Remembering January 6

The Horizon BY Kayode Komolafe  kayode.komolafe@thisdaylive.com

Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of an odious event in the history of American democracy.

On that day, a mob inspired by the outgoing President Donald Trump of the Republican Party, invaded the Capitol, the Parliament of the strongest liberal democracy. At least the violence resulted in five deaths including those of police officers.

On a prefatory note this reflection on January 6 in American history is far from being an undue indulgence in Afghanistanism. Many urgent topics about Nigeria abound, you would probably say. Yet, the assault on liberal democratic institutions and time-honoured values that took place on that day in America speaks to the Nigerian situation at least in one respect. At present, there is a lot of anxiety about Nigeria’s experiment with liberal democracy. Even making a law to back electoral reforms has become such a contentious issue. Not a few members of the Nigerian elite, in their exogenous fixation, are wont to cite American democracy as the universal standard. After all, the Nigerian presidential system of government is said to be borrowed from the model of the United States.

So, if January 6 could happen in America, nothing should be taken for granted about the liberal democratic development anymore. By implication, a lot of work has to be done to deepen democracy Nigeria. This is the message of this tragic American event to Nigeria or any other country desirous of building liberal democracy for that matter.

It is, therefore, relevant that all forces of human progress should be conscious of this trend.

For about six months now, the American Congress has been investigating what happened on January 6, 2021. In fact, a bipartisan Committee of the House has described the date as “one of the darkest days of our democracy.”

The purpose of the assault on the Capitol was to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden of the Democratic Party. Months later an attempt by the Congress to sanction Trump for the role he played in the riot was stopped by the republicans with their votes in the Congress despite the overwhelming pieces of evidence to link the former president to act. A triumphant Trump provided his own “alternative fact” of what happened only three months ago amidst his supporters like this: “The insurrection took place on November 3 (2019), Election Day. January 6 (2021) was the Protest!”

This will, of course, sound absurd to many people across the ideological spectrum. But the tragedy of the most developed country in the world is that about 23 million Americans (representing 9% of the population) actually justify the violence employed Trump supporters to abort the electoral process. This is democracy symptomatic of the larger pathology of political decay afflicting America.

Indeed the January 6 event and other Trumpist oddities recorded in American should be viewed within the context of the retreat and resilience of liberal democracy universally. While Trumpism still flourishes in America, right-wing populism is growing in parts of Europe at the expense of institutions of liberal democracy.

Hence, many thinkers on liberal democracy outside America have been expressing concern about the trend. For instance, only two days ago, a Canadian scholar, Thomas Homer-Dixon, warned in a newspaper article as follows: “By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.” The irony of this grim prediction should not be lost on Nigerians who are used to predictions of the disintegration of their country by some pundits drawing inspiration from some foreign “experts” on Nigeria. The Nigerian pundits often quote some inchoate documents based on the work of some American researchers.

However, Homer-Dixon says : “We mustn’t dis miss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine…

“In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.”

For the political scientist, the point at issue is that Canada should be prepared for the “ terrible storm” that may emanate from its southern neighbour

The views of Homer-Dixon, a scholar of violent conflict for over 40 years, cited above would itself be deemed outrageous in America a decade ago. However, many observers may not glibly dismiss this gloomy prognosis for American democracy anymore. Although some American scholars wrote extensively about the decay and possible collapse of the political order in America, yet some others were still busy lecturing the rest of the world, especially Africa, about the importance of building institutions and cultivating democratic values. For instance, the refrain was that “Africa doesn’t need strong leaders, but strong institutions.” Former President Barack Obama was sold on the ideas of these American theorists as he frequently talked down on Africa in his eight years in power. He preached institution-building and democracy as he made stopovers in a few African countries. Obama’s administration hardly developed any credible African policy. Significantly, the first black man to be American president never visited Nigeria, the largest black nation on earth. He probably didn’t see any democratic prospects in Nigeria. Such was the level of American arrogance abut democracy in relating to other countries. And four years after Obama, there was January 6 exposing the fragility of some of the great American institutions.

This trend should, at least, compel a critical rethink of the fascination of the Nigerian intellectual and political elite with foreign models. They revel in taking lessons from abroad on how to solve problems with glaring domestic solutions which are inexplicably ignored.

The self-flagellation of a section of the elite should also be tempered.

This point can be illustrated by a usual story. Some members of the political elite in the academia, politics and business are being engaged in after-dinner chats by western diplomats in Abuja or Lagos. A western diplomat asks a Nigerian sitting next to him at the dinner why elections are such a political mess in Nigeria. The Nigerian respondent fires back that the West often endorses the elections in Nigeria despite the critical observations of foreign observers of the elections. The verdict of the western diplomat is taken as authoritative in matters of election because he represents “an advanced democracy” in Nigeria. In subsequent public comments, some of the Nigerians at the dinner would be quoting the foreign diplomat as if his words are those of the oracle on Nigerian politics.

