by Akin Osuntokun

There is a sense in which the failure of President Shehu Shagari and the relative success of President Obasanjo can be explained in terms of their individual capacity for dictatorship or ‘discipline’. 

As it is often the case with presidents seeking reelection, the expected 2015 presidential election will be designated as a referendum on the first term stewardship of embattled President Goodluck Jonathan. The abduction of the chibok girls crisis could not have materialised at a more inauspicious time for him. And it can get worse. He has to now assume the worst case scenario and come to terms with the projection that for so long as he remains President he may have to contend with a relentless campaign of ungovernability.
The tragedy here is that he is complicit in this programmed political destruction through inaction and inexplicable proclivity to blunder. At any rate and in the time tested tradition of Nigerian elections, the 2015 elections-if it holds, is not going to be about competence-whatever the subjective interpretation of that.
Of course I do not agree with the definition of Nigeria’s problem as synonymous with Jonathan. It will be overly simplistic and self-serving to do so. No one individual or group of individuals is. Marxist commentators call this kind of attribution false consciousness. The problem is the Nigerian mentality that craves immediate gratification. And this mindset is understandable given our collective subconscious belief that Nigeria will not endure-which fuels the psychology of scrambling for whatever anyway may get before the cookie crumbles. America’s bulldog dash for energy independence predicated on the utility of shale gas has signposted the devastating reality of how perishable is the crude oil economy of Nigeria.
Left alone for the next four years, undisturbed by the subversive machinations of his traducers I have little evidence to suggest that Jonathan will leave Nigeria any worse than he met it. There is something beyond the pale in the depth of the malevolence directed at this president. If incompetence is his only crime then I see no correlation between this offence and the depth of the malicious censure he has received. At the very least he will remain president for the next one year- does he not, in that capacity, deserve a grudging support and sympathy to grapple with this extraordinary times?
There appears to be a contrivance here to employ him as a fall guy and deflection from giving attention to the fundamental problems of this country desperately begging for resolution. The problem of Nigeria is better attended to by working to eliminate the basis for the desperate ambition to grab hold of power at the centre. And I identify the enemy of Nigeria as anyone laying claim to the presidency and is in the same breadth hostile to the proposal of any review and redress of the dysfunctional structure of Nigeria.
The reduction of Nigeria’s problem to the leadership talent of whoever becomes president is flawed. The thesis of superman president as panacea is dangerous and ill thought through; it predisposes society to seeking Messianic leadership (and ultimately dictatorship) especially in a milieu consisting of large scale diversities as Nigeria. This was the mindset behind the proposal for a constitutional review that would grant former President Olusegun Obasanjo the leave to seek a third term tenure. The motive force of so called ‘Third term’ was less the naked ambition for power and more the philosophy of the indispensability of one man.
Nigeria, more than most countries, is cleavage ridden and inherently conflictual, which renders it prone to interminable rancour and chaotic agitation. Arising therefrom the problem is liable to be perceived as that of instability and disorder requiring the prescription of a strong leader who can stabilise its fractious and rancorous polity. This was the insinuation behind ‘Third term’- as further elaborated in the argument that Obasanjo had set in motion a number of much needed socio economic reforms which only he or someone of his description can consolidate and entrench.
Many have contended that the crisis of governance Nigeria has experienced since Obasanjo’s departure validates this position; and have wondered aloud that may be there is virtue in ‘Third term’ after all! This strong leader personality profile also stood him in good stead in his consideration for p resident in 1999.
Beyond his sectarian appeal to the frustrated underclass of the Muslim north, a similar logic is at play for the candidacy of General Mohammadu Buhari. Writing in The Nation newspaper, this was how the point was illustrated by my uncle Jide Osuntokun “in this country, both the leadership and the followership lack discipline. We need a leader who by example will show the way for the people to follow. Buhari and Idiagbon did this before so the man has a track record of discipline. The combination of discipline and honesty which we have in this man will lead us to our promised land. I do not know anybody in Nigeria who has this combination. I have heard that Buhari is a religious fanatic and a northern regional hegemonist. He may be this, but in a democratic regime he will be constrained by the constitution”.
Note that the immediate background to the prescription of the Buhari antidote by Osuntokun was the frustration encapsulated in the statement ‘that both the leadership and the followership lack discipline’. But as he himself knows and experienced as an adult, Nigeria has not always been in a situation where this kind of prescription is necessary — I refer to the first republic spanning 1960 to 1966, the golden age of Nigeria’s socio political development.
What was unique about the first republic was the predication of governance structure on the recognition and practice of federalism as the most suited for a country comprising countervailing large scale disparities. What we have since learnt is that the only workable alternative governance model (in the short term) to what obtained in the first republic is dictatorship-military or any other variant. Barring some form of dictatorship the only way Nigeria can endure is through the instrumentality of what is now becoming trite (to say) namely a return to the principle of federalism in letter, spirit and deed-restructuring.
Let me attempt a quick verification of what I have just asserted. Would the occurrence of Boko-Haram crisis have been less likely and more easily containable in a political structure similar to pre 1966 Nigeria? Would a dictatorship regime (military) be better suited to grappling with the crisis as it now exists? If the response to these two posers is in the affirmative-as it is for me, then it bears out the argument that the options for successful governance of Nigeria boil down in the end to the choice between restructuring and dictatorship.
There is a sense in which the failure of President Shehu Shagari and the relative success of President Obasanjo can be explained in terms of their individual capacity for dictatorship or ‘discipline’. In the case of Shagari, this was indicated in the total loss of control over his own government where aides and lieutenants completely ran riot and rampant. On the contrary Nigerians now remember with nostalgia (born of frustration and despair) how Obasanjo neutralised incipient insurrectionary culture with the Odi and Zaki Biam brutal and decisive inoculation. Jonathan certainly did not reflect this lesson in responding to Boko Haram neither for that matter did he deploy his state of emergency initiative with the fierce and totalitarian temperament (and effectiveness) of his mentor.
The fact that the inadequacies of both the Shagari government and the present dispensation elicit a longing for the dictatorship and semi dictatorship that preceded them is indicative of how Nigeria suffers from dictatorship withdrawal syndrome. It however bears emphatic reiteration that the all-time panacea for snapping out of this syndrome is the profitable recourse to the devolution and decentralisation of powers.
Tinubu for One Nigeria

