Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Buhari's AnticorruptionCampaignRhetoric Will Not Work

Moses:

Apologies for the delay in replying to yours  As you may have  noticed in the past 7 years October is the month when I may not open y mails for weeks and I remember when I made a fleeting intervention a year or two ago and you said I missed the earlier background to the thread.  Its not that bad this year and will be progressively better as i de-clutter my goals  As to your best friend in the forum thats late news since he left no one in doubt about that.

Consider me the alter ego of that childhood adversarial friend of yours.  The conclusion to your piece is very similar to the qualities touted of Atiku by the Atiku Brigade.  I dont know Sowore enough to know whether he falls in that category.  That is why I said the choice between you ad Atiku and not between Sowore and Atiku.

It is just that Atikus hypocrisy rankles.  He plays to the gallery of his love of the youth as his distinction over Buhari  He clains to have supported youths who made it to be governors  Yet instead of pursuing that to the end by supporting part of those not so young people to the presidency he opts to support hielf at 71 ( exaple of your gerontocrats.)  He wants to profit fro attacks on Buhari who is a slow civilianized developer by doing everythig to ake sure he (Buhari) does not go for a second term so he ca positio himself as the most experienced  (former VP) to succeed.  Why?  Because he realized that if Buhar i does a second term and manages to hand over to a southerner who thwn uses incumbency to wangle 8 years that leaves Atiku a super gerontocrat at 83 too late to make a bid for the presidency (unless he wants to rival Mugabe) which for him is a do or die.  So as far as he is concerned time is running out -hece the desperation.  First it shows he is a ba loser who is duplicitous toward Buhari (as he was toward Obasanjo) and is most likely to be duplicitous ('ruthless' as Farooq puts it) toward those who vote him to power.

Now Buhari:  I am not his flag waver.  If you know the role his first coming played in sending my father to an early grave you will concede that I should be the last person on earth to have any affection for Buhari.  But every family has the price they pay in times of crises for the development of their country.   I was among the first to be critical of him asking him to apologize to Shagari whom he and his comrades overthrew because they did not know that the wheels of progress of democracy are necessarily slow because of the multiple interests involved to be pacified rather than commandeered.  That was why to him Shagari appeared to be 'Baba Go Slow' then as he (Buhari) appears to many now.  Again there was not a continuation when he took over but new and different priorities.  It was for fear of beginning again that I threw my lot with a continuity of stewardship under Buhari.  Yes he is slow but he is moving; with perseverance we will get to Fagunwas Langbodo (Jerusalem.)  If Atiku genuinely wanted to reach out to him and was not successful initially, rather than storm out in a premeditated huff back to the PDP to lay the foundations for his current gambit he could reach him through such agents as the party leadership.

I was the one to point out his most lethal Achilles heel: his taciturnity and non communications savvy ( which are now being progressively addressed.)

Yes, Obasanjos rule in the military was the Gold Standard of rulership in Nigeria since Independence but even he could not repeat that in 'agbada' because people could decide to ignore him without any dire consequences  and not carry out his orders with alacrity.  Nigerians paid for that 'Gold Standard' through lack of freedoms.

OAA

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From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: 25 October 2018 16:53
To: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Subject: FW: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Buhari's AnticorruptionCampaignRhetoric Will Not Work

 

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: 18 October 2018 13:42
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Buhari's AnticorruptionCampaignRhetoric Will Not Work

 

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Yinka,

Na wa for you o. I stated clearly in the piece that my preferred candidate is Omoyele Sowore, the presidential candidate of AAC. Yet you say my preferred candidate is Atiku and that all I'm saying is that I'm for Atiku. At least give me the freedom to decide for myself. Am I not allowed to analyze the unfolding campaign brickbat between the two major candidates, Buhari and Atiku, even if I support either of them?

I declared my preference in the piece. But I'm also a realist. I know that my candidate has no shot and that the contest is really going to be between the APC and the PDP candidates. I believe that Buhari's continuation in office is a mortal threat to Nigeria and Nigerians. I could write twenty essays to demonstrate that, but knowing you and your fanatical love of Buhari, you will simply dismiss the critiques as "Atiku getting intellectuals to do his work" or some other escapist nonsense.

Which brings me to this: you know me. Am I the kind of intellectual Atiku or anybody can get to do his work--whatever than means? This is how you've been going around different threads of discussion on this list alleging without a shred of evidence that Atiku is sponsoring the write-ups of my best friend, Farooq Kperogi simply because he has taken a stance against Buhari's catastrophic administration. You did not even bother to research his publicly available critical write-ups on Atiku before making the insinuations, thereby exposing your ignorance of Farooq's public intellectual engagement and history.

