expectations and rather than refocus national energy at production, it is not rested on the oars of sharing or expecting so-called dividends. Yet, we all know that past military and civilian leaders took the country beyond the precipice of frustrations, pain, and fear. People lost faith in the national project. It would require more than a decade of dedicated, progressive, and well-managed governance for Nigeria to embark on the path of recovery. It would require rebuilding institutions, reformulating policies, mobilizing the people, reconstructing political relations, regenerating hope, and reconstructing viable cultural and social networks to sustain growth, development and democracy. These would take time. Dividends are what are left after all costs have been removed. Dividends generate the expectation of sharing. But you cannot share what you do not have or what does not exist. Now, beginning in May 1999 everyone was searching for the dividends of democracy. For ordinary people, they wanted it in the form of public services, jobs, low inflation, security, better infrastructure, and access to those that they had elected to office. And they do have a right to expect these benefits. But first, the people needed to be mobilized to generate the gross profits from which they would enjoy dividends!
For the politicians, dividends of democracy were simply bulging Ghana must-go bags filled with naira notes of various denominations, preferably the N500 denomination. Where this did not materialize, they either engaged in direct looting of the treasury or move around to harass parastatals and projects under the numerous house and senate committees for contracts and other favors. Where this did not produce expected results, they resorted to even more sinister political plots designed to blackmail other arms of government. The net result is that the dividends are not here. This has made the politicians unhappy and very desperate. The commitment of Mr. President to “No Business as Usual” has even made things worse and one of his famous crimes is the failure to make cash available for spending and stealing. Yet, every month we hear of budgetary allocation to local and state governments but Nigerians want the FEDERAL government to open the vaults and make cash available for spending!
This is not to say the government has not embarked on certain policies that make you wonder as to who is behind this sort of thing? An example is the multi-billion naira stadium in Abuja. Sports is great for the soul but a stadium is NOT more important that education, roads, industry, the environment, science and technology, a youth policy, rural development, and a viable transportation system. Unfortunately for our country, as politicians, policy makers and leaders focused more and more on finding and sharing the dividends of democracy by any means possible, they subverted, neglected, ignored and mangled public policies. In this way, they distracted government from its agenda, subverted existing programs, wasted time on irrelevant and mundane issues, and fanned the embers of hate, violence, intolerance, and suspicion across the country. If our national assembly had spent half the time and energy they have so far devoted to trying to impeach the president on cleaning up the nation, passing bills, and showing good leadership in their respective constituencies, Nigeria would have been a different and better place by now.
One can give a long balance sheet of things that the Obasanjo administration has done right. It is also possible to make a long catalogue of errors and miscalculations. I am not aware of any government on earth, especially one that inherited a totally decayed political economy that makes no mistakes. Of course, making a mistake is not the issue. Learning good lessons from mistakes and correcting such errors is the true measure of a sense of direction. It is the responsibility of every citizen to be part of such a process. Today we all sit down and expect one man, Mr. President to do everything. Yet, this is a time to focus on the positive to that we can contain the effect of the negatives. I can make bold to say, that one sure area where the Obasanjo government has taken the right policy, stuck by the policy and succeeded is in the bitumen sector. Mr. Chairman, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, allow me to give a quick balance sheet of policy without politics and how it has worked effectively.
Depoliticizing Policy under the Obasanjo Administration
: A Brief Case Study of the BPIC
As evidence of a desire to move the country in a new direction, Mr. President terminated the tenure of the former sole administrator of the Bitumen Project. In his place, a new Bitumen Project Implementation Committee (BPIC) was inaugurated in August 2000 with the essential mandate to implement the bitumen project.1 The main consideration in appointing members of the BPIC was to get quality and committed Nigerians together to work on a national project. The Committee was specifically required to:
a.Establish the appropriate legal framework for the bitumen sector;
b.Recommend the appropriate institutional framework for the sector;
c.Allocate the bitumen blocks to local and foreign investors; and
d.Put in place the necessary institutional and administrative infrastructure required to operationalize the bitumen project.
With due respect to the work of previous Implementation Committees and the efforts of Mr. Femi Dada, the project’s sole administrator for six years, there was little on ground to justify the robust hope in the public mind that the bitumen industry was just one small push away from blossoming. In fact, the project existed in name only. When the BPIC was inaugurated in August 2000 it found that the project had:
No comprehensive technical reports
No environmental baseline study/ report
No e-mail and website facilities
No serious community relations policy/program
Only tentative contacts with potential investors both local and foreign
Very poor administrative and financial framework
No legal framework
In other words, the very things that serious investors would ask for were not in place. The physical structures on the ground, some of which were donated to the project by the Ondo State Government, were either in disrepair or appeared neglected. Equipment and household/office furnishing (including 48 window and 18 split air conditioners as well as 11 large generating sets) had been stored in various warehouses some of them for several years. Structures built with public funds at Ore and Akure such as the clinic and lab were overgrown by weeds and though millions had been expended on rehabilitating a major office building at Quarter 52 Alagbaka donated by the Ondo State government, the Committee on the Implementation of the Bitumen Project (CIBP) remained in a rented facility at NIDB house! To make matters worse, the project owed several contractors millions of naira and many of them had no documents to back up their claims against the project. Finally, to cut the sad story short, the project lacked core staff in critical areas. Those on the ground were poorly guided and demoralized.