Life has a way of going round in circles. The late Chief Obafemi Awolowo went to prison in 1963 and attributed his woes to the machinations of the alliance between the late Premier of the Western region Chief Ladoke Akintola and the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa-headed federal government. In a deft political move, the military head of state of Nigeria in 1967, General Yakubu Gowon, sprung Awolowo from prison and romanced him into joining his government to preempt potential solidarity and unity of purpose between the two southern regions of the east and the west.
With respect to the turn Nigeria took after the civil war up on to the time of his death in 1987 I do not think that Awolowo lived happily ever after with this decision. At the height of his despair after the 1983 elections he predicted the doomsday scenario that Nigeria would never know democracy again.
In the intimacy of their friendship, there was no daylight between the late Chief Moshood Abiola and military President Ibrahim Babangida. The friendship contributed substantially to the emergence of Abiola as the winner of the 1993 presidential election. It was assumed and Abiola did confirm that he went into the race practically at the behest of Babangida. Under whatever pressure the latter annulled the election and sentenced Nigeria particularly the South-west into political turmoil that claimed the lives of Abiola, his wife Kudirat and scores of other martyrs. Culpability for this cruel visitation was generalised as inclusive of the entire Muslim north.
I know for a fact that communities are often held hostage by the ultra nationalist posturing and irredentism of a minority- akin to the rule of the mob. They dictate the definition of, for instance, what constitutes the ‘Northern interest’ and dare the rest of society to voice a contrary opinion and be liable to demonisation as traitor.
No matter his political party affiliation, Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu is one person for whom I have confidence in his capacity to join in charting a good path forward for the Yoruba community. I have always held the unity of Nigeria suspect and the events of the past few years have done nothing to alleviate this suspicion. I’m not happy to say so but I think many of us still answer to Nigerian citizenship for the negative reason of the collateral damage of disintegration. But for how long?
My assessment of the mood in the South-west is the equivalence of outrage at both President Goodluck Jonathan and those aiming to render the National Conference meaningless and barren. There is a convergence of purpose and opinion between the antagonistic members of the conference and the leading lights of the All Progressive Congress (APC) from the north. This is the dice Tinubu has to throw. As the personification of the APC in the South-west, he is in the awkward position of being the restraining figure against full-blown regionalist resurgence among the Yoruba. I hope posterity would judge him right.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.