By Charles Onunaiju
By all estimates, the elections scheduled for February 2023 especially the presidential poll will be a defining moment for Nigeria. It will be the second time since 1999 that an incumbent would not be on the ballot and whosoever is elected, whether from the ruling or other opposition parties would be a defining moment in Nigeria’s political history. While the outcome of the 2023 elections would add to the reputation of the country in deepening civilian led political process, the emerging trends of widening misery and poverty, amidst contentious and even acrimonious civic bond, would bring enormous strains and constrain the generation of enabling consensus to heal post-election contestations. However, a deeper and more broader challenge is to govern in a way that is radically different from the routine we are all familiar. The imperative to govern in a different way is simply because the familiar routine of governing have proved totally unable to engage the existential challenges that have bedeviled the country and even exacerbated the crises. Traditional apparatus and other formal institutions of governance have also been unable to generate vital mechanisms for efficient service to the generality of Nigerians. They need not be disbanded as that would amount to overthrowing the constitution but adroit, intelligent and patriotic leadership in post 2023 election can creatively explore the constitutional ambit to build shadowy smart platform to generate efficiencies and competencies necessary to deliver on the transformation of Nigeria.
Nigeria’s most insidious cankerworm that have viciously thwarted the best of intentions and even the correct policy measures is the endemic presence of vested interests at every turn of Nigeria’s effort to translate her famed potentials in to concrete aggregates for sustainable development. The whole gamut of existing institutions from the formal centers of power – executive, legislature and judiciary and the bureaucracy to the departments and agencies are all victims of manipulating and vicious vested interests, The stranglehold of vicious interest in all the country’s traditional state institutions demands in objective terms, a revolutionary cleansing requiring the complete overthrow of the state . But, such revolutionary upheaval is not only impossible but even undesirable because its consequences are usually beyond the scope and managerial competence of its progenitors. But something more thorough going than the chaos of revolutionary upheaval is possible to clean the Nigeria’s Augean stable. Gladiators of all sorts are priming and positioning themselves in all the political parties especially the major ones to negotiate themselves into vintage state and public institutions with the baggage, with the baggage of vested interests for which they are mere surrogates . In every step and in all circumstances as experience has shown, protection and advancement of these vested interests are the characteristic and defining nature of public office holding in contemporary Nigeria. The extensive, pervasive and corrosive influence and impact of vested interests have completely hollowed out traditional institutions of the state, deprived them of capacity, integrity, credibility and competence to act in the public interest. While they exist and are maintained with public resources, they are distracted and incapacitated by vested special interests.
In the context of the contemporary Nigeria, where special vested interests reign supreme, rules, procedures, norms and even laws are converted to provincial ordinances reduced to the subjective preferences selectively and meekly applied to the pleasure of the powerful. The traditional demarcation of making, interpreting and executing the laws designed to bolster and strengthen the efficiency of governance through both institutional independence and collaboration in functions have been sullied and compromised. While influence peddling is a feature of public life almost everywhere in the world, there may be now where in the world where it has so malignantly affected public institutions and so thoroughly vitiated their capacity to render and deliver services to the people than in Nigeria.
The reality in contemporary Nigeria is that pockets of special vested interest has overthrown the constitutional order, hollowed out the substance of public interest, and left them as glorified shells, only good for viewing. Everything that is purportedly done in the open and supposedly in the best of public interests have actually been negotiated and traded in the secret. Public office holders who enforce rules and regulate various sectoral actors are themselves key bidders, and major actors. With the virtual overthrow of the constitutional order and due process under the suzerainty of special vested interests, Nigeria’s manifest destiny to inspire the black race and lead Africa has remained a pipe dream despite obvious potential both in human and material resources. The early gains of post-independence Nigeria in establishing a virile public service and a responsible political process have been summarily reversed. The election scheduled for first quarter of 2023, will not automatically recover the famished fate of the country, but any one among the contestants who win, can make a decision to hold down the hemorrhage and turn the tide.
To seek to confront vested interest and their powerful practitioners is not an option. Persuading them either to give up the privileged vintage position will be exercise in futility. But because they are banal and vain, they can be tricked as their ego can be massaged to irrelevance. As they have stomped the country, seeking votes on behalf of different candidates with a view to being catapulted into public office as ministers, and other choice and key offices.While letting the political jobbers fill all the designated positions to their satisfaction of having summarily captured the state institutions, a wise and patriotic leader determined to break jinx can create a shadow cabinet within the ambit of the law. A presidential Think Tank, a long over due summon of the country’s Intellectual capital, composed of thinkers and scholars in broad range of disciplines, prepared to work with little or no visibility and modest emolument can work to seek mechanisms, device informal rules and develop templates for dismantling the sovereign impunity of vested interests without courting the mortal peril of confronting them or breaching the constitution. When the famed boundless energy of Nigerians is unleashed in a true republic when public institutions are genuinely primed to serve the public, the transformative impact of a Nigeria that is awakened would be far more reaching than the celebrated Asian dragon, the awakened Peoples Republic of China.
2023 can bring about more of the same or can be truly a defining moment. But Nigeria’s defining moment cannot come if there is no radical break with the old way of doing things and neither would total disruptions set us on the path of recovery.
Onunaiju is a research director of an Abuja Think Tank.
