Prof. Udenta O. Udenta, a Founding National Secretary of Alliance for Democracy (AD), has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reach out to leading political players such as former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of Labour Party, Peter Obi and Musa Rabi’u Kwankwaso, presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party(NNPP), in the 2023 general elections, in a bid to resolve socio-economic and political challenges confronting Nigeria......See Full Story>>.....See Full Story>>
A statement by Professor Udenta, advised Tinubu to involve the National Chairman of the All Progessives Congress(APC), the leadership of majority and minority of the political parties at the National Assembly , the Chairman of Nigerian Governors’ Forum and the Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) Governors’ Forum to chart a way forward for the country.
Udenta, who a Patriot and Political Thinker, warned that, “Unless hunger is mitigated, poverty reduced, prices of staple food items crashed significantly, inflationary pressures lowered, Naira depreciation reversed and the prices of petroleum products made within the reach of the people, the nation should expect more hunger protests in the nearest future, higher in intensity and range than the just concluded ones.”
He said: “As Karl Marx so powerfully put it, a time will come when the working people will have nothing to lose but their chains. Such a time is now upon us in Nigeria.”
While acknowledging that President Bola Tinubu’s national broadcast may not have met the expectations of large segments of society, he noted that credit should be given to Tinubu “for admitting that the people are hurting and he hears their cry, loud and clear.”
“But so long as they continue to cry with no end in sight expect social instability, mass mobilisation, regime demonisation and national fault lines tearing apart rapidly, no matter the forces that are deployed to contain them.
“As the saying goes, he or she who is already on the ground indeed fears no fall,” he said.
The renowned Professor affirmed that mass protest—“so long as they are peaceful, civil and lawful- is a constitutionally prescribed civic right designed to provide guardrails for the protection of democratic governance, and in furtherance of human liberties.
“Well organised protests enrich the constitutional order by empowering civic spaces and helping to strengthen and consolidate popular democracy under persistent attacks by illiberal – authoritarian statecraft.
“No amount, and I repeat, no amount of pressure, persecution and prosecution by the state and its security, intelligence and defence apparatuses can constrain or eliminate mass protests so long as their purposes are genuine, pro-people and progressive in nature and orientation, and so long as such actions are peaceful and civil.
“In the same vein, organisers of mass protests must respect the very Constitution they seek to honour and disavow violence and the presence of anarchists and anti-democratic elements within their ranks because as lousy as Western liberal democracy has become in Africa with the immensity of its shabby record, it must still be protected from assault by reactionary forces that want to plunge society to moments of unremitting angst with no end in sight.”
Commenting on the non- participation of Igbos in the just concluded hunger protests, Prof. Udenta said: “the Igbo non- participation in the just concluded protests, in itself is a form of protest against the Nigerian state, a vexatious matter that requires rigorous interrogation and negotiation so that Igbo people can continue to play their very important role in the conversation about the future direction of the country and their place in it.”
On the way forward in ending the protests driven by hunger and stoked by poverty, Udenta said “I am not an economist and neither am I a policy wonk. But even if I am one, let it be stated clearly that given the way national politics is currently being played, no amount of policy prescriptions will solve the current economic and social challenges that the nation faces.
“The economic foundation or base incarnates the political superstructure in a complex pattern of cause and effect relationship but again as Marx averred, the history of hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle(over economic determinants) but all class struggles are political struggles.
“Until we get the politics right we can never get the economics right. Bola Tinubu’s government has not gotten the politics right so it can NEVER get the economics right.
“The current crises bedeviling the nation including but not limited to the parlous state of the economy, the pervasive hunger and multidimensional poverty stalking millions and the overall state of national anxiety stem from the inability of the Bola Tinubu Presidency to manage the Political State.
“It’s pretty obvious to any discerning eye that Bola Tinubu is running Nigeria from the edges of the Political State and that the most pronounced political pathology of the moment is the Absent Centre in the Nation’s Political Ontology- the lack of elite consensus and through that the construction of overarching national consensus.
“Bola Tinubu’s power base appears more narrow now than it was over a year ago when a confluence of forces produced a tenuous coalition that was adequate in securing him a controversial and highly contested victory.
“The administration thinks that it can by-pass and sidestep the political elite and ground its vision of national progress through the intensification of policy options, strategies and prescriptions.
