It was the year 2000 or 2001. We were seated almost in a circumference. The venue was the Presidential Villa in Aso Rock, Abuja. We awaited the arrival of President OIusegun Obasanjo. The event was the monthly Presidential Media Chat. It was a forum where the president took questions from select editors. This evening, the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) was programmed to beam it live to the world.
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Cameras were readied for action. Their minders jealously fiddled with their objects to be sure nothing programmed to go right ever went wrong. As a first-timer here, all I did was to turn the whole place into some ball of historical philosophising. Like an eagle encircling the sky, my mind pawed over past enervating stories about the mythic Aso Rock. This was where a now feeble Ibrahim Babangida, at the autumn of power, proclaimed magisterially, like Saturn, the Roman god of time, that he was not only in office but in power.This was the same place where goggled Sani Abacha breathed his last and facts of his expiry are now as splintered as bullets from the guns of his goons.
Then I remembered Francisco Goya. A Spanish artist, Goya’s painting of Saturn, sometime between 1820 and 1823, which he entitled Saturn Devouring His Son, depicted the Greek myth of Saturn eating a child of his. The myth was that, out of fear of a prophecy by Gaea that one of his children would overthrow him, Saturn turned cannibal, committing filicide in the process. As I sat in what was once Babangida’s Aso Rock, I ruminated over how the Saturn painting fitted the Minna General perfectly. For fear of what would become of him after leaving office, Babangida, right inside this sprawling cultic home of power, attempted to gobble a democratic Nigeria. Aso Rock, my mind constantly echoed: This was where soldiers midwifed the crisis that almost ate Nigeria during the June 12 crisis!
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Seated inside that brightly lit, picturesque and beautifully idyllic section of Aso Rock were John Momoh of the then fledgling Channels television, as anchor; Nkechi Nwankwo of the Champion newspaper, one Muhammed representing the New Nigerian newspaper and me, of the Nigerian Tribune. Opposite us was a coterie of media aides and ministers, as well as the presidential spokesman, Mr Tunji Oseni. When eventually the curtains were lifted on the chat, these people clapped like the fawners that they were. Obasanjo committed a number of gaffes during the chat which he needed to be told of. It didn’t matter. The god must earn his fawn. Earlier, Oseni had lent us a temporary usage of his office inside the Villa. We apportioned time of talk, dissected the questioning session into social, political and economic, while no one, including Obasanjo, knew what we had on our minds to ask the president.
A few months before, the mythic but long-awaited democratic rule was celebratorily ushered into Nigeria. On 29 May, 1999, Nigerians sang that conquest song usually sung in traditional Yoruba palaces when a would-be chieftaincy holder/king had surmounted all hurdles and successfully ascended the ancestral stool of their forefathers. Nigerians were literally singing that victorious song, “Ìwonpápá, ìwonnà/A ti m’óyè yìí je/Ìwonnà…”
Expectations hung in the sky like strange hieroglyphics in the heavens. You could reach for one, cut a sizeable chunk and masticate expectations. The media was the major culprit of this Nigerian Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. For decades, it built an El-Dorado of a democratic Nigeria that would solve all Nigerian existential challenges. The 29th of May, the people assumed, was good riddance to bad rubbish of military rule. By 1998 when General Sani Abacha suddenly expired like a threatening apparition, the military had harvested huge disdain of the Nigerian people. Their khaki represented repression, the boots punishing affliction and the institution itself a metaphor for retrogression and damnation.
By then, for just a fleeting four-year interregnum, Second Republic civil rule came out to dance like the magical masquerade Yoruba call Eégun Aláré. This was, literally, a group of magicians or entertainer Yoruba
Nigerians’ expectations from democracy reminded me of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. This Orwellian script came in the form of an allegorical novella. It centred round animals on a Manor Farm as cast who overthrew their oppressive human farmer, Mr. Jones. Placed side by side Orwell’s, Nigeria had its own replica of the respected boar called Old Major who dreamed of an El-Dorado animal world and constantly gathered the animals to share his dream. Expectant that a successful rebellion would create an equal, free society, the animals sang, Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland/Beasts of every land and clime/Hearken to my joyful tidings/Of the golden future time... They dreamed that, upon sending the neglectful, drunken farmer, Mr. Jones, from the farm, they would live in a dreamworld of perfection for beasts.
Like Old Major, we also had the Gani Fawehinmis, Alao Aka-Bashoruns, Femi Falanas, Frank Kokoris, Ndubuisi Kanus and many other human rights activists who canonised democracy. In a post-military Nigeria, agbada,
However, upon their spontaneous revolt, the pigs immediately morphed into a more tyrannical Mr. Jones, becoming even more corrupt, far more power-hungry dictators. They eventually transformed the farm into a totalitarian regime identical to and perhaps worse than the human rule they overthrew.
Meanwhile, in Aso Rock that day, John Momoh signified for me to fire my salvo at our own Snowball, the new leader of the Animal Farm. I carefully parcelled the morsel for him to swallow thus: “Mr President, perhaps because I am closer to a species of humanity called the common man, I am able, more than you, to accurately feel his pulse. I don’t know if you know that the common man is saying that the life he lived under the military was quite better, comparatively, than life now under you in a democracy. Aren’t you bothered, Mr President?”
In his characteristic clearing of phlegm off his throat, Obasanjo cleared the room for the impending ballistics. And he began, with military precision, an attempt to shred my question into smithereens. He identified what he had done in few months of being in government and ended by saying, “Don’t let us put words in the mouth of the common man!” His answer was however very simplistic.
