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Avoiding
the Path of Argentina
By TONY IYARE
Few weeks ago,
the government of Fernando de la Rua in Argentina collapsed after
two days of the people’s rage. Governments constituted after that
also collapsed laying the country virtually bare on the streets
for anybody to take over. Argentina was suffering from the effect
of unbridled implementation of a Structural Adjustment Programme
imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund which
has seen the weakening of the country’s currency, the Peso, the
servicing of its debt by a large chunk of its earnings, the collapse
of social welfare programmes and the withdrawal of subsidies leading
to the nose dive of living standards. Our leaders in Nigeria are
hardly moved by the events in Argentina. They are resolved to sell
off what is left of our national patrimony to their friends and
fronts in the name of privatisation. Without a hoot about creating
social guarantees to absolve the shock of their policies, they are
bent on achieving what they call the realistic price for oil at
N40 by the end of this year. So the N4 increase that the citizenry
got on January 1 could merely be a dress rehearsal for further increases
in April and perhaps later in the year.
So many figures
about oil subsidy is being bandied about without anybody wanting
to take direct responsibility of how it was arrived at. The Nigerian
government says it is the IMF that gave N200 billion as the cost
of subsidy. The IMF says that is a figure given by the government
itself. So much with politics of figures. The sad thing is that
our memory about events around us is too short. The authors of the
IMF and World Bank script have done little to upstage the welfare
programmes in Europe and America which provides enough shocks to
their citizens After the September 11, 2001 attack in America leading
to the downturn in the Aviation industry in America and Europe,
the respective governments have come up with huge bail-outs to mitigate
the effect to their citizens. While we’ve been told to liberalise
our markets and open our economy to all sorts of junks from Europe
and America, their economies remain impenetrable by inbuilt protectionist
policies. It is interesting that while our leaders strive for an
international fuel price, they have failed to provide the necessary
international welfare schemes to lighten the burden of its people.
But the people’s patience cannot be for too long. It
could also boil over like it did in Argentina.
Ige,
Afenifere and Yoruba Politics
Wither Afenifere
after the death of Chief Bola Ige, Minister of Justice and Attorney
General of the Federation? Is the mainstream political movement
of the Yoruba on the wane? Will Ige’s debacle throw up the Yoruba
in shreds? These are nagging questions many are finding difficult
to resolve. But Justice Adewale Thompson, secretary of the Yoruba
Council of Elders (YCE) and Senator Mojisoluwa Akinfenwa, the Alliance
of Democracy (AD) leader in the Senate, have some definitive answer:
it is headed for death. Thompson, 75 and a commissioner for Justice
and Attorney General when Ige was governor of old Oyo State, only
came short of heralding the nunc dimitis of Afenifere, a group founded
51 years ago with late elder statesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo as
its arrowhead. Now that Ige whom he perceives as the fulcrum of
the Yoruba socio-cultural and political organisation is dead, “Afenifere
is dead”, he says. Mojisoluwa, another ally of Ige who long before
now stopped attending meetings of Afenifere, believes the crisis
of relevance of the organisation will be accentuated by the death
of the nation’s chief law officer. No doubt Afenifere led by Senator
Abraham Adesanya, 80 is culpable in not being able to manage the
crises involving the governor and the deputy in the AD controlled
states of Osun and Lagos. The movement is equally culpable in not
being able to stem the upsurge of Yoruba on Yoruba violence in Ile
Ife, Owo and other areas. While it is true that the organisation
has come to the cross-roads with the assassination of its deputy
leader in controversial circumstances, it may however be too hasty
to share the death wish of Thompson, a close associate of Ige on
Afenifere.
