On Being A Freelance Politician

Bauchi State Governor Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed, Kauran Bauchi, best known for combative politics and acerbic rhetoric, suddenly made a rich addition to Nigeria’s political vocabulary on Thursday last week. Receiving a visiting South East ADC Stakeholders’ delegation led by Mr Peter Obi, he declared himself to be a “freelance politician.” Obi’s team was apparently in Bauchi to convince Governor Bala to end his US-Iran Islamabad-style talks with the ruling APC, abandon PDP [of which he is Chairman of its Governors’ Forum, already reduced to two members] and firmly pitch his tent with the opposition ADC. ADC saw an opening because earlier last week, Bauchi State PDP leaders declared that talks with APC had broken down.

It was the mass media sector that first popularised the phrase “freelance reporter.” This was the equivalent of “daily paid worker” once prevalent in Nigeria’s public and organised private sectors. “Freelance politician” is a new, very rich addition to Nigeria’s political vocabulary. Since 1978, when we began to experiment with presidential style politics, Nigerian politicians have enriched the vocabulary of liberal democracy with words and phrases such as zoning, rotation, Accord Concordiale, landslide victory, power shift, a little to the left and a little to the right, open ballot, Option A4, annulment, actualise mandate, stepping aside, Ghana Must Go, godfather, godson, post-dated resignation letter, Okija Shrine, Third Term, Party Leader, Garrison Politics, party re-registration, party merger, automatic return ticket, consensus, vote buying, On Your Mandate We Stand, Lt. Yerimarisation,  Bwalarisation, Nafi’u Balarisation, and more recently, “stay there and scatter them.”

A freelance politician, such as defined by Bala Mohammed, does not belong to any political party, something that must puzzle both the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act. Neither of them envisages contesting an election without a party platform. Yet, since 2000AD at least, a huge swath of Nigeria’s political space has been occupied by actors outside political parties such as Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo, Arewa Consultative Forum, Northern Elders Forum, Middle Belt Forum, Pan Niger Delta Forum and Ijaw National Congress. While these groups have been careful to remain within the narrow strip of party-less political legality, others such as Oodua People’s Congress, Yoruba Nation, Indigenous People of Biafra, Eastern Security Network, Boko Haram and ISWAP crossed the dividing line, into the wider path of violent pursuit of political goals.

The coming onboard of the term freelance politician reminds me of an exchange that took place in the Philippines in late 1979. Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos was facing severe criticism from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin. With the unfolding revolution in Iran then dominating newspaper headlines all over the world, Marcos told reporters in the Malacanang Palace that Sin was “trying to be a Khomeini,” the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution. The mischievous reporters rushed across the street to the cathedral and relayed the news to Cardinal Sin. The outspoken cardinal, who once described himself as “the Original Sin,” cheerfully said, “If there is a Khomeini in the Philippines, then there must be a Shah!”

Look here, Governor Bala Mohammed. If there is a freelance politician in Nigeria, then there must be freelance political parties. You mean, there are parties in Nigeria that have neither ideology nor any unified policy platform, that attract members merely based on appeals to ethnicity, regional sentiment and the mobilisational power of individual politicians, and which garner votes with the help of what INEC and security agencies delicately call “vote buying”?

At one time in this Republic, there were nearly one hundred registered political parties, and the ballot paper was almost as long as an unrolled tissue paper. Did I say tissue paper? Many of the parties on that ballot paper were no better than that. At first, they existed because INEC used to give monetary subvention to registered parties. When that practice was stopped, they still existed because a briefcase political party’s ticket could be bought by a desperate aspirant who loses the primaries in a major political party, but is desperate to appear on the ballot paper. The few votes that they get, is often due to illiterate voters who confuse party symbols.

Malam Bala Mohammed, if there is a freelance politician, then there must be freelance supporters. I recently retold the story of a man in Jos during the Third Republic who led dancing troupes to welcome seven different presidential aspirants from the airport into town. He was the cheerleader at all their campaign rallies. Four of those aspirants were NRC while three belonged to SDP. That is the dream freelance supporter that Governor Bala must be thinking of. Right now, a clash of red pants is unfolding in one Northern state, of women activists at a political rally displaying the photos of a governor emblazoned on red pants. They are the freelance political supporters that Kauran Bauchi has in mind.

There cannot be freelance politicians without freelance marabouts, babalawos and shrine priests in Nigeria. They are a very important factor in Nigerian elections. They convince an aspirant that he is going to win, provided he pays them handsomely. They claim supernatural power to do everything from incapacitating election rivals, to blindfolding voters, to spiritually stamping ballot papers, to twisting the thumps of returning officers.

If there is a freelance politician, then there must be a freelance election official. In every election cycle, INEC’s ranks are filled with ad hoc election officials. Despite their undergoing crash training on election laws, manuals and procedures, these ad hoc officials are a big headache to INEC since many of them are already committed to parties and politicians, while many others are there to make a kill.

If there are freelance politicians, then there must be freelance collation and returning officers. Even though most of these are university professors, plus card reader, IRev and electronic result transmission [which some people connived to exclude from the Electoral Act], stuff still happens. The most freelance of all freelance returning officers in Nigerian elections was the Returning Officer, Gubernatorial Election Ondo State in 1983. As declared by the Supreme Court in its ruling on the election petition, he added “1” behind the NPN candidate’s score of half million, instantly transformed it into 1.5 million votes, and it swiftly overtook the UPN candidate’s 1.2 million votes. He was the dream freelance returning officer.

If there is a freelance politician, then there must be a freelance security agent. Such as the Police Commissioner in Borno State in 1983 who fired teargas to prevent Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and Governor Muhammadu Goni from entering the town from the airport. Or more recently, the Police Commissioner in Port Harcourt who locked Government House gates and prevented the state governor from finding his way back into his own abode.

If there are freelance politicians, there must be freelance lawyers in Nigeria who are professionally free of conflict of political interest. A Nigerian lawyer handles several election cases simultaneously, with clients belonging to different parties. He sues INEC on behalf of some clients and defends it in other cases. His aim is not to see that justice is done but to see that his client wins the office, as US President Richard Nixon of Watergate infamy once said, “by hook or by crook, mostly the latter.”  If there are freelance lawyers in Nigeria, then there might be some freelance judges. In the 1990s, some guerrilla newspapers alleged that a particular judge wrote two conflicting judgements, for one to be delivered in favour of the highest bidder.

I can already hear somebody saying, if there are freelance politicians in Nigeria, to borrow from Cardinal Sin’s logic, then there must be freelance columnists who go about picking holes in the actions of politicians but who cannot win even a councillorship election in their own hometowns. Nobody elected a freelance columnist, but there he will sit, on one lame laptop, and claim to know better than the people on the field as well as the government officials who sit in offices with all the files, figures and reports in front of them.

You know what it reminds me of? A passage in Arthur Hailey’s 1960 novel In High Places, where the Prime Minister of Canada, who had been grappling with an immigration problem for weeks, saw a newspaper columnist stating firmly how to easily solve the problem. The Prime Minister muttered to himself, “I think we should hand over this country to columnists since they know the solution to every problem.”