Three notes on the Nigerian moment

By SULEIMAN A. SULEIMAN

I was an avid reader of the THISDAY Backpage columnists in the late 1990s to the early 2000s, from Dr Amanze Obi on Mondays to Waziri Adio on Sundays. Somewhere in the middle of the pack was always Simon Kolawole, who would end his columns with “And Four Other Things…”, where he would dispense with four other issues in a series of short and sharp comments after the main article. It became his signature style, and he does it still at TheCable. Surveying the Nigerian and global scene over the past week, I found myself unable to settle on a single issue, and I thought I might as well do a Kolawole today.

Rising ‘stealth authoritarianism’ under Tinubu?

When I read that yet another court has ordered the deregistration of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), my mind flashed back to a political science concept called ‘stealth authoritarianism’. Political science concepts try to describe the real political world, and this one, proposed by the American constitutional law scholar Ozan Varol, refers to the use of legal, institutional, and structural mechanisms to subvert democracy from within, rather than, for example, through overt military intervention.

Varol argues that rather than suspend the constitution or abolish elections, as military governments repeatedly did here in Nigeria and elsewhere, modern leaders maintain the outward appearance of democracy but use the same democratic institutions to gradually but effectively entrench a dictatorship, hence the term stealth authoritarianism. Varol drew his empirical evidence from a range of countries including his native Turkey, but he might as well have been describing what has long been happening in Nigeria, particularly in the past three years under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The National Assembly has arguably never been weaker and more irrelevant than in the past three years. Opposition political parties have never faced a harsher time with the judiciary or more crippling internal crises than since 2023, all of them reportedly at the instance of the ruling party. The politicization of the judiciary and anti-corruption agencies has scarcely been more overt since 1999 than under the current administration. Party primary processes for selecting candidates for elective positions have hardly been more like executive imposition than what we witnessed last month. The list could go on and on.

While it is true that most of these structural problems of Nigerian democracy certainly predate 2023, there is no argument that they have intensified and accelerated under the Tinubu presidency. Therefore, rather than read them as separate events, we should, I think, approach them collectively as part of a pattern of eroding Nigerian democracy and emptying it of meaning and substance. What we are seeing under President Tinubu, in short, is the rise of stealth authoritarianism in Nigeria.

Since the Tinubu government has been overly concerned about a military coup truncating Nigerian democracy, it might as well reflect on the fact that democracies can also be truncated and stymied from within. Rather than appearing to be afraid of democracy, the president can encourage Nigeria’s democratic institutions to do democracy proper.

Where is Obasanjo?

One of the many reasons why it feels like we are marching towards stealth authoritarianism is that the media and civil society organizations, with only a few notable exceptions, have rarely fallen more silent in the face of egregious governance failures or violations of democratic due process than we have been seeing over the past three years.

More than that is the unusual silence of Nigerian statesmen. Elder statesmen have a moral obligation and national duty to speak out when formal political and civic institutions are increasingly weakened, if for nothing else because they are less vulnerable. This is why I must single out former President Obasanjo. The former president is a unique individual in Nigerian political history, a man whom fate has thrust into crucial moments in our national journey, from the late 1960s to date. Almost no one has been there and done it in Nigerian political history and development than Obasanjo. Certainly, few have done it for longer.

In active service, Obasanjo’s failings were many and well-known and documented. The worst moment of his long political career was, of course, his attempt to subvert Nigeria’s constitution and entrench himself for a ‘Third term’. But he was always well regarded at home and abroad as a detribalized Nigerian leader and statesman. And since leaving office in 2007, he has come to occupy a unique place as perhaps Nigeria’s most influential political figure, whose forceful interventions on burning political developments have helped to redirect the nation regardless of who is currently on the saddle.

When the late President Yar’Adua was away on a hospital bed receiving medical treatment abroad, and all the political knives were out to rush him to his grave or at least out of office, Obasanjo’s voice was loud and clear. He had almost single-handedly brought Yar’Adua to office in 2007, but in 2010, he did not hesitate to make clear that the then-ill president needed to release the required letter that would fill the constitutional vacuum created by his long absence, and make then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan Acting President. He did the same against Jonathan, and later President Buhari, when both appeared to have been sleeping at the wheel as the nation burned.

For unexplained reasons, however, Obasanjo’s voice seems to have found locks under the present administration. The former president has not said much of consequence over the past three years. He was relatively quiet even as millions of Nigerians groaned under impossibly harsh economic policies. He has kept mum as foreign elements and collaborators within the government openly pitch Nigerians against each other along dangerous religious lines. Above all, Obasanjo has been tight-lipped as Nigerian democracy descends into a creeping authoritarianism in all but name. So, I have no choice but to ask: Where is Obasanjo?

State Police: Solution looking for problem

I sighed when I read about the State Police Bill currently waiting for presidential assent and further legislative processes to transform into a constitutional amendment. I am not particularly opposed to policing reform in general, or the idea of state police in particular. But like most things Nigerian, this is all proving to me to be no more than another shoddy job.

First of all, other than in formulaic terms, the bill does not address how the state police would be different from the existing federal police in Nigeria. The bill merely splits the current structure into two: one at the federal and the other at the state levels, with little evidence of institutional imagination or insight in its creation. It is, really, an intellectually empty piece of proposed legislation. Two of the most important things about policing are its cultural and professional ethos and funding. That speaks to training, professionalism, and a long-term sustainable source of funding.

How would a state police formation, in any Nigerian state, better and more effectively deal with our evolving policing challenges than the existing policing system? On what sort of different normative and professional values would the new institution be built? How would state police be funded differently in a way that ensures long-term sustainability? There is very little evidence or experience in Nigeria that state-level institutions and agencies perform better and more effectively or behave differently than their federal counterparts. Legislation on paper is one thing; actual practice is another, and can be very different.

This is where process matters as much as the outcome, if not more so. The State Police Bill has not benefited from the one thing it needs the most: public debate. Since we are supposed to be doing this under a democracy, we must remember that debate among all stakeholders, including the general public, is not an inconvenience to legislative decision-making. It is foundational. Without a robust public debate in the national and state assemblies and among the general public, the bill risks being seen essentially as part of the decades-old debate about “true federalism”, “restructuring,” and so on. And since, in both tone and substance, the underlying factor in that debate is an unfounded fear of northern domination, many would come to view the bill as only reflecting unhelpful regional politics already associated with this government. And that, I think, would be rather unfortunate.

Suleiman, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja

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