Sowore for President

By Obi Nwakanma
The gale of defections between the All Peoples
Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) in recent times indicate, or ought
to highlight for Nigerians, that these two
parties are tweedle dee and tweedle dum, and
together, they make Nigeria walk higgledy
piggledy. They essentially mirror each other.
They represent that agglomeration of hacks
that boldly took charge of ground operations in
Nigeria, while “high-minded” Nigerians were still
busy wondering whether or not to trust the
process, and take full part in the transition to
power in Nigeria in 1999.

By the time Nigerians woke up to its reality,
power was in the hands of louts, sharpers and
con artists, and many criminal types with
forged certificates from Toronto and Chicago
who now sit astride power and have shaped
Nigeria in their images in the nearly twenty
years since the so-called transition to
democracy. That political transition was, quite
frankly viewed by many as a political fraud,
supervised by nervous and compromised
Generals who had been forced by civil agitation
and international pressure to cede the symbolic
reins of power. Many Nigerians thought that
the first one term will be the real transitional
period when experienced, and well-organized
politicians would enter the field and change the
course of Nigerian politics. But take a look,
dear Nigerians, and you will see that in this
recent drama of “carpet crossings” is the
menace of the poverty of ideas that have since
characterized that transition, and defined
Nigeria’s political landscape since the return of
organized party politics. Perhaps it was all the
result of the hurried and mediated process of
1999, because it is very clear that the old
Generals are still in charge.
They may have removed the tunics, and
replaced it with clothes from civvies streets.
But the face of Nigerian politics still carry their
images. They are still the secret hands that
rock the infant cradle of Nigerian party politics
since 1999, and are still ruling the roost using
select proxies whom they have mentored,
sponsored, and positioned to secure their own
interest. It is still Obasanjo – Buhari –
Babangida – AbdulSalami and Danjuma – and
to an extent, Yar Ardua from the grave – and
their cohorts that continue to call the shots
from their hidden and not so hidden sites.
These are the men who amassed the kind of
resources so enormous that they could single-
handedly fund the political process, including
elections, either directly or by proxy. And they
have played the grand politics of self-interest
very well. They have stage-managed quarrels
between them, yet there is none for whom
Nigeria’s survival as it is currently designed
benefits more than these individuals. They are
like those ancient Roman consuls up to
Pompeii. Let me not over dramatize it. But
there is very clearly a connection between
them, and they have been stringing Nigerians
along, toying with them, and staging elaborate
dramas of power. The other day, Dr. Abubakar
Bukola Saraki went to see Obasanjo. Before
him Atiku went. In the same week Dankwabo
found his way to Minna. Just before he
defected to the APC, the PDP minority whip,
Akpabio went to see Buhari who is currently
president in London. No one, among the
original political class, those sacked by the
military on December 31, 1983, has the kind of
clout or the resources of these ex-soldiers. Dr.
Alex Ekwueme was properly kept in his place.
In any case, they too were played out in the
power games of 1999 when the soldiers
installed their former commander-in-chief as
the new president.
As a matter of fact, what happened in 1998/9
was the triumph of Nigeria’s Cohortes
Praetorianae – the Praetorian guard – over its
political masters whom it was originally
designed to guard. They had tasted power, and
were already mired in the muck of it. And down
the line, when he was forced to rethink his
“third term” ambition, and because Obasanjo
knew that Dr. Peter Odili could have staged a
different kind of political game, he subverted
his rise to the presidency, and brought out a
politically inexperienced and almost naïve
Goodluck Jonathan, who was not only as
gentle as a lamb, but did not have the
gumption to lop off a head if it required it. He
matched him with a sick Umar Yar Ardua. Umar
was a good man, and could have shifted the
dynamics of Nigerian politics.