Clearly something had gone wrong with our policy strategy at least as it related to the bitumen project. Leadership had failed. Supervision had failed and policy had been sacrificed on the alter of opportunism. To put it bluntly, the project was going no where! It was against this background that the BPIC was constituted with wide ranging terms of reference and a strong mandate.
Of course there was opposition to the BPIC. Many persons, for a variety of reasons did not want it to succeed. While some lobbied heavily in Abuja for the Committee to be dissolved, others tried to rush the block allocation process. It was alleged that the chairman was an “absentee chairman” because he was based in NY! Though the position was not a full-time one and the chairman attended all the Committee’s numerous meetings, those who took this infantile line of reasoning overlooked the fact that the BPIC had a professional and competent secretary and staff on ground in Akure. It was also claimed that certain states were not represented on the Committee. The appointments were based on merit. States of origin were merely coincidental. In any case, the mandate was to get the project off the ground not to pamper the egos of states. It was even alleged that the chairman was not from a bitumen-bearing state. Though very irrelevant, this rumor was completely false. We also heard that President Obasanjo did not want the project to take off because bitumen was found mostly in AD states! First Edo state, a bitumen-bearing state was under a PDP government. Second, the president had taken it upon himself to visit Ondo state and Agbabu in particular to see the bitumen occurrence with his own eyes. Third, again and again, he had publicly declared his undiluted commitment to the take-off of the project. There were several acts of sabotage against the project by several interest groups either through rumors, misinformation, disinformation, writing of baseless petitions, and criminal attempts to penetrate and influence the staff to work against the actualization of the project. These all failed because the BPIC decided to maintain an open door policy, emphasize merit, not pamper any politician or person, and set targets that were attainable. Of course, the Committee was lucky to have had two ministers, Senator Kanu Agabi (SAN) and Mrs. Modupe Adelaja, two wonderful, patriotic, focused, highly-motivated workaholics who gave total support and were prepared to do everything possible to ensure that our work did not suffer or get distracted. In addition, our host government under Chief Adebayo Adefarati gave all possible support and left no one in doubt as to its commitment to the project. It was with these levels of support and the full commitment of the Committee that we executed policies and programs that strengthened the project and gave it a new sense of direction. These included:
Renewed contact with the African Development Bank (ADB) in connection with an outstanding technical aid grant to the project;
Meeting with a high-powered team from PDVSA of Venezuela to discuss practical ways of implementing the project;
Establishment of a technical committee to review bids for the environmental baseline study of the entire bitumen belt and the subsequent award of a contract to the baseline study of the bitumen belt;
Contact with embassies and missions of countries with relevant technology that could be of use to Nigeria;
Establishment of a website and an e-mail service as these are critical in these days of globalization and growing information network;
Comprehensive review and restructuring of financial procedures and administrative structures in order to improve transparency and accountability.
Full inventory of project facilities/properties including efforts to retrieve public/project properties such as cars and satellite phones that had been deployed to the use of non-project persons;
Renovation, rehabilitation and relocation to the office building in Alagbaka Quarters, Akure thus saving government millions of naira in rent;
Renovation and rehabilitation of all project buildings in Akure and Ore including the Guest House that was in a total state of disrepair;
Digitization of block demarcation and other technical data to support the bidding and block allocation processes;
Initiation of negotiations, following Presidential approval, to conduct a seismic survey of a portion of the bitumen belt;
Initiation of additional core drilling activities in the bitumen belt;
Initiation of a major media program to increase the generation, processing, packaging and dissemination of accurate information on the bitumen project;
Renewed contacts with bitumen-bearing states and communities in order to bring them on board and earn their confidence and cooperation;
Initiation of contacts, research and negotiations for the establishment of a Bitumen Training Institute to produce local skills for the eventual takeoff of the bitumen project;
Review of the proposed legal instrument for the project and made recommendations to incorporate therein environmental and community relations concerns;
Initiation of a comprehensive community relations program designed to mobilize and educate bitumen-bearing communities on all aspects of the project and on what to expect when investors begin operations;
Verification of all contracts and claims of debts and in the process saved the project millions of naira;
Assessment of the bids for bitumen block allocation and successfully allocated the bids to winners in September 2002!
Ladies and gentlemen, this is only a partial list of what the BPIC did since August 2000 and I am proud to say that the BPIC did in two years what had never been done in the history of Nigeria in the bitumen sector. If Mr. President had concerned himself primarily with party affiliation, state of origin, ethnic location, and other nepotistic considerations, the bitumen project would have remained exactly where it had been before August 2000. While these issues are important in a federal and plural society, policy should strive to rely on autonomy, experience, commitment, vision, merit and quality. This is the only way to ensure that irrespective of parties, regimes, and personalities, some continuity could be assured and progress recorded in the interest of all.
