[allAfrica.com] [Africa_2005] Unacceptable Silence Daily Trust (Abuja) OPINION December 5, 2005 Posted to the web December 5, 2005 By Adagbo Onoja 1,000 troops deployed to Yenagoa (which, to the extent that the Senate has given approval, may be regarded as constitutional even though the approval came after we had seen the troops already in Bayelsa); Bayelsa Government House invaded by the police; the state's accounts frozen; the State Radio shut and a set of legislators are under special police protection to carry out the urgent task of impeaching Alamieyeseigha in which the EFCC is deeply involved. All these actions have been taken by the federal government against a coordinate level of government and yet the nation is not sufficiently horrified to shout NO. I cannot hear such NO because only Professor Ben Nwabueze has done that yet in a timely fashion. We should be hearing more than that, not from the activists of the MDD, MRD, Afenifere, ANNP and other partisan politicians, but from the core of technically non-partisan voices like the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN); the Jamatu Nasril Islam, JNI; the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, SCIA; the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the civil society organisations particularly ASUU and Labour that have a tradition of reasoned intervention, among others. Is this still about decorum and protocol in communicating the state? But haven't these issues passed the level of private appointment with the president or 'telephone conversations' between any traditional ruler and the president, for example. This is about restraining a rampaging state consciously or otherwise determined to tread the path of rubbishing the system. I am not ignorant of the very categorical statements of a frontline traditional ruler like the Sultan of Sokoto, Sultan Muhammadu Maccido on the dangers of so- called market economy and the policy of using Nigeria to gratify foreign interests in anticipation of solidarity for some personal power project or of the very courageous interventions by some leaders of the church, particularly in Abuja who have told President Obasanjo to his face many, many times, that he is a failure as a leader of government. But each obsession of a dictator must be rejected on well-argued grounds by voices of collectivities. This is what is missing from the federal invasion of Bayelsa State this last week. Today, the spark for this invasion is about one Diepreye Alamieyeseigha who has lost any sense of smartness after stealing his people blue (including their votes in 2003). But tomorrow, the invasion of Government House, shutting down of a radio station, freezing the allocation of the state, etc may not be about a Governor Alamieyeseigha running away from the London or New York or French or Ghanaian Police, but someone else whose ethnic and or religious background or performance in power may make any of the actions of the federal government against Bayelsa straight invitation to anarchy. That scenario would not be far in coming and I pray that we would all be alive to listen to people like Gani Fawehinmi (well, he is beginning to see the limits of his initial stance on Alamco) and Eziuche Ubani making convenient comparisons to make themselves feel less guilty about the strong-arm tactics and manners that have been characteristic of the centre. And why are we so blest? The logical inference from the above narrative is that we are not making progress in democracy, however defined. Apart from the willful assassination of concepts like due process or constitutionalism or federalism, the evidence is also there in the recent lecture we received from Ghanaian President John Kuffour and before him, World Bank Wolfowitz. Each of these two gentlemen advised our president against the temptation to extend his stay in power. PDP National Secretary, Ojo Maduekwe (the author of a lovely piece titled 'Epistemic Authority' (I hope I still remembered it correctly, as published in 2002 in an edition of The Guardian) who has obviously been sleeping since Wolfowitz and Kuffour's visits then woke up last Friday to see nothing beyond hysteria on the issue of Obasanjo's third term. Ojo Maduekwe and whichever PDP he was speaking for deserved to be dismissed and I hereby do so. I put it to him that the denial is because the third term bid is going the direction all reasonable people feared it would: the regional shield politics. This is what the rump of the PDP is now trying to make light of. But the matter is much more than the light strokes from Ojo Maduekwe. It is about what is in our make that we are so incapable of elevated living. Who would have ever thought that someone who has attained the personality stature Obasanjo has attained in the world would ever, ever get himself messed up in the pastimes of those that Ali Mazrui called the lumpen militariat. In a crude interpretation for the purpose of a newspaper level analysis, I would say Mazrui was referring to the first generation of barely educated military officers who came to power in the first wave of coups in Africa. That generation was a generation of classic lumpens in power-crude, bestial, uncouth and crass immorality, moneymaking, statecraft and exercise of power. As early as 1979, Obasanjo had clearly distinguished himself from this crowd. In the 1990s, he was clearly making progressive statements. It is possible that the collapse of the Soviet Union, his jail experience, its regional dynamics and all of that left indelible marks on his psyche, but then, having been part of the processes of the negotiation of Mandela's release, the jail ought to have strengthened him in his convictions rather than otherwise. The experience of the past six or so years shows conclusively that he also lost any old convictions while also failing to master properly the dynamics of the new ones he has embraced. This is a big loss, both for Nigerians who are suffering for nothing on account of such poorly-digested frameworks, as well as the fact that even if he bows out of power unproblematically in 2007, he is not going to have the local constituency to be a Nigerian response to the Mandela nobility, to play the role of Africa's spokesperson on the troublesome issues in global North-South relations for which his diplomatic nuances and bluntness initially suggested. The legacy of improperly-digested framework Talking about improperly-digested framework being embraced in the afternoon of a man's life brings to mind the gale of retrenchment that has been hitting the public service quietly in the last few months. The one that has become most dramatic, courtesy of AIT, last Friday is that of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, NEPC. Here, the staff from all the states where they have offices were called to a Pre-Disengagement Seminar in the zone nearest to him or her and lectured on how to be thrifty vis-�-vis their disengagement payment. The following day, the letters of retrenchment started hitting those on target. It has been complaints galore bordering on the mystery of the criteria used since nobody was told (both those who read the 'correct' disciplines, those who never had a query, as well as those nowhere near retirement age were involved), the belief among those retrenched that while the Pre-Disengagement Seminar was going on, an interview for recruitment of some new people was also going on at Chelsea Hotel, Abuja and the allegation that the seminar took no less than 70 million naira. While these may be the psychological tales of those affected, the idea of sending away 50 % of the staff strength of any agency at a go sounds ridiculous. And, in an economy in which even well-established organisations cannot make ends meet, it must be a sour joke to expect business neophytes to go and make a breakthrough with a pitiable disengagement allowance. The point is that retrenchment is a shock therapy. The psychological disorganisation that comes with it cannot be compensated by any money. What more systematic governments do particularly in economies that offer very little alternative openings is to retrain those to be affected by job losses. This way, those retrenched never have the opportunity of coming to terms with life in terms of armed robbery or the slow death from feeling rejected by their own society, anyway!   ==============================================================================   Copyright © 2005 Daily Trust. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). ==============================================================================