God fatherism and electoral politics in Nigeria (1)
By Audu Gambo
Election is one of the most critical civic engagements that characterise any liberal and competitive political system. It is an important exercise in the sense that if carefully, freely and fairly undertaken, it produces outcome that is almost mutually agreeable to all competing social groups, which are politically active within a given polity. Any political leadership which emerges from a free and fair electoral process enjoys consistent and considerable support of the citizenry and is scarcely questioned in terms of legitimacy.
Indeed, such a political leadership, depending on how it exercises the popular mandate given to it to govern, may experience rising or declining legitimacy rating profile. In nearly all democracies in the world, political parties are formed to provide platforms through which citizens seek to promote their political aspirations.
Although independent candidacy is allowed in some democracies, the more conventional mode of contestation for political power is through political parties, which perform the key functions of interest articulation and interest aggregation in any democratic political system.
Political parties do engage in soliciting for electoral support for their candidates by identifying some critical developmental challenges of the moment and thinking out effective responses to them. In other words, campaigns by political parties are expected to be fundamentally issue-driven. This pattern of civic engagement helps to enhance the level of consciousness of citizens about current public issues.
There is in a sense, a robust debate over public issues by political parties aimed at swaying public sense of judgment at the polls in their favour.
In Nigeria's Fourth Republic, which was inaugurated on May 29, 1999, there has been an observable deviation from the above conventional pattern of electoral politics. Individuals, rather than political parties, are the driving force of electoral politics in the current dispensation.
Some individuals with questionable money and other influences have eclipsed parties in the determination of choice of candidates for election into public offices.
These individuals of questionable means and character have robbed political parties of their conventional and legitimate functions of presenting clear and coherent programmes on the basis of which candidates presented by them are chosen by voters, executing programmes packaged by them and explaining to the electorate how the fiduciary political power given to them was expended.
In other words, a government which is freely and fairly instituted by people must be accountable to them as the source of its moral authority to rule.
These are some critical functions of political parties that these individuals who are severely bereft of civic culture cannot perform effectively in a democracy. In Nigerian parlance, these moral malcontents are called "godfathers" and are believed to have considerable means to successfully foist their will on the public, instead of that of their political parties.
The paradox here is that you have godfathers who do not share the core defining attributes of God. Political parties lack the capacity to act contrary to the wishes and aspirations of these "godfathers" because they look up to them to bankroll their campaigns and to use their influences to see their candidates through elections.
Political parties in societies that have cultivated godfathers are in a fundamental sense, structurally and financially weak to organise themselves for any free and fair electoral contest without the unwieldy influence of these political entrepreneurs.
Godfathers do "finance political party activities and individual electoral campaigns as an astutely thought out investment outlet to be recovered through frivolous and bloated government contracts, appointment of cronies into choice public offices and other prebendal returns by the beneficiaries".
Godfathers in the Nigerian context today are unfortunately the vehicles for the delivery of victory to predetermined winners! The destabilising effects of this for democratic consolidation provide the justification for this essay.
Our key concern is, therefore, to interrogate the interface between godfatherism and electoral politics in Nigeria.
The core thesis of our analysis is that the emergence of godfatherism in Nigeria's political landscape is an expression of profound moral malaise inflicted on the Nigerian society by the bad governance experienced under protracted military rule during which the normative structures of the society was weakened by inept, corrupt and unprogressive successive military governments.
The military had demonstrated very scanty regard for the principle of due process, transparency and accountability in managing the public space between 1983 and 1999. We seek to provide responses to probing questions such as what is godfatherism? What is the geography of godfatherism in Nigeria? What are the implications of godfatherism for democratic stability and good governance in Nigeria? What measures can we prescribe towards curbing the menace of godfatherism in Nigeria's electoral politics?
Godfatherism in perspective
Conceptualisation on "godfatherism" is pertinent as we proceed with our analysis. Godfatherism, in a broad sense, is an ideology which is constructed on the belief that certain individuals possess considerable means to unilaterally determine who gets a party’s ticket to run for an election and who wins in the electoral contest.
