(Elite Pluralism or Electoral Federalism)

Like all medical perplexities, the Nigerian patient has many physicians. Unfortunately, none is as yet a psychiatrist of collective hysteria. Hysteria defines the Nigerian condition. It drives the people to extremes of passion: from tender loving to mutual loathing, from reasonable cooperation with authorities to irrational confrontation with the state, and from kindness to many to cruelty to all. The human condition has never been richer in sheer diversity; or more intriguing in its seething and sizzling contradictions.

As military rules recedes into remote antiquity in Nigeria, the contradictions of domesticated democratic rule are opening up. One of these contradictions is the very fact that the “open” society has now allowed Nigerians to have an idea of the glaring imperfections of democracy as naturalized in Nigeria. This is the longest spell of civil rule in the history of Nigeria.

The First Republic lasted six years and the Second Republic four years. The Third Republic died invitro. With seventeen continuous years of civil rule under its belt, the Fourth Republic has even managed a historic regime change, with opposition elements defeating an incumbent government in the presidential election of 2015.

Yet rather than thank God for little mercies and use the opportunity of relative stability to pose questions that will deepen the democratic process, or engage in fruitful and creative strategizing that will boost social justice and political inclusiveness, Nigerians have been quarrelling and bickering over irrelevancies. It is all in the nature human societies, particularly when people believe they have been short-changed in the name of change.
So, once again it is the season of open cynicism when men and women on the boil complain and question everything under the sun. But this monologic narrative about suffering under change does not exhaust the story in its diverse possibilities. Indeed, it is curious that we complain endlessly and rightly too about the legislature, the judiciary and the executive without appreciating the underlying irony or the conditions of possibility.

These strident complaints seem to have come to a head with the administration of General Buhari for three interlocking reasons which may not be obvious to the president and his harsh interlocutors. First, given the circumstances of his current ascendancy, people complain because they believe that this ought to be a listening government.

Second, they complain because they believe that they have a government strong and resolute enough and with the capacity and resilience to absorb criticism without toppling into self-absorbed intolerance. Finally, people complain because it is seen as part of change or a longing for change. The whole Buhari project itself, it can be argued, is anchored on a relentless electoral critique of the PDP project of perpetual power without responsibility.

It was a political siege lasting for a whopping sixteen years and three epic presidential slugfests beginning from 2003. There is no evidence that Buhari was part of, or ever bought into, the military conspiracythat foisted General Obasanjo on the nation. The only time the two military heavyweights ever collaborated was during the short-lived Association for Good Governance- or something to that effect-formed after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election. Predictably, the whole thing ended in a fiasco as a result of multiple political ambushes.

Having been a serial victim of electoral malfeasance himself, it will be very strange if President Buhari were to be seen opposing or rejecting necessary electoral reforms and the structural adjustments which will put the electoral destiny of the nation beyond the manipulative reach of a few people or an oligarchic cabal.

Yet even more curious is the fact that in all the noise about restructuring, fiscal federalism, political reform, modernization etc.., we have been slow tocome up with the notion of electoral federalism in opposition to elite pluralism or the plutocratic politics so beloved of our retired generals and the dominant faction of the political elite.

Electoral federalism presents a major challenge to multi-ethnic and culturally polarized nations, but it is also a nation-enhancing formula for overcoming primordial divisions. By giving sinews and strengths to the smallest units, it ensures that no part is made to feel electorally unimportant or surplus to hegemonic requirements.

But even more importantly, the voting template is structured in such a way that no single unit or combination of two hegemonic blocs can determine the electoral fate of the nation. In elite pluralism, once the political barons have made up their minds, two elite formations can combine to impose their rule if not vision on the rest of the society.

The perils of elite pluralism and plutocratic politics can be seen in General Obasanjo’s recent assertion that he (Obasanjo) and three other people gathered together to impose General Buhari on the nation. Coyness and self-effacement have never been part of the former president’s virtues, particularly when it comes to political self-advertisement. Yet it is quite intriguing that on this occasion, perhaps jolted by his own dangerous indiscretion, Obasanjo issued a public retraction and ate his own word.

But the Owu-born warlord need not be remorseful or sorrowful about this indiscretion. This is the nature of politics and democracy in Nigeria, particularly after the advent of military rule. The selectorate select and then ask the electorate to elect. If the selectorate fail to select, there would be nothing for the electorate to elect.

This was how Obasanjo himself came to be in 1999 and in 2003 when he steamrolled the entire nation by unilaterally electing to act on behalf of the selectorate. Again in 2007, Obasanjo, in a rather crude show of unilateral power, appropriated the will of the selectorate to impose Yar’Adua and Jonathan on the nation having failed in his bid to extend his tenure. The electorate had no choice but to elect accordingly.

