Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first African-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Amaopusenibo Bobo Sofiri Brown, editorial opinion contributor to USAfrica and USAfricaonline.com, served as pioneer Manager of PR at NAFCON Nigeria, founder of the SUNRAY multimedia group in 1992 in Port Harcourt and is currently CEO of GRAIN Consulting.
Since August 2023 reports and insights on the coup d’etat in Niger Republic are throwing up several challenges.
What is unfolding deserves deeper interrogation from several directions.
There are those like former President Buhari whose retirement siesta was likely disturbed by the events.
The suspicion is that they woke him up with the news from Niger Republic.
And he unarguably sounded like those well-fed and establishment favoured retirees in Nigeria such as former Governors.
He, reportedly insisted that the coup in Niger was “unwarranted”.
Former President Buhari is not alone in his views about the coup in Niger, though others may not be so loud.
Such people will tend to see the present situation as an “unexpected” development.
Yes; it is an unexpected situation, only because the ruling Feudal System in Nigeria tends to block the ears and eyes of the leaders from the anguish of the oppressed!
In which case it is logical that cannot notice the dynamics which the silent but steady struggle of the oppressed, can throw up.
People who cannot see what is coming, especially when it carries signs of a possible dramatic change in the power equation between different stakeholder groups in a society and then, seemingly offers a big window of self-help to the poor.
It may be a momentary window and may even not change the fundamental enslavement of the poor.
But it would be a huge relief for the oppressed to see victory, even for one day.
For a people who have been denied by every institution that ordinarily should advance democratic access and processes for human dignity, one day is long enough to wag a finger of retribution in the snobbish face of institutions that over the years, turned against the people.
In Nigeria, this denial of democratic processes or equal access to citizens, makes our skin crawl as we hear those who occupy top positions in public institutions make mockery of the poor they are supposed to lift.
They joke that the poor cannot breathe.
But it is our institutions that have left the poor in such despair.
Such institutions as the legislature, judiciary, as well as the banking and education foundations are expected to energize a national economy to make the citizens find career-based productive undertakings.
Yet they continue to fail Nigerians and claim that this is a democracy!
It is clear that the children of those in top public institutions are not the poor who need to breathe.
What appears to be happening explains why they can make mockery of the poor.
It would seem that Nigeria’s current Senate President now appears to operate as a chartered Prayer warrior.
It is reported that he has contracted his eminent self to send “prayers” to the bank accounts of Senators to guarantee them a “happy holiday.”
We are left to ask when the Senate President will send similar “prayers” to 200 million Nigerians to enjoy a normal life, not a happy holiday.
In any country serious about citizens’ right to equity, the video clip of the Senate President’s recent utterances should have brought a national call for the public to occupy the National Assembly until at least a motion of apology is passed by the Legislators!
But here we are waiting for the Senate President’s prayer power to benefit some of us.
Meanwhile, the children and cronies of Senators and those of their political tribe are cosily stepping into every juicy position in the legislative, executive and judicial arms of government at Federal and State levels of government.
They are forming a local trend of what The Economist of London called an emerging “new Aristocracy” . In its edition of January 24-30, 2015, it gave more than a 3-page expose on what Paul Ryan, an influential Republican Congressman, described as a big fear that the situation was leading the United States toward an unwanted direction where one’s birth determines the person’s life.
But a more detailed work showing the trend of the new aristocracy as a deliberate inheritance of career positions to keep powerful positions in the family of the rich and powerful in a merit- based society as the US, has since been done by Steven Brill in 2018.
In his book, Tailspin, Steve Brill points to the trend as a national threat that has pulled the US down from its pursuit of social justice and equity of access to oppprtunity.
But in 2023, Nigeria is seeing an unparalleled number of “inheritance candidates” taking over from their parents as Local Government Chairmen, commissioners, legislators, Committee Chairmen in Houses of Assembly, House of Representatives and the Senate, not to talk of the bureaucracy in each State.
It is a growing “underground” of career inheritance by those whose parents want to “colonise” particular job attractions for their families in Nigeria.
Shouldn’t Nigerians reject this trend as undemocratic?
Perhaps it is finally the age of “emi lokan” at every level in Nigeria!
Somehow, what they see happening to the mighty men of politics and political power in Niger Republic should make them uncomfortable.
It could be seen as too close for comfort.
Ministers and their likes are being pulled on the ground in their communities by kith and kin they denied opportunities for years.
Suddenly those who personalized political power and made the State treasury their family property,, are being thrown out!
From indications in most mass media channels, both traditional and new media, the number of Nigerians who tend to support the ordinarily people of Niger Republic, may be on a mercurial rise as we speak.
Why is this so?
It could be that more Nigerians are being made to feel like the masses in Niger Republic.
It appears life on Nigeria’s streets and neighbourhood, is increasingly making average citizens to share in the suffering caused by the systemic oppression of the ordinary citizens of Niger Republic.
Unknown to former President Buhari, Niger Republic that appeared to be a sanctuary of opulence to attend to him as an exclusive family right, has become the shared bloodline of all oppressed Nigerians!
So to many of us, the only surprise we feel about Niger Republic is the same simple question that rings from North to South of our country: why didn’t it happen sooner?
The crisis in Niger Republic is making many groups in Nigeria uncomfortable, because in my view:
a) a stakeholder storm is brewing. Those who benefit from the old power equation in Niger Repunlic seem to want the old order to return.
On the contrary, those who have other interests in Niger Republic do not want to restore the oppressive old system, at least not by war.
Some do not want to restore it at all.