I never expected you to be that reckless and to throw around such ad-hominem personal attacks instead of simply engaging with what folks write. I am closer to Farooq than I am to some of my siblings. We've been friends since university days. We know and confide in each other. I can tell you that nobody has enough money or power to make Farooq write anything on their behalf. I can also confirm to you that he has turned down so many overtures and weathered many threats because of his insistence on holding successive Nigerian leaders, including Buhari, accountable. When I read Farooq's column here linking to a recent column of his, which is an epic takedown of Atiku and his candidacy, I thought you'd see the folly of your earlier insinuations that he is being sponsored by Atiku to take down your man, Buhari, and apologize to him. 

I've engaged you on many issues on this list in the past but I have NEVER attributed any motives to you, nor have I claimed that you were doing anyone's bidding or expressing an opinion on behalf of someone who is getting you to do their work. This is because I respect you as a free, independent intellectual agent. You defend Buhari on almost all issues, never acknowledging his many failures and always spinning these failures as the work of detractors and conspirators who want him to fail. I sometimes just shake my head at some of your defenses of Buhari because they're so conspiratorial and oblivious of objective facts. But neither myself nor anyone to my knowledge on this list has accused you of working for Buhari, doing his dirty work, or of being sponsored by him. Yet you refuse to extent the same discursive courtesy to your interlocutors, accusing them of being sponsored or, worse, being bought. 

Let me tell you a personal story. Earlier this year a childhood friend of mine from Offa (we came up together in Kaduna) was disturbing me about Atiku. He supported and maybe still supports him. He wanted to convince me that Atiku was a good candidate and worthy of my support. I cannot count how many heated arguments we had over this issue. He always initiated the conversation during his phone calls from Nigeria. I would always tell him that I could not support Atiku or any politician who is a member of the political establishment that ruined Nigeria. In fact, on one occasion he became a bit belligerent, saying that I was hiding in America and criticizing how bad things are at home with Buhari but that I was not willing to support a candidate who could change things. We had a very heated conversation and had a mini-fallout over this matter. I subsequently refused to take his calls until he texted to apologize and to say that I was right and that he was no longer supporting Atiku. 

If you had simply asked me for my position on the election, I'd have gladly explained it. Instead, as has become your template lately, you elected to accuse me of being one of the intellectuals used by Atiku to do his work.

As I stated in the article and reiterated earlier here, my preferred candidate, Sowore, has no shot in the current electoral dynamic. For me, this election is a referendum on Buhari, who has failed the test of leadership on most fronts and whose continuation in office will imperil the nation or at least set it back generations. Therefore, my position at this moment is that Buhari does not deserve reelection and that ANYBODY would be better than him. That category of anybody includes all the opposition presidential candidates, including Atiku. If Atiku is that "anybody" so be it. I want a Nigeria without Buhari as its leader.

I hope now that you know my position, we can focus on the issues, the opinion I expressed, and the thesis I advanced.

On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 4:54 AM OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:

I disagree with the conclusion of this piece as well as some axiomatic givens that lead to such conclusion. 

The conclusion seem to lead to who the writer thinks MUST win the election based on his own predilections rather than an even handed analysis.

That the election will be fought on the triadic paradigm of competence,  cosmopilitanism and capacity is a summation of what pro- Atiku campaigners have sold as the essence of Atiku so the conclusion is saying nothing other than : I am an Atiku supporter ( no crime in that!). Now the underpinning axioms of the essay:

Not even Obasanjo saw his administration post 1999 as the gold standard of civilian administration.  He saw his party as marring his best efforts of governing Nigerian  because according to him " they are too corrupt" and has even been alleged to have threatened to tear up his membership card.  Now corruption and governance:

From my earlier point derives the well known fact that corruption is antithetical to governance even from the root of both words.  Yes, the more the brazen corruption the more visible the antithesis is seen.  Jonathans vorruption was his main downfall asceven his wife was arraigned for corruot practices.  The reason he could not make a dent on Biko Haram as I have stated earlier elsewhere is mainly due to ethno-corruption.  His field  commanders not able to stomach the prospect of a southern commander- in- chief telling them to turn their guns on " their own" chose to sabotage the mission by embezzling the funds for arms procurement;  hence the need for a northern c- in- c a la Buhari.

From this position can be appreciated the known fact that no country on earth is absolutely corruption free ( I have lived in 3 countries on 3 continents and I KNOW that this is basically true.

The idea that if government is competent but corrupt it can be tolerated is a false grouping of oppositional terms to underwrite the pre- tempted tolerance of Atiku s past.

To state that Atiku bank rolled Buharis 2015 campaign and there should be no problem accepting Atiku bank rolling his own campaign and his party is to set the stage for an eventual Atiku dictatorship.  No country in the world that I know of allows that brazen hijack in presidential democratic polity.  It means we have ALL lost our sense of ethical decency and decorum.

