Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Tunde Bakare's speech

The Nigeria project requires a new mindset that is driven by morally and uprightly minded leadership. 

The institutions as they are presently are extremely weak to make any significant change. 

Corruption as we know it today consumes every sector of the economy and its spiral effects are found in family, religious, social and ethnic circles. From the grassroots to the height of political spectrum the ugly head of corruption is dominant. 

The mindset of social and material values that are rooted in the spirit of excellence and perfection for social cohesion and unity of purpose. It is akin to the Highest Good of Plato that is capable of healing the most corrupt society anyone can imagine if the leaders at every level of society follow it as a compass. It requires education for constructive criticism, freedom of expression and association, understanding, commitment to peaceful co-existence, dedication to service delivery, sacrifice without bitterness etc on the part of members of the society. 

If these ingredients of purposeful existence permeate every segment of the new Nigeria, the country will be heading towards greatness and I believe it is achievable. 

Segun Ogungbemi Ph.D

Professor of Philosophy

Adekunle Ajasin University

Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State

Nigeria

Cellphone: 08033041371

                   08024670952

On Jan 10, 2015, at 2:22 PM, "'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Oga Moses,

Now that we are arriving at some form of convergence on this issue, it seems appropriate that we begin thinking of, as Olayinka puts it, moving from A to B. And even beyond the confines of listserv (I have the spectre of Ikhide's constant challenge staring at all of us on this).

We seem to have agreed that 

(a) our instantiation of liberal democracy has become problematic because the African political leadership allowed  a foreign political system to be engrafted on the African polities without due and critical consideration for our unique sociopolitical circumstances;

(b) that uncritical decision is responsibility for our present postcolonial politics of winner-takes-all-loser-becomes-vengeful as well as the exhorbitant presidential system whose overhead is undermining budgetary performances and economic progress in no small measure;

(c) the traditional African societies provide a rich array or traditional political forms that could serve as a platform for allowing the past interrogate the present rather than the external imposing on the internal (if you get what I mean);

And two more points:

(d) We need to put in mind that it is the current political wahala that gave birth to this theoretical musing, and Ikhide is right that some of this ought to translate into concrete political programmes, actions, etc.

(e) And, finally, that the present political class has been so thoroughly inducted into political power that it will, at all points, undermine every and any move--political and constitutional--to reform the very basis of its hold on power (short of an iconoclastic revolution or an undemocratic but enlightened strongman, and that possibility should be factored into the intransigence of this class). And come to think of it, while not subscribing to Ikhide's blanket attack on African and Nigerian intellectuals, aren't the intellectuals-in-power complicit enough in colluding with the political class in its desperate bid to hold on to power? 

I have outlined a non-party polity alternative which I believe has a very strong appeal if institutionally considered. Olayinka has also presented an analysis of what he calls an Hexagen, a political arrangement that could tone down the zero-sum implications of our politics. We have the six geopolitical zones already but I ain't sure if that amounts to anything yet.

Thus, we seem to know what the problem is, but what are the answers? How do these analyses translate into some concrete political programmes? Everything points at some serious constitutional tweaking but how to get past the rapacious political elite?

Does this conundrum point at the entrance of a strongman here? Whatever we have said about its political and moral implications, we seem at a point where moving forward appears impossible except we have a revolution or a very strongman. I prefer the latter.

Adeshina Afolayan

Sent from Samsung Mobile

-------- Original message --------
From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Date:
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Tunde Bakare's speech

Shina,

Thanks for your intervention. I agree with much of what you wrote, but in my opinion, liberal democracy is not zero-sum in principle or philosophy. That's why, whether it is the parliamentary system of Britain or the presidential system of America, the idea is that shared power between the arms of government and in rare cases in the parliamentary system between parties can prevent the system from being or becoming zero-sum. However, in Africa, liberal democracy has clearly produced zero-sum conceptions and practices of governance. So, in my opinion, the problem is not the theory per se but the on-ground dynamics of liberal democracy in Africa, aided in my opinion by the peculiarities of African political and socioeconomic conditions that I outlined early on in several posts. The problem is that neither the Western actors who pushed this brand of democracy on Africa nor the African states who adopted them stopped to think of how African states differed from Euro-American ones and how sociopolitical and economic conditions in Africa might complicate and constrain the workings of liberal democracy. Finally, they did not think about the dangers of a one-size-fits-all political system and made no effort to tweak what they were implementing to take account of and address the peculiar tensions, conflicts, interests, and pressures of African politics. In my opinion, doing this due diligence would have resulted in significant departures from some of the tenets of liberal democracy such as majoritarian rule (as opposed to rule by consensus).

On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 9:40 AM, 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Oga Ken (and Moses),

In response to your last observation, may be we can begin by looking at the very nature of political party as an organisation set up to gain or retain power (and, at all cost, we may add). If we add all that Moses had mentioned in his post on the nature of election and governance as well as the zero-sum essence of politics in Africa, we come to realise that the idea of power, according to the perception of a political party, becomes an explosive, do-or-die affair. Power will definitely corrupt given all the loopholes and benefits attached to its use. You need to peruse the benefits and responsibilities attached to the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to understand why the parties go to such extent to win it.