This splits the fragile solidarity of Nigeria’s power elite that President Tinubu is leading.
So who is where?
b) As Nigeria’s Stakeholder groups that form different strata of the power cabal appear inclined to fight over Niger Republic, who are the emerging victims?
First the President’s ministerial list shows an incredible team of no party principle or ideology.
It suggests a new version of democracy emerging in Nigeria where we have politicians but no party discipline, no commitment to a party philosophy or a party’s manifesto as a collective platform of issues the government in power holds as priority.
Going by the list in the public domain, the President’s choice of Ministers will largely be people who can by their past record help President Tinubu in his electoral dilemma.
If it comes to a repeat election, many in the list shouldn’t find it any strange to “snatch it, grab it and run with it” as a certain advisory in the public domain in Nigeria had demanded before the general elections of 2023 .
The Generals who took over political power in Niger Republic, have been forced by the reactions they have provoked , to undergo a crash course in Class Struggle.
When in July 2023, they locked up their former President in a mansion, they unintentionally became the wind that opened the rump of Nigeria’s political elite and their ECOWAS cabal.
That cabal in Nigeria has been split into pro -ECOWAS and anti-ECOWAS factions.
Those who are in the pro-ECOWAS faction are being hushed into executive murmuring, seeking endorsemrnt from France and US rather than from their own hone countries.
It shows how much they love democracy.
From their records in public office across West Africa and especially in Nigeria, most of them are in a long lineage of ruling elite that have seen to the downward slide of the economy of and social life in West Africa. They appear to have done so at the same time that more of those who hold political power are joining the select club of questionable millionaires from Africa.
So, to them democracy is not an ideological framework with machinery to change society to improve the life of citizens or to lift their respective nations to prominence.
Only a handful can stand to be counted!
Their own democracy is only a system of retaining political power by hook or crook for personal enrichment and continuing enslavement of their citizens.
In that sense Niger Republic today stands as a rebuke to the oppressive ruling elite that defines the borders of West Africa.
Sadly it would seem that the socio-economic investmnets by Nigeria which Preaident Buhari’s administration arbitrarily deployed in Niger Republic, only helped to sustain oppression by a few elite in power.
Who knows? The old power elite in Niger Republic simply served to watch over stolen wealth from Nigeria!
It is clear that whatever Nigeria did for them , did not primarily benefit ordinary citizens of Niger or a broad- based Stakeholder pool in the country.
That explains the confidence of the military in Niger to treat Nigeria and ECOWAS with such shoddiness.
Now we can see how historical tendencies appear to create their own complexities.
A Tinubu Chairmanship of ECOWAS, faces two major contradictions.
First is that it is threatened at home in Nigeria by consequencies of its widely suspected illegitimacy.
As a product of the Feudal System that does not encourage collective decision making, efficiency or credible attempt at transparency, the administration is compelled by the logic of the system to try and look bold against popular wishes at home.
It has been embarassing democracy by announcing policies before consultation with popular stakeholder groups!
This tendency seems to have led the administration to find an external mission for itself.
But how can it claim to be a defender of democracy in ECOWAS when at home INEC’s Yakoob Mahmoud cannot present any widely acclaimed, credible and “glitch free” Polling units from Feb 25 or March 2023 elections as a model evidence of democratic electoral process?
Secondly, President Tinubu is also handicapped by the lack of a blueprint of an economy that can inspire Nigerian citizens in Diaspora to come home to join their brethren to build competitive economic niches at LGA, State and federal investment frontiers of a national emergency to save our citizens from an unproductive but luxury- consuming government elite?
In all of President Tinubu’s arbitrary hike in pump price of petrol and ridiculous palliative schemes, there is no mention of any policy to cut back on government convoys or less of expensive brands of vehicles by government officials.
At the present exchange rate of Naira in sexond week of August, a six -vehicle convoy of Lexus, Toyota or BMW brands of SUVs preferred by government officials, costs over one billion Naira to purchase and about N1.3m to run each month!
Doesn’t President Tinubu care?
It is not surprising that Tinubu’s govermment imposed by the Feudal System has proceeded to announce anti-people policies in its first 60 days in office.
But without intending to do so, President Tinubu’s elitist policies could begin to unite opposition groups in Nigeria to stand as true Stakeholder groups. They can then defend a common cause on the national economy and social equity in order to gain popular support.
Today at least about 30% of those who voted for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu or those who didn’t mind the outcome of the election tribunal process before, are beginning to be vocal against his policies.
Starting a war in ECOWAS could be a life jacket strategy to keep Mr President in power in Nigeria: after all, who wants to remove an ECOWAS Chairman that is fighting a war for democracy and has support from France and US?
But this strategy could back-fire.
A dramatic loss of credibility across West Africa and loss of even local acceptance, due to the naivety of our Feudal System, would hurt President Tinubu’s administration.
Niger Republic is exposing Tinubu’s election and policies to greater scrutiny by ECOWAS member states.
They are speaking out as external stakeholder groups concerned about Nigeria’s internal affairs.
The old doctrine of non interference in the internal affairs of member countries is being undressed as a tool of internal colonialism and oppression by a Feudal System such as we have in Nigeria.
Now what face will President Tinubu have after this is over?
ECOWAS will likely be factionalised, going forward.
Thanks to who?
What will Nigeria look like when Niger Republic can stand to tell President Tinubu & his ECOWAS support faction to go to hell?
Finally, Yes, a new Nigeria is becoming unavoidable.
What is more, it may come faster but may not be the way we think.