In the UK No major donor would be allowed to put themselves forward as party flagbearer as PM ditto the US ( and that was why Trump unexpectedly won).  You must remember that was in part why the NPN frustrated Aare Abiola into crashing out of a party he claimed was formed in his own Ikeja sitting room;  the likes of Umaru Dikko were reported to have stated that the NPN was not for sale to the highest bidder ( well the PDP can now be for sale to the highest bidder isn't it?). And this tallies with the question  Atiku was confronted with in London on whether he was considering going as independent candidate.  In fact the INEC ought to disqualify Atiku automatically on this ground.   

Again because Atiku has got some intellectuals to do his foot work for him in advance does not mitigate the distastefulness of his gambit.  

You see the northern Hegemony never believed June 12 was ever possible.  They thrived on divisiveness as an instrument of governance and dominance.  Once it happened they went to work trying to duplicate the Aares strategy for making it happen after their rep. In power  IBB annulled it so it can be re- presented by their own beneficiary and  champion:  it will not work.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>

Date: 17/10/2018 16:03 (GMT+00:00)

To: USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Buhari's Anticorruption CampaignRhetoric  Will Not Work

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Why Buhari's Anticorruption Campaign Rhetoric Will Not Work

 

By Moses E. Ochonu

 

Here is why the corruption and anti-corruption rhetoric of President Buhari's campaign has fallen flat so far and may not stick to PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar. To be sure, it's partly because the many corruption scandals of this administration has neutralized corruption as an electoral issue; so that, when it comes to corruption, it's now a wash between the APC and the PDP. But I'd argue that there is something deeper and more fundamental going on.

 

There has been a clear, decisive shift in Nigerians' perception of politics and in their expectation of what leadership in an electoral democracy should deliver for the populace.

 

For decades in our postcolonial political history, corruption alone occupied the space of blame and alibi for our multi-fanged problems. Nigerians felt that every problem in the country conduced to corruption, was traceable to graft, and would thus be solved by eradicating governmental malfeasance. Corruption was the overarching explanation for everything that was wrong with the polity and anticorruption was advanced as a cure-all.

 

This leads us to the expectational realm. If corruption was seen as the causative agent in Nigeria's problems, Nigerians expected their government's major preoccupation to be the fight against corruption. In their eyes, this was the preeminent duty of government — to fight graft to a standstill.

 

There has been a shift of attitude.

It is difficult to precisely date when this perceptual and expectational shift occurred but I'll tentatively date it to the second Obasanjo administration when Nigerians seemed to make peace with the inevitability of governmental corruption and consequently seemed to trade their seemingly unrealistic expectation of the eradication of corruption for a more realistic quest for immediate benefits and social goods euphemistically and colloquially called "dividends of democracy." Some of this "dividend" is funded by governmental corruption.

 

If the economy was growing visibly, new economic opportunities were being created, governmental corruption was democratized and its proceeds trickled down the socioeconomic food chain, then Nigerians decided that corruption, inevitable as it now appeared to them to be, didn't matter to them as much as a widening net of opportunities that built and expanded a middle class.

 

In fact, Nigerians generally expect those who go into politics to reap its illicit rewards. They therefore tolerate corruption within limits. In Nigeria, corruption is thus a matter of intense moral relativism. This is one of the reasons why corruption in Nigeria is always something that people outside of one's social and filial circles engage in. It's the reason why a Nigerian can be unequivocally and vehemently against corruption in all forms in the morning and then rationalize and minimize it in the evening when someone he is fond of becomes the accused.

 

So, corruption per se is not what Nigerians hate. What they hate, at least in the period after the psychic shift under discussion, is 1) the volume and flagrancy of the corruption; and 2) the toxic mix of corruption and incompetence. 

 

If the corruption is discreet, measured, travels through the capillary of the economy and, more crucially, is married to competence, they do not seem to mind it, given that, as I stated, Nigerians generally believe that politicians need to take care of their clients and supporters through illicit access to public funds, and given the concomitant mitigating folk wisdom encapsulated in the pidgin saying: na where man dey work na there man dey chop.

 

Why did the shift occur? Why did Nigerians make peace with corruption besides the fact that they saw a robust, expanding economy despite the corruption of the Obasanjo administration? It is probably because Nigerians saw, after 1999, the democratization of the stealing field, the ways in which politics at all levels was lubricated by illicit money because of poverty, illiteracy, and traditional systems of patronage, and how this web of shady financial flows was, whether one liked it or not, the lifeblood of the economy.

 

This is precisely why Obasanjo's administration has been largely rehabilitated in Nigerian political lore as the gold standard of democratic governance post-1999 despite the mind-boggling corruption that occurred during that administration. 

