By Chido Onumah
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President Goodluck Jonathan
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Nigeria is a deeply flawed polity. And unless we brace
up to this reality and do something about it, we would continue to witness the
show of shame that is going on in the name of democracy in Rivers State and
indeed across the country.
In July 2003, a pseudo-democrat and putative dictator
posing as the democratic president of the Federal Republic in cahoots with
political jobbers and miscreants sacked an elected governor of a state. Exactly
ten years later, history is repeating itself.
It was Karl Marx who
in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte, while complementing Hegel's assertion that
every major event, phenomenon or personage in history usually appeared twice,
stated that the first appearance was usually a tragedy and the second a farce. If
Obasanjo/Ngige in 2003 was a tragedy; Jonathan/Amaechi ten years later is
certainly a farce. Or how else can you describe a situation where five members
of the Rivers State House of Assembly – an assembly with 32 members – impeached
the speaker and replaced him with one of their own.
The videos of that attempted coup have become media
sensation. However, beyond the mindless violence that we witness and the comic
relief that they provide, the horror show is an indictment of our democracy. But
it is much more than that. It is window into a much deeper national problem. Therefore,
if we focus on the Jonathans (Goodluck and Patience), Amaechi as well as their
sidekicks and disciples we miss the point.
For me, the crisis in Rivers State is a reflection of
our crisis of nationhood; the outcome of the distorted structure of Nigeria and
its power relations. Many of those who are shouting themselves hoarse today will
do the same thing if given the opportunity. Clearly, any attempt to understand the
current crisis without focusing on this fundamental problem would amount to
chasing shadows.
Prof. Chinweizu captured
this reality when he noted during the January 2012 fuel subsidy crisis that,
“Many of the deadly problems plaguing Nigeria are maintained by the provisions
of the constitution as well as the structures it has set up. Therefore,
tackling many of Nigeria's problems would require a comprehensive critique and
gutting of the constitution in which they are rooted".
Last year, former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, complained about “the
scandalously limitless powers wielded by anyone who occupies the presidential
seat in Nigeria”. It is the same limitless powers that governors enjoy in their
states. Of course, the political class will complain and do everything except
interrogate the very system that makes this scandal of a democracy possible: Whether we
are talking about governors sacking local government chairmen with impunity, the
president using the apparatuses of the state to solve his personal and
intra-party problems or the National Assembly assuming powers it does not have – in this
case, the illegal and unconstitutional “take-over” of the Rivers State Assembly.
Rather than being fixated on the Jonathan/Amaechi farce,
perhaps, this offers us an opportunity to begin discussing the bigger question
of restructuring the country. Unless we take that bold step, the affront to
democracy we witnessed in Anambra State in 2003 and Rivers State in 2013 will
happen again, perhaps on a grander and much more farcical form.
A few days ago, during a solidarity
visit to Governor Amaechi, the governors of Kano, Jigawa, Adamawa and Niger
States called for State Police. We must not stop at that. We should go a step
further to discuss resource control/revenue allocation, citizenship rights and
the many problems that make our democracy a huge joke.
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