Conclusion
What else do we need to do to depoliticize policy and entrench a new culture or tradition of putting the right people in the right places and ensuring that our politics is drained of its numerous negative coalitions, contradictions and conflicts? Of course, it would be easy to call on government fight corruption; respond to the plight of the poor, promote industry and agriculture, empower the youth and women, strengthen and reform the bureaucracy, revamp infrastructure, and design a viable health policy. We could add an urgent need to promote science and technology, whip some discipline into the ranks of the dependent bourgeois class; revamp academic institutions, and promote rural development. But the government and politics must first be reformed for policy-starved sectors or areas to change for the better.
First, the issue of good governance is central to the reinvention of politics in our country. But do those in power know the meaning of Governance? Do they value good governance? How can people who have no respect for the rule of law value governance? The value of governance is of course directly related to the structure, solidity, and quality of the state. This means that the state must be restructured and democratized. An unsteady, unstable, inefficient, undemocratic and non-transparent state cannot promote good governance and positive public policy much less democratic values and economic growth and development. The calls for political restructuring and refederalization have my total support. We kid ourselves to think that we can ignore these demands after decades of despotic military misrule.
Second, political stability, transparency, accountability, and good governance are heavily dependent on the strength of civil society. Civil society is the foundation of stability, creativity, the market, and progress. Progress can never be made unless there is a clear effort to open up political spaces and allow civil society to thrive. A government and leadership that are not sensitive to this are doomed to fail. Foreign interests frequently gauge how much popular or grassroots support a government has. This cannot be generated on the pages of newspapers or through special supplements and press releases. It comes from a steady and systematic engagement between those in charge of governance and the people and their communities through dialogue, shared values, and collective commitment to a national agenda. Unfortunately, most Nigerian leaders are yet to understand or appreciate the meaning of civil society much less how to mobilize its energy for the task of national development. It is not too late to remedy this dangerous tendency.
Third, I am a very strong believer in the fact that progressive persons and activists must make a bid for power. Power is not the preserve of political crooks, retired military officers, the rich and so-called professional politicians. The evidence of their past failures can be found all over the nation and on the faces of our people. People with new ideas, new networks and the energy to work for change must seek political power. This is no longer the time for “siddon look” politics. This is not the time to sit by and complain or criticize endlessly. It is time to deploy the accumulated experience and networks into the service of the people. It is ideologically wrong to leave the terrain to rascal politicians and then complain that they are not performing. Those who have no desire to run for office must learn to support those that have the courage to do so. It is ideologically fraudulent to give up a war even before fighting a battle, to discourage those that are making a bid for power and to conclude, even before they win elections, that they would fail. If you do not have power you can change nothing.
Fourth, as I indicated earlier, a constitution is the number one policy guide of any nation. The 1999 constitution is, at best, a fraudulent document. It cannot serve as the basis of governance and it has been condemned across the country. The fact that the National Assembly and the presidency have set up mechanisms to review the constitution is evidence of the problems with the constitution. The process of constitution review must however be seen as an opportunity to promote mass political education, mobilization, national dialogue or debate, and for addressing the national question. Until Nigeria adopts a truly people-driven, process-led, consultative, participatory and inclusive approach to making a popular constitution, the country would not get out of its current you chop and, you chop politics. Only such an approach would build legitimacy for the document and build ownership around it. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that if a people collectively make a constitution, they would collectively nurture and defend it. This sort of constitution making strategy could come from a truly democratic national conference. It is not late for Nigeria to draw lessons from other African examples such as South Africa, Uganda, Eritrea, Mali and Ghana.
Finally, I recommend a comprehensive and fully participatory national conference to be organized at ward, local government, state and national levels. We have become so divided, oppressed, antagonistic, and suspicious of each other that we can no longer whitewash the reality of our predicaments. Diversions and manipulations would no longer do it. We have cultivated and concretized a tradition of not relying on policy. Politics is now everything. Even then it is the sort of politics that is heavily monetized, criminally violent, shamelessly banal and superficial, and arrogantly pursued by hook and crook. This sort of politics cannot lay the foundations for progress in Nigeria. We must meet to discuss our hopes, dreams, pains, strengths, weaknesses, fears, challenges, and opportunities. We must share some understanding and agreement on how we got to where we are, what our current predicaments are, and how we are to get out of our current problems. We must discuss the national question especially issues of gender equality, rights, language, religion, political parties, power, elections, leadership, trust, citizenship and those vexing issues that divide us. We must give the people themselves an opportunity to articulate their dreams about a better future and we must discuss how to understand, tolerate and accommodate our differences in a truly democratic environment. Elsewhere I have discussed in detail the structure, duration, leadership, funding and representation at such a conference. Suffice to say here that it is only after such a national discussion that we can establish a truly democratic, tolerant, inclusive, sensitive, participatory, just, and transparent environment that would move our country forward. Only such an environment would privilege and protect an environment where policy would not be mangled and bastardized by politics and we can dream safer, better and richer dreams for our dear country.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you very much for your patience.
Akure, Ondo State
October 30, 2002
2 thoughts on “Between Policy and Politics”
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Hi. I read a few of your other posts and wanted to know if you would be interested in exchanging blogroll links?
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.
Tim Ramsey