The only known exception to this iron law of electoralism in Nigeria was in 1993 when General Ibrahim Babangida, panicked into careless brinksmanship, failed to select and the electorate elected an unanointed and unselected MKO Abiola. All hell was let loose and the election was summarily annulled by the full selectorate. Having failed the nation in this military-ordained transfer of power to the extent that he imperilled continued military rule, Babangida was lucky that he was only forcefully shunted aside for General Abacha, the ultimate enforcer, to gather the reins of power and the scrambled wits of the military oligarchy.

But not being very intelligent or an astute reader of the wider political currents, Abacha mistook his historic brief as the final undertaker of military rule to mean continued military rule or at the very least his own transformation to a civilian despot. His old military cohorts such as Generals Obasanjo and Yar’Adua, whoin their political delusion still thought there was something to play for were swiftly impounded and thrown into the dungeon of the dead and dying. But in a historic clearing of the clogged deck facilitated by external interests, both Abacha and Abiola had to be eliminated to pave the way for General Obasanjo.

Having been the major beneficiary of this occult democracy and the deadly manipulation of elite plasticity in Nigerian politics, it is understandable if General Obasanjo continues to be enamoured of its schemes and scheming. Obasanjo himself and his disastrous impositions are prime examples of what is wrong with this type of command democracy and its manipulations of narrow elite consensus and institutional incoherence in the country.

There is always a ring of fait accompli to this kind of oligopolistic politics and the manipulation of elite fault lines by a few supermen in a multi-ethnic country cobbled together by colonial interlopers, since nature abhors a political vacuum. The danger with this kind of politics is not that it is inherently evil or amoral. It is more dangerous than that.

Since it is unable or unwilling to avail itself of the need for the constant restructuring and the architectural revamping of the polity which throws up new talents and energies needed to galvanize the nation it is constantly scraping the bottom of the barrel and throwing up expired non-starters such as we have seen with Obasanjo and his jaded impositions. Its mere existence therefore becomes an iron and binding justification for its continued existence as we have seen in Obasanjo’s unguarded outburst.

For example since the advent of the Fourth Republic and owing to the reality of structural marginalization and political amputation arising from the civil war and hegemonic politics, there is no evidence that a military general or political figure of commensurate stature from either the South South or the South East has ever taken partin the oligarchic deliberations which precede the foisting of a ruler on the whole country.

The current turmoil and turbulence and the cries of exclusion and marginalization from those parts of the country should serve as a warning that we cannot continue to exclude significant sectors of the nation from its power configuration. Something will give and if care is not taken the force of inevitability will lead to the inevitability of force.

The Americans who we like to ape for the wrong reasons are also conditional democrats. Their founding fathers also knew that the election of a nation’s president is too important to be left wholly in the hands of the electorate with its untamed and often unwise rabble. They therefore came up with the idea of an electorate college as the ultimate arbiter of who becomes the president of America.

Consequently, when they are voting for a president, Americansare also selecting the electors who will act as the ultimate umpire in conjunction with the state legislatures, the governors and the congress. But America is a land of constant restructuring and ceaseless self-surpassing. When this inventive 1787 contraption ran into stormy waters in 1800 in the historic Jefferson-Burr presidential duel, they quickly came up with a structural amendment which has since undergone several amendments as unforeseen circumstances develop.

In the light of the foregoing and given the sheer scope and magnitude of state corruption that has been revealed to the public by his fortuitous advent, General MohammaduBuhari will be the last member of the old oligarchy to ever rule Nigeria. The retired general should seriously ponder his strategic role and historic destiny as the final undertaker of the old Nigerian ruling class in all its political, economic and electoral turpitude and should not allow himself to be misled by hawks insisting that the current configuration will do.

This is why the president, rather than seeing those who are clamouring for the urgent restructuring of the political, economic and electoral organogram of the country as irritants and closet adversaries should see them as allies seeking to help him midwife a new Nigeria. As it is, the general appears torn between the false claims of those who insist they brought him to power and the wider and more legitimate claims of the Nigerian masses who swept him to power to save them from their tormentors.

Given the current mood of the country, if the retired general should choose to run in 2019 based on a revalidation or mere recombination of the existing formula rooted in the coalition of two hegemonic blocs, there is every possibility that the nation might dissolve into terminal anarchy and chaos. Here is hoping that President Buhari will not be the last ruler of Nigeria as we know it.