Obi Nwakanma
16 September 2007
column
Lagos — IN real terms, the first hundred days in office of the current president, Umar Yar'Adua has been marked by cautious and tentative, even uncertain steps.
In terms of the broad direction of his policies and policy control, there seems but a few flashes of difference that might indicate slight policy shift from the previous administration. There are of course symbolic moments when the administration makes gestures of distancing itself from the policy direction and general character of the Obasanjo administration. But in specific terms, Yar'Adua's hundred days have been characterized by sommersaults, symbolic policy reversals, and there is a certain opacity in the general sense of the direction of this administration. A clear picture should have emerged by now. A firming up of principles. It is true that the situation with the Central Bank governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo over monetary policy points to the administration's wariness over its relationship with the Bretton Woods group, often associated with the Americans and their strategic interest, but such an interest is quite alive and present in the current administration.
Indeed, Yar'Adua's secretary of state, Babagana Kingibe, is a trustee of the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) the epicentre of American elite power and its global alliance. Such a relationship speaks volumes about the various interests at play and the subsets, and wider subtexts of Nigeria's national politics, frequently conditioned from its external obligations; or to put it rather plainly: the external obligations of its own subaltern power elite. So indeed, we are not to expect anything beyond the strategic goals of an alliance conditioned by a deference to the Washington-London-Riyhard axis of power and its logic of partnership built upon since the council of Yalta in 1945. But a hundred days also ought to mark quite clearly, beyond the foundational theatre of governance, something we should hold on to, in terms of defining the real goals of the Yar'Adua administration. The settling pains and the ambiguities of office ought to be now clarified, to provide Nigeria with a definite idea about what Umar Yar'Adua is really all about. It also possibly marks the end of the romance with the Nigerian media, which typically allows a resting period of 100 days for incoming governments before organizing its blistering searchlights for a closer observation of the workings and failures of governments.
It is important, therefore, that President Yar'Adua begins to understand that Nigerians are in a hurry to, not merely move on from the cruel past of failed administrations, especially in the last forty years, but to something quite plainly their right: A good government with great programs. Recently, the Foreign minister, Ojo Maduekwe outlined what he called the new framework of Nigeria's foreign policy under the current administration. He called it "citizenship diplomacy." Aside from its quaint title, one notes that the motherlode principle of this policy is retaliatory diplomacy, in which foreign governments that treat Nigerian citizens shabbily in their foreign embassies and countries should expect effective retaliation from the Nigerian government. For instance, in the case of Nigerians killed by Austrian and Spanish authorities, Nigeria is likely to retaliate presumably. There are clear ambiguities in that policy certainly, but the real question in foreign policy as my friend, the late Leslie Harriman should say is, "what is your mojo?" - what have you got to back it up?
Nigeria is neither a serious military power nor an industrial behemoth. It may do nada. It has oil, perhaps that would have been an effective tool, if like today's Venezuela it has revised its oil policy, reappropriated its oil fields from the control of the international oil cartels and local middlemen that have established authority and contract over them, and use it as a clear tool of its foreign policy. But Yar'Adua is no Hugo Chavez. And, therefore, the old order remains. And the old order is a layer of the crust of corruption, perfidy, and brazen robbery of Nigeria's commonwealth in the last forty years.
This has stagnated and compromised Nigeria's national interest, especially because Nigeria's corrupt order has been accomplished on tacit partnership with foreign interests who still hold Nigeria on the jugular. One of the moves which president Yar'Adua ought to make in the next hundred years, if he is to establish legitimacy and clear credible authority is to initiate an independent investigation into the activities of the former President Olusegun Obasanjo, to determine the extent of his misuse of his power to the detriment of national interest. This move should also not stop with Obasanjo, but must include past military regimes, and uncover the stakes of the billionaire generals, whom we seem to have conveniently forgotten in the backdrop of Obasanjo's years. But even just as the last words drip off my pen, I have very little certainty that Umar Yar'Adua is made of that kind of spunk.
There are aspects of the man I like: His quiet and ascetic bearing; and the sense of his personal integrity; but there is increasing whisper that the man is no longer his own man; no one indeed is his own man, who enters Aso Rock, with the ambiguity that currently defines Nigeria's national interests and the clear goals of that interest. It seems that Nigeria's national interest is quite different from its elite interests - which I frequently describe as subaltern - meaning that it is a middleman elite; not sovereign; acting merely as renters to more powerful international interests who make them rich, and keep them satisfied, at the detriment of a nationalist agenda and the right of the general populace.
This image of Yar'Adua as part of the same old, circumscribed interest is increasingly seeping out, and the image of inaction, of a groping presidency, is now circulating, because after hundred days, president Umar Yar'Adua seems to be locked down, unable to gain traction, and consistently mulling and changing his options as circumstances change. Governance is of course a slippery field, and those who have state responsibilities carry the enormous burden of the collective will, and should be given support when the occasion demands, but patience for this administration has started to fray slowly because indeed, what Nigerians want are simple enough: security of lives and property, atop it.
To be fair, Yar'Adua's conciliatory moves in the Niger Delta was a commendable departure from the crude militarism of the last administration, which in all, snowballed into armed resistance, and now into the democracy of violence because of the massive dumping of arms in the Niger Delta, sometimes I understand, by the subversive undercover of the Nigerian security services; a move by the Obasanjo government which reminds me of the Iran-Contra debacle of the Reagan administration in the USA in some material particular.
Obasanjo's failed policy in the Niger Delta has led to a metastization of robbery and violence in he entire Eastern Nigerian and Midwestern corridor. But what is important is that domestic insecurity requires strategic reorganization and re-equipment of Nigeria's policing mechanism, while external insecurity demands Nigeria's massive investment in its systems build-up: A reorganization of Nigeria's armed forces, and massive investment in military research and production using the excessive human manpower to establish Nigeria's military industrial capacity.
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