Back to the parties, someone had suggested that we make a distinction between 'political parties' and 'political associations'; the difference being in the relation of each to the notion of power. The beginning assumption for what Kwasi Wiredu called 'a non-party polity' is that there is no necessary connection between democracy and multi-party system. If this is accepted,  then we can begin to make a case not for a narrow notion of political party founded solely for the appropriation of power, but for a party (in a broad lexical sense) that exists essential for participation in power. Political participation in this sense runs more with the idea of good governance than with that of 'government'. The parties are thus organised on a representative basis around the project of good governance (rather than that of gaining power with the implication that others will be entirely out of power.) 

The non-party polity sounds idealistic, but doesn't all the points we have been making about the traditional African societies and their political systems appropriate this consensual and cooperative model? Its highest point is the interrogation of power and its corrupt proclivities. Government is formed not by parties but by the consensus of elected representatives,  says Wiredu. Government becomes a coalition of all those interested in good governance. 

Imagine the possibilities of such a system?

Adeshina Afolayan

Sent from Samsung Mobile

-------- Original message --------
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Date:
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Tunde Bakare's speech


hi moses
i find this interesting. i don't recall us debating the point on cote d'ivoire, but i do agree with you on the need for a more balanced system. checks and balances. dennis duerden wrote about this in traditional african systems of rule, with kings' power hedged by age-grade societies or the like. and mamdani et al argued that colonialism destroyed the traditional balance by introjecting a system of unchecked power given to the appointed chiefs under colonial administrators. not terribly far from the power of totalitarian states.
my greatest disappointment since the 90s has been the failure of multisystem democracies to work, because the rulers, from biya to kagame to mobuto to mugabe etc have learned to delegitimize the system by undoing the oppositional structures. and even if they didn't, i quite agree that the checks in a legal and legislative branch aren't working in many african states, though not all.
the notion that we can return to the past seems fanciful, esp in an age where the very power of the african state has been attenuated by neoliberal economic forces.
so where are we? the kind of balance you laud, which i too laud, might be seen to have functioned somewhat in senegal, and still is, partly because mourid and tijanni orders divvy up the power--and accommodation to the opposing group has been ingrained in senegal for centuries, as mamdou diouf has argued. too bad the same hasn't come about in nigeria.
how do we get there? that's the real question. what do you think? what is the mechanism for inculcating that kind of change?
what i wonder is about the nature of power that operates in determining the political structures--what drives that?
ken

On 1/6/15 9:21 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:

Olayinka,

And may your tribe increase for this wonderful intervention. There is a debate in the archive of this forum about this. It was mainly between myself and Ken and occurred, I believe, during the Ivory Coast electoral brouhaha. The culprit in Africa's new crisis of governance and electoral democracy, I've always maintained, is the winner-takes-all presidential model of liberal democracy that we have adopted. Coming to Nigeria, when we uncritically borrowed the presidential system from the US, we didn't stop to think that in the US, the presidency, while desirable to political actors and parities, is not the be-all-and-end-all of all political and electoral quests, since the legislative and judicial arms exercise real checks on the president--and that, because there are functioning institutions of accountability, the president cannot control or determine how and where to allocate revenues or use state money to engage in political patronage as is done in Nigeria and most of Africa.

In the first place, I am still not convinced that we need the expensive presidential system, but once we adopted it, we should have known that, given our weak institutions of accountability, prevalent political corruption, weak checks and balances, and the tendency of an executive president to exercise overriding allocative prerogative, we would end up with what we have today: a political system in which control of the presidency, of executive national power, has become a do-or-die affair, the endpoint of all political contests. As a result, all over Africa, and especially in Nigeria, presidential elections have become moments of tension, conflicts, and existential anxieties for the nation concerned. We should have anticipated this conundrum and rejected the presidential system or tweak/mitigate it by introducing elements that either reduce and check the president's power or compels him and his party to form a broad-based government and govern by consensus.

For goodness sake, why can't we craft something that speaks to and reflects our peculiar situation--something outside the winner-takes-all model, even if it is not based on one-man one-vote? African democratic discourses tend to be predicted on the false notion that democracy is about elections and that only the principle of one-man, one-vote is acceptable as a premise for elections. The most important elements in democracy are not elections or electoral rituals but accountability, representation, consultative input from citizens, and legitimacy--and all of these can in fact be obtained without elections in the liberal democratic way we've come to define and practice the rite of voting and being voted for. 

I am reading Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom because I'm teaching a course on the Mandelas. In the first section of the book dealing with his childhood, Mandela talks about living in the court of the King of the Thembu and seeing how political business is conducted, how matters are discussed by the king, his advisers, and citizens/subjects at special ad hoc meetings moderated by the king. He makes the point that consensus, consensual decision-making, deliberative egalitarianism, and inclusive, collective governance were the dominant features of this democratic model, not majoritarian or monarchical decision making. He makes sure to contrast this model of traditional democracy with the Western liberal, majoritarian, winner-takes-all model and concludes that, except for the traditional African process being patriarchal and male-centered, it's very inclusive, and minority opinions are always part of an emerging consensus and are carried along on the way to an acceptable decision, hence the concept of winners and losers does not arise. Mandela's essential argument is precisely against the winner-takes-all, majoritarian tyranny of Western liberal democracy, which has now become a source of perennial