Friday Sermon: The Devil’s Rectangle 2: The New Bourgeoisie

By Babatunde Jose

“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent” – Abraham Lincoln.

In Marxist philosophy, the bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society. Joseph Schumpeter, Growth Theory, saw the creation of the bourgeoisie as the driving force behind the capitalist engine, particularly entrepreneurs who took risks to bring innovation to industries and the economy through the process of creative destruction.

Today, in our clime and most African countries that social order is dominated by a new bourgeoisie, made up of political leaders and not captains of industry. They are rent collectors who make huge profits without investments; they have no factories and are neither entrepreneurs nor employers of labor but they own huge amount of money, but they are not inventors or creators of wealth; they live a life of opulence like royalty but they are not royalty; they adorn the cover of Forbes magazine and bestride our narrow world like colossi, master of all they see. Impervious to the suffering and tribulations of the people they are supposed to serve, they are as callous as the proverbial ‘Agbalowomeri, Bale Jontolo’ – J.F.Odunjo

For to him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. — Mark 4:25 This was the regular cliché of the late Festus Okotie-Eboh in answer to the question how he came about his huge wealth. Okotie-Eboh was the Minister of Finance in the First Republic.

Not content with living in the old Government Reservations, our politicopreneurs have opted to build mansions on hilltops, like the ubiquitous Colonial District Officers, far removed from their people. Perhaps like Jomo Kenyatta wrote in Facing Mount Kenya, ‘there they commune with the gods’. These are our leaders! Much has been written about them.

Vexed by their shenanigans Oby Ezekwesili said: “Our political leaders have turned democracy into a criminal enterprise breaking all the principles of representative government. They have not illuminated or advanced Nigeria. Under their watch, Nigeria has become the epicentre of human greed, avarice, official impunity and duplicity. Success is now measured in what you could corner for yourself, no matter how many children were left starving to death.”

In a paper: The Challenges of Leadership and Governance in Nigeria, Godwin Okaneme submitted: “From the time of the nation’s independence up till now, it has seriously grappled with the challenges of poor leadership and governance or what has been popularly referred to as leadership and governance ineptitude. Governance therefore has become an all-comers affair where the qualified and the unqualified, the high and the low as well as the rich and the poor all jostle inordinately for political power.”

The paper opines that to solve the nation’s intractable leadership and governance challenges conclusively, the country needs a true and transparent transformational leadership structure which will drive the political and governmental system in the country for effective and efficient political leadership and governance that will ultimately usher in genuine and verifiable development in the country for the overall benefit of the entire citizenry. We are however far from producing such leaders.

The paper further canvasses for an open, accountable, transparent and competitive leadership recruitment process which will give all citizens who genuinely wish to take up political positions the fair and unimpeded chance to do so without any let or hindrance since politics is generally regarded the world over as a call to serve humanity and not an opportunity for self-enrichment as many see it presently in Nigeria.

“Whatever the argument is, the important point is that the leadership challenge has been a clog in the wheel of progress in Nigeria. Thus, present and past leaders of Nigeria seem to have failed to provide quality leadership capable of addressing numerous challenges confronting the country”. Nigeria and the Challenges of Leadership in the 21st Century: A Critique by Chris. Iwejuo Nwagboso And Otu Duke; International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 13; July 2012.

The socio-economic and political development of any country depends largely on the ability of its leadership to facilitate, entrench, and sustain good governance. Over the years, we have had leaders who, prior to ascending leadership positions, are sold to the masses as beacons of hope amidst the misery viciously staring them in the face.

They cream their way into the hearts and minds of unsuspecting masses with their humble and Obidient disposition, camaraderie, or seeming understanding of the plight and sufferings of the people, only to assume leadership positions and become total strangers and despots, insensitive to the plight of the masses.

As one commentator puts it, “Nigerian political leadership is an entangled, mangled, and cluttered perplexity of subterfuge machinations and deception. They seem divided along ethnic and religious lines but are eternally united in thievery and corruption; enemies by day and gang of marauding highwaymen at night”.