They are men who have the "power" and influence to decide both who gets nominated to contest elections and who wins in the election. Godfatherism in this sense means the practice of political office seekers getting connected to an individual who is believed to have the ability to deliver a desired outcome in an electoral contest. It is the tradition of looking for a political father to help promote one's political aspirations.
Many Nigerian politicians uphold the belief that without getting connected to local godfathers, they may not realise their political ambitions.
In the process of cultivating the favour of political godfathers, political office seekers are robbed of their independent and rational sense of judgment and personal dignity; they become mere surrogates and reconstructed in such a way that they are totally subservient to their godfathers.
Godsons must always be willing to do the biddings of political godfathers so as to continue to count on their support at all times.
Godfatherism is not a recent phenomenon in the Nigerian electoral politics. Contrary to the widely held belief that it is a creation of the Fourth Republic, the phenomenon dates back to the 1960s when the first generation of Nigerian politicians, through some constitutional arrangements, wrested political power from the British, who took their exit from the country on October 1, 1960.
A. Ujo contends that the likes of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obaferni Awolowo carefully cultivated godsons, whom they believed would build on their legacies. The chief motivation of doing so was not to use godsons as surrogates to promote parochial interests, but to promote the developmental aspirations of the people.
The first generation of political godfathers was not driven by any sense of self-enrichment using surrogates.
Even if they were indulged in this, the scope and intensity would fade into insignificance when juxtaposed with the experience of the Fourth Republic. There is, therefore, a profound sense in which one would assert that the First Republic godfathers were essentially benevolent and progressive.
This position is predicated on the incontrovertible fact that they did not abuse their status as godfathers by making some frivolous demands on them (godsons) the way the current godfathers do. They served as huge reservoir of wisdom and experience to be consulted on the enterprise of governance.
It was enough satisfaction for them that they wielded tremendous influence in the society and this inevitably generated a groundswell of goodwill and reverence for them.
Their views on political issues were scarcely contested in their different locations in the country. For these great statesmen, quality governance was their critical concern and not any pecuniary gain as it is the case with the Fourth Republic crop of godfathers. In other words, they cultivated personality cult of power.
The legacies of First Republic godfathers still endure in those states they held sway.
While the first generation of political godfathers were driven by community sense of interest in seeking to influence the electorate to vote for some candidates of their choice, the Fourth Republic godfathers employ money and other influences to award electoral "victory" to their godsons for some pecuniary motives . This is primarily due to their warped perception of politics as a means to an end.
To these godfathers, electoral politics is one huge investment opportunity with considerable promise of massive returns. Electoral politics in the Fourth Republic particularly, has assumed commercial enterprise outlook with profit as its logic of operation.
Every step taken by any godfather in the Fourth Republic is determined by profit motive. Unlike the First Republic godfathers who were driven by community sense of interest, the Fourth Republic godfathers have no consideration for public interest in their political calculation, as only those who are willing to execute their sinister agenda are carefully recruited into elective public offices.
The Fourth Republic political godfathers are essentially predatory in their motivation to influence electoral politics.
We can, therefore, talk about benevolent godfathers in the First Republic and predatory Fourth Republic godfathers.
To understand better why the Fourth Republic godfathers exhibit anomic political behaviour in promoting their exclusively defined interest, it is important to provide a sketchy picture of the origin of godfatherism in electoral politics. According to Ibrahim Jibrin, the origin of godfatherism in electoral politics could be traced to the city of Chicago in the United States of America in the pre-World War II era.
It was within this period that "the heads of criminal gangs sponsored politicians in elections, manipulated the results to get them elected and in return, received protection and contracts from their political godsons".
It can be seen from this cryptic account of origin that the key defining characteristics of godfatherism in the USA and in Nigeria are, broadly speaking, similar. Godfathers employ whatever means, legitimate and illegitimate, to ensure victory for their godsons in return for unlimited tangible and intangible benefits.
Godfatherism, therefore, promotes an entrepreneurial sense of politics as opposed to its conventional civic sense and this, no doubt, raises the stakes of politics, especially electoral politics in an emerging democracy.
Godfathers expect that having invested so much in their godsons, returns, as negotiated and agreed upon, should start flowing without much ado, given the historically unstable character of Nigerian politics.