Ahmed Yahaya – Joe
“Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.” – Ralph Charell
The recent wrestling contest between Ngozi Alaegbu and IBB is a must see. She came mentally prepared without notes yet her questions flowed with the incisiveness of Fareed Zakaria. As the aging Maradona tried to dribble around her tricky questions, she tackled him effectively.
Beyond the occasional memory lapse, the 80-year-old fox has proven he is still very much Machiavellian, eminently analytical and superbly crafty. Arguably, no Nigerian understands Nigeria better than this Minna hilltop oracle.
The single most important messages IBB conveyed to the nation in the interview are as follows;
1. There is a Deep State in Nigeria that ensures there is a continued presidential system of government and Nigeria shall remain an indivisible federation with a free market economy always operating in our nation. A Deep State is a constantly recurring “government” within any existing government at any given time.
2. Nigeria’s problems revolve around lack of political ruling class consensus. IBB described it as, “elite tyranny” implying it is responsible for the current insecurity bedeviling the nation. He is suggesting a stronger local government system to reduce intense competition at the center.
3. Nigeria’s Deep State has already identified the next president. In describing the qualities of the next Nigerian leader, IBB was indirectly taking a swipe at the current leadership skills (or lack of there off) without poking fingers and calling names.
4. He is still not apologetic on any of the many shortcomings during his 8-year military presidency. That notwithstanding his deft handling and expert management of Nigeria’s diversity albeit through the skilful deployment of “settlement” remains unrivalled.
IBB has no basis to intefere in leadership fault finding on any administration of the day without admitting his historical role in the cumulative effect that has negatively located Nigeria between a rock and a hard place.
What makes a great interview is the tense cat and mouse game between the interviewer and the interviewee. Ngozi in that respect nailed it. She is our own Christiane Amanpour. While Reuben Abati is more of Stephen Sacur of HardTalk, it is Seun of Politics Today on Channels TV that is an expert in diversionary maneuvering. Recently, he led Dr. Chris Ngige through a blind alley on medical tourism. It was a brilliant ambush. Then there is the recent encounter between Charles Aniagolu and Màtthew Hassan Kukah also on AriseTV.
In overall context, Nigeria’s only military president was clever by half, because while traducing civilians by absolving the military as “saints” in comparison on the corruption index, he woefully failed to take full responsibility of the June 12 fiasco.
That notwithstanding, there are in two other takeaways from IBB through the lens of others in retrospect;
1. “Elite overproduction creates counter-elites, and counter-elites look for allies among the commoners. The commoners’ living standards slip—not relative to the elites, but relative to what they had before.
Commoners’ lives grow worse, and the few who try to pull themselves onto the elite lifeboat are pushed back into the water by those already aboard. The final trigger of impending collapse, is state insolvency. At some point rising insecurity becomes expensive.
The elites have to pacify unhappy citizens with handouts and freebies—and when these run out, they have to police dissent and oppress people. Eventually the state exhausts all short-term solutions.” – Graeme Wood in, Can History Predict the Future? (2020)
2. “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land, climate, water, air, or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to their responsibility, to the challenge of personal example, which is the hallmark of true leadership.” – Chinua Achebe (1984)