Even if the
engendering crises and disagreements in the organisation could be
remotely blamed as the cause of Ige’s death, it is not peculiar
to Afenifere. Inherent in any association is the struggle for primacy
and pre-eminence of ideas and views. The crystallisation of any
organisation presupposes the existence of conflict. It would have
been surprising for the 51- year old organisation to exist in the
absence of conflict. It is also inconceivable to expect that Afenifere,
a movement set up to address the holistic development of the Yoruba
in the Nigerian state would take a bow with the exit of Ige. People
and tendencies come and go but organisations with ideas and vision
continue to fester. The death of Ige may iimply the waning of a
strand in the movement but does not necessarily mean the death of
that strand. Contrary to the view of some, the rise of splinter
groups in Afenifere will also not lead to the withering away of
the core. Since the formation of the group 51 years ago, attempts
have been made to create splinter groups. From Egbe Demo floated
by Akintola to Imeri Group which had the likes of Dr Bode Olajumoke,
Dr Tunji Otegbeye and others as the engine of its activities, to
Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE) led by Venerable Emmanuel, these
splinter groups were designed to create alternative political structures
that would serve as counterpoise to Afenifere. But why do these
splinters hardly endure? The reason is that they are driven more
by the passion to resolve immediate political ambition than any
long term goal. When the objective of a group is tied to whimsical
desires, it cannot be sustained for too long. While Egbe Demo was
aimed at consumating the political hold of Akintola in the West,
the Imeri Group was aimed at carving out a platform for former Chief
of General Staff and number 2 to late dictator, General Sani Abacha.
Ige influenced the formation of the YCE after he lost the AD presidential
primaries largely as springboard for the fruition of President Olusegun
Obasanjo’s second term ambition in the South West. While it is true
that Afenifere like any other organisation in its mould is confronted
by a crisis of renewal and identity, the splinters which were created
to satisfy immediate political aspirations can not be the alternative.
Although the
Yoruba have generally enjoyed the benefits of the advantage of early
start in education, it is thanks to the doggedness of Afenifere
that a people estranged from power at the centre for a long time
were able to achieve the laudable heights in the area of rural transformation,
education, healthcare and effective control of the bureaucracy and
the economy. This is because of the ability of the organisation
to renew and transform itself particularly when confronted by the
viscitudes of military rule. While casting itself in the veil of
a socio-cultural movement, Afenifere has been able to solely or
partly give birth to formidable front political groups like the
Action Group (AG), Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), People’s Solidarity
Party (PSP), People’s Consultative Front (PCF), Council for Unity
and Understanding (CUU), National Democratic Coalition (NADECO)
and the Alliance of Democracy (AD). The implication of this is that
the core of the mainstream Yoruba movement suffered little from
the effect of widespread ban on political activities by successive
military regimes. That’s why it took only 24 hours after the lifting
of the ban on political activities by the Obasanjo administration
for Chief Awolowo to announce the birth of the UPN with its constitution,
manifesto, flag, anthem and symbols. Before Ige’s debacle in Afenifere
due largely to his failed presidential ambition, other tendencies
like that represented by Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, former premier
of the defunct Western Region almost saw the movement in shreds.
The internal crisis of the Action Group degenerated leading to the
declaration of a state of emergency in the West. The aftermath of
the crisis was also the treason trial and jailing of prominent leaders
of the AG like Awolowo, Chief Anthony Enahoro, Alhaji Lateef Jakande,
Chief Bola Ige and others.
But the interesting
thing was the capacity of the organisation to turn around its travails
and reinvigorate its leadership. If Ige was actually intent on the
renewal of leadership and focus, he could easily have reached out
to the younger generation to redirect the course of the organisation.
To have opted to create a splinter YCE and almost rendered the AD
prostrate through the imposition of a spineless leadership is suspect
How could a deputy leader of Afenifere elect to float a rival organisation?
How could Ige give his word to Obasanjo to serve as minister without
first clearing with his core organisation? His “here and there”
politics remains an enigma. With the benefit of hindsight on issues
that led to his trial in Yola for indiscipline by the UPN leadership,
Ige may just be threading a familiar path. He seem to relish reaching
out beyond the Afenifere organs to resolve his differences within
the organisation. This is strange as the Yoruba prefer to quarrel
within and chart a bold united front on issues from without. Maybe
to Ige, the collective wisdom of his organisation falls short of
the individual instinct of the Cicero. But this essentially is what
imperilled his politics.
First published
in the National Interest, Volume 2, No 392 on January 20, 2002.
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