 

No one could accuse Obasanjo of incompetence, of being indecisive, of being confused, of mismanaging the economy, and of being slow to act. I was probably one of his harshest critics, writing tomes to underscore his hypocrisy, corruption, political intolerance, and pettiness, but even I never accused him of incompetence. I didn't like his neoliberal economic policy direction and his slavish devotion to the Bretton Woods orthodoxy of economic management, but I could never accuse him of not governing, of sleeping at the proverbial wheel while the nation burned, or of dividing the nation with his utterances and actions. 

 

Many Nigerians similarly cut Obasanjo slack because they look back and can remember a functioning, growing economy at a time when the price of crude oil, Nigeria's main export, was less than half of what it now is and when fuel was relatively cheap. They look back and remember an economy that opened up new opportunities and expanded the middle class. Some of these opportunities were actually connected to illicit streams of finance traceable to governmental graft. Nonetheless, because the economy worked under Obasanjo, the perception of him as a competent leader has endured and hardened in recent years.

 

And this is why Nigerians now largely overlook Obasanjo's personal corruption, his political and judicial overreach, and the colossal failure of his signature intervention in the power sector, remembering only the evenhanded manner he dealt with national crises, and the strength and agility with which he governed.

 

Some people today point to Obasanjo's establishment of the EFCC and the ICPC as the reason he is now being favorably reevaluated. I disagree. The EFCC and ICPC under Obasanjo had, at best a mixed record and were used largely to fight the political opposition, setting a precedence that has continued to date. The reason Obasanjo's administration has emerged in a new light is because Nigerians remember him as a competent leader despite the corruption that festered in his administration and despite his failure to deliver on the all-important electric power sector. This perception has, of course, solidified in part because subsequent administrations proved less competent and less capable of managing the affairs of a complex nation.

 

Some people may fault my thesis by pointing to the popular anti-corruption angst that plagued the Jonathan administration and ultimately partly caused its defeat. It is true that the old perceptual consensus on corruption being the preeminent challenge of Nigeria seemed to make a comeback during Jonathan's administration, but that conclusion is possible only if one reads the surface political visuals and ignore the underlying dynamic. It was not the corruption per se that brought Jonathan down. It was the extent and in-your-faceness of it. More importantly, it was the fact that Jonathan was perceived, fairly or unfairly, as weak and incompetent. 

 

It was the intersection of excessive corruption and perceived incompetence that did Jonathan in. I would even go further to argue that it was the narrative of incompetence, more than that of corruption, that caused Jonathan to lose power, setting aside other factors such as the fracturing of the PDP and the regional political (re)alignment of the North and Southwest. Had Jonathan been corrupt and competent, the campaign message of the then opposition APC would not have worked. The opposition successfully cast Jonathan as a weak, incompetent leader incapable of protecting Nigerians from the ravages of Boko Haram and that if he continued in power, Nigeria's sovereignty would continue to be breached with impunity. That message resonated with Nigerians because the Jonathan indeed appeared weak and incompetent in the area of security.

 

This is similar to how Nigerians perceive Buhari today — as an aloof, incompetent, slow, weak, indecisive, and divisive leader, whose words, silences, actions, and inactions threaten not just Nigerians' livelihoods but also the very existence of the country. If Jonathan struggled with Boko Haram, Buhari's arenas of incompetence are many — the comatose economy, unchecked herdsmen terrorism, kidnapping, intensifying disunity, an unwillingness to take action against erring officials in his administration, and a resurgent Boko Haram.

 

Nothing grates Nigerians more than the marriage of corruption and incompetence. You can get away with corruption if you're competent but not with a combination of incorruptibility and incompetence. In other words, Nigerians would rather have a corrupt and competent leader, as long as the corruption is discreet, moderate, and democratized, than an incorruptible and incompetent leader. The worse combination is this: a leader who presides over a corrupt administration while professing a fictional integrity and while displaying a seemingly congenital incompetence.

 

These dynamics are the reasons the Buhari campaign will have a hard time making the corruption argument stick to Atiku, not to mention of course the fact that the same Atiku funded Buhari's 2015 election campaign and was lauded then by the APC as a patriot and as an asset to the party. 

 

The aforementioned dynamics are also the reason why, if my good friend and preferred candidate, the incorruptible Omoyele Sowore, becomes president, his incorruptibility is unlikely to impress Nigerians unless he is a competent, proactive president. Unless his anticorruption is accompanied by competent, result-producing governance. 

 

In the current climate, no leader is going to be judged by how incorruptible they are. Thanks to the psychic shift I explained earlier, competence and problem-solving capacity have leapfrogged anticorruption as the preeminent expectations of Nigerians.

 

The 2019 presidential election is going to be fought on competence, capacity, and cosmopolitan ethos, not on the overplayed and duplicitous rhetoric of corruption.

 

 

 

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