According to Valentine Achum: “They sing sonorous and sensuous songs of reforms, only to end up with ‘cacophonous choruses’ of deforms. They serenade the masses with pleasing and teasing tunes of prosperity, only to leave the masses grieving and grinding with elegies of poverty. They fly into office as angels, only to crawl out as demons. They vivaciously jog into office as heroes, only to sluggishly stroll out as villains. For the few with good intentions, they end up being corrupted by the bad ones. They go into the office as doctors and leave as patients’’.

Serving one’s people is one of the main roles of a Muslim leader. In Islam leadership is not a matter of privilege or position; it is rather a huge responsibility. Leaders need therefore to feel as if they are servants in order to be able to fulfill their duties in the best way possible.

Leadership in Islam is rooted in belief and willing submission to the Creator. And We made them leaders, guiding Our command; and We inspired them to do good work, and to observe the prayer, and to give out charity. They were devoted servants to Us (Allah). (Al-Qur’an, 21:73).

‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’; we certainly need leaders who can translate visions into reality. A leadership that spent so much money in putting up the iconic Trade-Fair Complex in Lagos only to abandon and turn it into a motor spare-part market, can never be a goal-oriented leadership, nor can we describe a leadership that watched the deterioration of the Lagos/Ibadan, Sagamu/Benin, and other road infrastructure, as a serious leadership.

Equally, we cannot vouch for the earnestness of a leadership that allowed the two roads leading into our busiest ports to virtually close down. Leaders that abandon and allow Ajaokuta Complex to waste away are not progressive leaders; the same goes for the leaders that allowed the Aluminum Smelter Complex at Ikot Abasi or the various Steel Rolling Mills to rot.

There are over a thousand abandoned projects in Nigeria ranging from the multibillion dollar to multimillion dollar ones. The iniquities of our leaders are not pleasing to the Almighty. Fortunately, we all know the solutions to these problems. They are characterological and behavioral.

Nigeria’s underdevelopment is more of poor implementation and management  than lack of development goals and programs. Policy summersault and development projects abandonment are common. The political aspirants will need to tell us in clear and unambiguous terms how they intend to deal with our problems:

Of the country’s 210 million people, some 90 million have no access to electricity. About 20 million children are out of school. With no social safety net, some 40 per cent of Nigerians live in absolute poverty, defined as earning less than $1.90 a day.

Security is so poor that many people are too afraid to venture out of their homes. The security forces, grossly underpaid and under-equipped, are in a war of attrition against gangs of bandits, separatists, extortionists, kidnappers, and terrorists: Unfortunately,  they are losing the battle.

How can the aspirants turn the tide of kidnapping which has become a growth industry: In the 1^st six months of this year, according to SBM Intelligence, a security consultancy, 3,420 people were abducted, with a further 564 killed in incidents associated with kidnapping.

Oil theft is another extortionary racket. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company estimated that 600,000 barrels of oil were being stolen every day. Nigeria has an OPEC quota of 1.8mn barrels but is only able to meet about 1.13mn, the lowest in 50 years. In the Niger Delta where most onshore oil is pumped; the government regularly pays off the extortionists who blow up pipelines or employs them as poachers turned gamekeepers.

Refineries have not worked properly for over 25 years: But we spend billions on Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) all the time. Yet, there has been a proliferation of illegal refineries processing stolen oil. Rather than making a great windfall from the current war in Ukraine, Nigeria is losing money. This is exacerbated by the unholy subsidy regime, an intended consequence of the rot in the oil industry.

We therefore need a paradigm shift in our socio-economic milieu. Can these aspiring crops of leaders offer that change? Being as they are, ‘carpet baggers and scalawags, cut from the same cloth as the past and present leadership.

Yet, unless the next government can rewrite the social contract between the state and its citizens, it will not matter who wins. Can our presidential and gubernatorial aspirants meet these requirements and live up to the billing if elected? The answer is blowing in the wind.

Barka Juma’at and a happy weekend