The Nation Newspaper Alienation and elite dissonance in post-military Nigeria
Almost ten months after the conduct of presidential election in Nigeria, the fireworks over who actually won the election even after the apex has delivered its “final” verdict over the matter continue to ricochet across the polity. This degree of rancor and bitterness over an election is unprecedented in the history of Nigeria, and it says a lot about the lack of elite amity in the nation.
They make life impossible for themselves as well as for others. They weaken further the resolve of weak governments and turn the nation into an anarchic and ungovernable entity. Faced with the possibility of economic and political extinction, the violated multitude look forward to delivery at any cost even where it means a deus ex machina.
Alienation is often more pronounced in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious nations. The contradictions are so palpable and gripping that they alter normal perception and turn the average individual into an enemy national who hates everything about his country. When and where such passive, sullen hostility turns into an active confrontation with the state and its lawful agents or heralds unrelenting destabilization, the ruling class must be on Tsunami watch.
In the case of Isaac Adaka Boro, eighteen months after his rag tag band of riverine rebels was put to rout by General Aguiyi-Ironsi , he was already donning the uniform of a Nigerian Army major when he was shot and killed by a lone Biafran soldier hiding in a disused shed around Bonny. It was also around this time that Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, fiery ideologue and former governor of the old Kano State, famously declared that he was not in politics because of. Rimi’s comeuppance would come later as the equally wily and punitively proactive General Olusegun Obasanjo refused to make him Foreign Minister, plumping instead for the less fancied but equally ideologically unstable Sule Lamido.
The past twenty four years have proved that in a fragile polity and multi-ethnic nation seething with rancor and mutual hostilities, elite consensus is never a done deal. It requires constant nurturing and constant repairs. Obasanjo himself was almost surprised around the corner by his deputy who became his mortal adversary. His attempt at tenure elongation met with a resounding shellacking which struck deep at the foundation of the post-military polity.
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