“This was clearly demonstrated in President Tinubu’s policy-laden national broadcast on the end hunger protests.
“This is nevertheless a demonstrable fatal Political misjudgment given that unless and until he moves to the Political Centre as Obasanjo did in 1999 and Yar’adua and Jonathan did in 2007 and 2011 respectively by reaching amity with the political elite and leveraging on their deep anchorage on dominant civic, cultural and corporate forces his policy formulations and prescriptions will keep behaving like water being poured onto a stone- it is easily washed off.
“The regime’s problems are further compounded by a baffling contradiction- how to secure mass support through the application of anti- people neoliberal capitalist economic projects in the specific circumstance in which he is suspicious of the political elite and is intent on keeping them at arm’s length.
“If he makes peace with the elite he can at least enlist their support in the apparent war his policies have temporarily declared on the people.
“But by rejecting them he has unwittingly driven substantial portions of the civic universe into the arms of his bitter political opponents.
“Anybody who tells President Tinubu that he can continue to govern as he is presently doing doesn’t mean well to him and the long suffering Nigerian people.
“I observed about three years ago that given the gradual disintegration of the state and the weakening of the historicist logic that undergirds it, it’s in plain sight that no one single party, no one single faction of the elite can govern Nigeria without it falling apart in no distant time.
“What is required now- for the sake of the nation and beyond the narrow permutations and interests of partisan warlords- is a rethink of the foundational logic that President Tinubu underpinned his presidency.
“As was drawn to me by a deeply knowledgeable player in the nation’s ideas circuit, President Tinubu’s national broadcast did not contain one line of Presidential Proclamations, Presidential Convening Orders and Presidential Directives! Not one line!
“What then is to be done? President Tinubu should quickly convene a conclave of the nation’s leading political players as follows: Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Peter Obi of Labour Party and Musa Rabi’u Kwankwaso of NNPP; the National Chairman of the APC and those of the above parties; the Leadership( majority and minority of NASS), the Chairman of Nigerian Governors’ Forum and the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum.
“It is his call to reach out to his political opponents and not the other way round. He is the President of the country; they are not.
“At the end of the conclave the following political direction can be charted:
“Re-establish the Office of Special Adviser to Mr President on Inter-Party Relations as President Obasanjo did in 1999 when he appointed no less a person as the Founding National Chairman of APP( as it was then called), Sen Mahmud Waziri, as its head with unfettered access to him and as President Jonathan did when he appointed Sen Ben Obi to same office who went all out to platform the current high performing National Peace Committee with support from the EU.
“President Tinubu should, as a matter of urgency, re-constitute his Cabinet and incorporate elements within the organized political opposition and civic groups as President Obasanjo did in 1999 and Yar’ardua did in 2007.
“The outcome of such an arrangement will not be a coalition government or a government of national unity in its ‘normal’ institutional appearance; it’s rather a way of re-building political trust and constructing elite consensus and thus enacting one of the pre-conditions for any meaningful impact of economic policies to be felt.
“President Tinubu should also convene a meeting with the nation’s leading civil society lights.
“The primary purpose of this conclave is to work out modalities for mainstreaming civic concerns and strategic agendas into governance programming, specifying the correct way and posture in grounding state- civil society relations through the activities of a Presidential Council on Civil Society which he has to set up without delay, and more practically to work out the details for re-animating the Office of the Special Adviser to Mr President on Civil Society Relations as President Yar’adua did in 2007.
“My personal suggestion on the stalwarts to invite to such a gathering are individuals I have neither discussed this matter with and do not really know how they will individually react to it: Femi Falana SAN, Dr Olisa Agbakoba SAN, Annkio Briggs, Clem Nwankwo, Sen Shehu Sani, Dr Kole Shettima, Owei Lakemfa, Prof Sam Amadi, Prof Jibrin Ibrahim, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, Prof Chidi Odinkalu, Ene Obi, Omoyele Sowore, Amb Nkoyo Toyo, Deji Adeyanju, Dele Farotimi and Aisha Yesufu.
“These are Patriots with impeccable credentials and a proud history of telling unvarnished truth to power.
“They are fearless and if only President Tinubu will engage them openly and honestly the disaster that awaits this troubled nation if things persist the way they are may very well be averted.”