The background to my question was that an ominous shroud was by then hovering over Nigeria. Labour was threatening to go on strike. Costs of food had skyrocketed. Obasanjo hadn’t totally shed his military toga of tyranny. Odi and Zaki-Biam, where he ordered an Apartheid-like Soweto mow of residents, were soon to follow. Politicians had begun to live like the new Snowball. They had tampered with our general code that all animals were equal. In its stead, they hung up in the sky a parodied new rule: Politicians are more equal than others.
From Obasanjo to Umaru Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari and now, Bola Tinubu, Nigeria merely witnesses change of baton of a punisher for a greater punisher. We exchange tyrannical Snowballs for heartless Napoleons. While in Animal Farm, Snowball, who initially took over its running, was mild, Napoleon eventually exiled Snowballs, seizing absolute control. Our new democratic Napoleons do not have blood flowing in their veins.
Exactly 27 years after civil rule, Nigerians are forced to ask this philosophical but painful, anguish-propelled question Yoruba often ask themselves at point of suffering, hopelessness, mirth-lessness, “Broken bottle on our forehead, bludgeon on the back; Is this how they play comradeship at the Ede market?” Its parent word is actually, “Òpáláńbá ń’wájú, kùmò l’éyìn orùn, sé b’òjú ti rí nìyí, t’áa fi ńje obì l’ójà Ede?”
The truth is, 27 years after, as I asked Obasanjo in 2000/2001, democracy has been a huge disappointment to the people of Nigeria. Put differently, 27 years after, those behind the wheels of our democratic travel have so brazenly demonized the concept of democracy in our everyday lives, that democracy appears far worse in outlook than military rule. A recent NOIPolls on the state of democracy in Nigeria shows a paradox of widespread dissatisfaction with current governance, as well as spiking mistrust. According to NOIPolls, “72% of Nigerians express dissatisfaction with democratic governance, with 46% stating they are ‘not satisfied at all.’” On geopolitical basis, dissatisfaction is said to be highest in the South-East (58 per cent) and South-South (56 per cent), compared to the North-East where dissatisfaction sits lower at 33 per cent.
Yes, democracy brings freedom, but we can still see manacles on our hands. Comparatively, life in 1999, before civilians took over the reins, was far better and more qualitative than now. More Nigerians have died in the last 27 years than those killed by military guns and the 1967-1971 civil war. Indeed, more Nigerians have died under insurgency, bandits and kidnappers in the last 15 years than they did in the 28 years of military rule. As I was downing my pen writing this, retired General Rabe Abubakar, kidnapped by bandits, was announced dead in captivity. Yet, all we hear are governmental promises that all would be well. Hundreds still remain in captivity.
The quality of those who govern us and the stuff of minds that go into governance, again comparatively between military and civil rule, have also dwindled considerably. More fundamentally, there is more ethnic tension than there was in 1999. Nigerians are today more radicalised in mutual ethnic hatred, and are more at the borders of ethnic wars than they have ever been. In terms of food security, if democracy was conceptualised to bring abundance, Nigerians feel like they are in a famine situation.
Some say the fault isn’t the concept but it’s Nigerian actors who tar-brushed democracy. Some others say all we need do is decolonize democracy. To them, the problem is our failure to make a hybrid of this foreign democratic concept by blending it with local content. Party politics, the engine room of democracy, is totally cannibalised for personal reasons. No genuine person ready to serve the people can emerge from this process called democracy. Politicians have become archetypes of Rastafarians’ Babylon. In that Rastafari culture which took roots in the West Indies, Babylon is a metaphor for oppressive, corrupt, and unjust systemic powers. It represents wonky modern societal structures, governments and authorities whose laws and systems are designed to keep marginalised or everyday people struggling and disenfranchised perpetually.
In the hands of politicians of Nigeria, democracy has become a vampire which, in the words of Bob Marley, is “suckin’ the children day by day“. In another Marley line, as if referencing Nigerian politicians, he says, “Dem belly full but we hungry.” Institutions of democracy like the electoral commission have become mannequin to be toyed with in the hands of the executive. Corruption of the last 27 years are perhaps worse than the previous 39 years. While, a la Kaduna Nzeogwu, Nigerian politicians of the First Republic were 10 percenters, the ones of today heist the total sum of contracts.
What makes matters worse is that, the ballot box, which should free suffering Nigerians from this democratic bondage, has become their affliction. How do I mean? In 1973, a bank robbery took place in Stockholm, Sweden. It became a 6-day standoff where bank staff were held hostage at gunpoint. During this period, the captive bank employees unexpectedly began to develop unnatural bonds with their captors. Upon their release and the kingpins arraigned in court, the hostages declined to testify against their captors. They even raised money to defend them. Stockholm syndrome then became a psychological response of a captive or abuse victim developing an emotional bond with their captor. In Nigeria, between the electorate and the politicians, there is a Stockholm syndrome. Voters are in love with politicians who serially afflict them. They shout their praises on the social media while hunger clobbers their bellies. By 2027, even with hopelessness as their next-door neighbour, the Nigerian electorate will still vote for these captors.
But, what do we do? We must continue to hope against hope! We however will not cease asking democracy, which we thought was our comrade and hoped would rescue us: “Òpáláńbá ń’wájú, kùmò l’éyìn orùn, sé b’ójú ti rí nìyí, t’áa fi ńje obì l’ójà Ede?” Why, comrade, did you hit us with broken bottle on the forehead and bludgeon us on the back, Democracy? Is this how they play comradeship at the Ede market?
Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.
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