But he was hobbled by ill-health. When Yar
Ardua died, and Jonathan took office, and
attempted to grow some balls, and isolated
Obasanjo as a result, Obasanjo and the “third
force” of power, that organized “Deep state”
that often acts as the state within a state, in
ways that seem straight out of Chris Mullin’s
thriller, A Very British Coup, ousted him, and
handed the power to Buhari, another figure of
this “deep state.” That is the challenge of
Nigeria’s politics – to unmask the actors
behind this “deep state” inside a very dark web.
It is a relay between these powerful Generals
and whomsoever they anoint to secure their
interests.
Today Nigerians have forgotten their old grouse
against the Generals who actually plundered
the state, and stole its commonwealth. We
have moved from the prospect of investigating
and sanctioning those who corrupted Nigeria
under military rule, to fighting ourselves as
Nigerians, and slapping the new badge of
“corruption” on Jonathan, and thus conveniently
forgetting the past. The condition of the
Plebian is that they have no memory and they
preserve nothing. They combust at the flick of
every match. The organizers of power in
Nigeria know this. They use religion and
ethnicity to distract common folk. They created
parties that refract each other. The Parties –
PDP and APC – are straight out of the same
rule book. They sound the same. They feel the
same. Yes, PDP was a “den of thieves and
killers.” When APC took the power the thieves
and the killers moved their den to the APC.
That’s how this works. That is why I am
excited by the prospects of the young voices
I’m hearing right now, challenging the political
order.
I hope Nigerians are paying attention. I am
talking about Omoyole Sowore, the 47-years old
publisher of Sahara Reporters, and Chike
Ukaegbu, the 35-years old Nigerian
entrepreneur running for president, and whose
moves have received serious play on
international media like the BBC and CNN, but
hardly so in Nigeria. I say, I hope Nigerians are
paying attention, because these are very
exciting young men, and both remind me
strikingly of the young Nnamdi Azikiwe, and his
thesis of a “renascent Africa.” Like him or not,
there is a charisma around Sowore that is
infectious. This young man first came to my
attention, sometime in 1995 or thereabouts,
when he came with the young Maiyegun as
part of the University of Lagos Students Union
leadership to Sunday Vanguard, and Fola
Arogundade and I debriefed them.
The next time I ran into him was in New York,
when my wife Mira and I visited Amy Goodman
at the Pacifica Radio, and she said, “O, there’s
a young man you must meet,” and it turned out
to be Sowore, who at that time was in
Columbia. I have followed his rise in journalism
and public advocacy, and he speaks in the very
language, and with the very passion of the new
generation. There are those who have tied him
to Tinubu and the APC, and their slush funds.
But I sat listening to him marshal out his
cardinal principles for seeking power on
Channels TV. He’s talking about education,
jobs, and a technology-driven economy that will
unlock the vast and recondite talent of the
Nigerian youth.
It is bold and visionary. He is making the right
noises and building a grassroots coalition,
speaking directly to Nigerians across many
divides, and across the country, in town-hall
style meetings. He is working straight out of
Azikiwe’s playbook of 1944, and I do advise
him to go and read up on Zik and his
movement, and how he created the most
powerful nationalist coalition from the
moribund politics of the interwar years in West
Africa. That’s the future. And same goes for
young Chike Ukaegbu – equally bright,
articulate, and charismatic. He too speaks in
the language of the new age – the necessity
for what he calls “three pillars” on which he is
running: “Education, Technology and
Entepreneurship” https://twitter.com/cnn/
status/1015371313505099776?lang=en . These
young are not talking about sharing pumpkins;
they agree on the same cardinal principles.
Let’s hope they agree on the same methods,
because either of these two bold young men
will make a better president than the “analogue”
figures that currently populate scene. It is
about time Nigerians paid attention to their
youth. Better still it is about time the youth of
this country, those whom Zik called the “new
Africans” rise and take charge of their own
destinies, because they have the numbers, and
the energy. Let’s put the wind behind their
sails, to create a youth wave that could propel
either Sowore or Ukaegbu to the presidency
because today belongs to them and not to the
Generals and their proxies running the “deep
state.” I hope Nigerians are listening.