Now, the just imagine the reverse of the above scenario. A Nigerian diplomat Washington can hardly tell an American politician, businessman or scholar over dinner in Washington that January 6 exposed the decay and retrogression in American democracy.

In sum, it is unhelpful being cynical about the dangerous developments in American. The important thing is to see things for what they are: a reminder that the struggle for popular democracy, social justice and genuine freedom is a work in progress.

In other words in matters of democracy, nothing should be taken for granted, not even in America.

PolicyNotes

Missing Guns and Primacy of Audit

Although it is often said that Nigerians have become inured to shocking news, yet not a few persons must have been shocked at the lead story of THISDAY on Monday : “2019 Audit report: 178,459 Firearms, Ammunition Missing from Police Armoury.”

The shock would particularly be as a result of the widespread allegation that some of the missing firearms might have been transferred to criminals by those who were the custodians of the lethal items.

But the other less pronounced surprise would be that the much-derided office of the Auditor-General could be so effective that it could even audit firearms and ammunition in the custody of the police.

Auditing the police?

That would be unimaginable in some quarters before the audit report was made public.

The Office of the Auditor-General should be commended for this effort, even though it is its statutory duty. It is now the responsibility of the institutions of government that should act on the report to do so with dispatch.

The report would not only be a surprise in some quarters, it would also be a salutary reminder that a system is still in place despite the its huge deficits.

This is an important point to stress for those who have written off the public sector and its agencies and departments.

The system is not dead, after all.

Yes, there are structural and human problems with the system. But it can still work if it is sufficiently enabled to do so.

Besides, this audit of guns and bullets in the police armoury should bring to the fore the primacy of audit in public finance and economic management

This primacy of audit had been historically established as a matter of public service policy before the latter-day reforms.

Some of the reforms came in the wake of the wave of “democratisation and good governance” of the late 1990s. The Bretton Wood institutions and other development agencies inspired some of these public sector reforms. Laws were enacted for public procurement and “due process” became a slogan of the public service. Accountability became a battle cry of advocates of reform. Anti-corruption and pro-transparency agencies were established.

Some of these functions were more or less subsumed in the primary duty of the auditor.

It is now often forgotten that if the Office of the Auditor-General is suitably equipped to perform its duty, a greater part of the irregularities in the public sector would be avoided.

As civil servants of the old would say, the ethical fabric of the civil service was solely erected in the famous General Orders, the rules and regulations guiding the conduct of public servants as well as defining the terms of discipline.

‘Tribal Allegiance’ in 2022 Nigeria?

The debate on the ownership of oil and gas resources featuring two elder statesmen- former President Olusegun Obasanjo and a leading voice from the Niger Delta Chief Edwin Clark – could ultimately be salutary.

That’s if in the process ideas of equity and structural balance are proffered to illuminate the current attempt to review the problematic 1999 constitution.

In the response of Obasanjo, he advised that Clark and other Niger Delta voices should suppress “tribal allegiance,” so that the “state could emerge.”

The former president is characteristically nationalistic in his statement; but he should have paid a greater regard to the sensibilities of the people of Niger Delta while taking a more wholistic views of things.

Talking about ownership, Obasanjo seems to be mistaking legality for legitimacy.

However, the purpose today here really is to draw attention to some of the terms Obasanjo used in his controversial statement.

As it is the case with a lot of discussions in the public sphere, the Obasanjo intervention is riddled with what former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called “terminological inexactitude.”

First, the Nigerian state has not only emerged, it is firmly in place.

Instead it is the Nigerian nation that requires enormous efforts by the leadership and the people to build in the interest of all.

It is most inappropriate to talk of “tribal allegiance’’ in the 2022 Nigeria.

Like Obasanjo, politicians, public intellectuals and even professors still call Nigerian ethnic groups, made up of tens of millions of people, tribes.

There could be ethnic allegiance, but not tribal loyalty anymore in 2022!

Even 100 years ago, the ethnic groups in Nigeria could not be described as “tribes,” much less in 2022.

There are no more tribes in Nigeria.

Instead there are ethnic groups and nationalities. Some groups even describe themselves, with a measure of justification, as “nations.”

Colonial anthropologists used the pejorative word to describe African in the 19th Century.

It is unbelievable that Africans have maintained this insulting description of their ethnic groups, nationalities and nations.

It is not happenstance that the British media will never describe an advocate of Scottish independence of having a ‘tribal allegiance.”

But the Nigerian media still wrongly describe Ijaw, Kanuri or Efik as tribes.