Politics without politicians

Even the most avid monitors of the alarming decline of quality of leadership would be worried over the cumulative evidence that the political process is failing in many areas and regions. It is little comfort that most of the world that Nigeria and most of Africa look up to as models and standards are floundering under the combination of unforeseen and foreseeable failure of politics to resolve some of the more basic of their problems, such as sustaining basic thresholds on coexistence of groups, identity politics and management of economies in a globalized world. These are not happy days for systems that would claim that they have settled the most basic questions that haunt the processes of building nations. Politics, the process by which humanity distributes and deploys power and resources, is showing a worrying deficiency to resolve human problems at a moment when the frailties of our civilizations are showing, with disastrous consequences.

The US is at a major turning point. Its voters will soon decide whether they want an America that can reclaim the path towards a nation struggling to right a stained past and still preserve massive, strategic privileges, or reverse gains made towards building a more inclusive, compassionate and plural nation. The UK seems to have resolved its split personality that had made it uncomfortable for decades, but it does not really know exactly what this means for its economy and relations with a world it is deeply tied to.EU has shrunk and is putting a brave face after realizing that it is not as solid as it thought. New and old players are disrupting the old world, but the shape of another world is too hazy and uncertain. Huge parts of the world are crumbling under proxy wars and local struggles for dominance, and it would take decades to settle these conflicts and prepare to deal with new ones.

Most of Africa is struggling with two difficult positions. One is this idea that liberal democracy is the only system acceptable in a world which itself shows that it can be stretched and squeezed to serve different purposes. The other is containing many exasperations and challenges which the system poses to countries with pronounced limitations in terms of the quality of leaders who operate it, threats from poverty, insecurity and identity issues which it is too weak to respond to, or it compounds. Africa is a patchwork of regions and nations that have variously charted different courses towards what advanced democracies which set the rules tolerate or accept. Africans have learnt to live with indifference over leadership failures; futile resistance against strong leaders who understand that stability is more acceptable to the world than the quality of the democratic process; double standards of global referees; and endemic conflicts over populations, faith, resources and pure criminality wearing poorly-designed political uniforms.

Obama’s US triggered a major part of the unrest in the Maghreb and boosted armed insurgents in parts of West Africa with the ouster and murder of Libya’s Ghaddafi. Egypt tested a West that had drawn faint lines around military coups and got away with it. In Zimbabwe, desperation to remove Mugabe reinforced the perception that the use of force to affect changes in leadership in Africa is not acceptable to the West unless it fits directly into its core interests. Leaders in their eighties now routinely change constitutions and rig elections to stay in power without consequences beyond the feeble protests of beleaguered citizens.

Now Mali confronts the ECOWAS region with a fait accompli which represents another setback for the democratic system in a region which had had a few successful skirmishes in Gambia and Guinea Bissau in the past. In many ways, Mali represents one weak link in West Africa’s chain. It possesses most of the triggers to worst-case scenarios: a weak political leadership which continuously exploits a leaking democratic process, dangerous cleavages around region and religion, insurgencies that have dug in and defied defeat, weak state institutions, leadership of a region and a neighbourhood whose credentials for upholding the most basic standards of the democratic system and good governance are barely distinguishable from its own. Mali dared West Africa and the West. They backed down. France, whose stake in Mali is second only to the Malians’, appears to have accepted the coup as irreversible, if not a foretold interruption. The rest of Africa took note, and many leaders looked around nervously.

It is in this context that situating the quarrels between two leading nations in West Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, shows in greater relief how low standards of leadership in many parts of Africa have sunk. The details of these demeaning quarrels are all too familiar. The two leading nations with deep historic and contemporary ties do not appear to be able to disentangle themselves from damaging fights that do little justice to their standing or capacities. Neither diplomacy nor self interest appear to have had a decisive influence on leaders in both countries to get them to avoid unnecessary damage that could hurt both countries badly. Ghana is stuck to an argument that Nigerians doing business in Ghana must comply to its laws and regulations. Nigeria’s response has been weak, unimaginative and even embarrassing. Its citizens run from pillar to post screaming against xenophobia, discrimination and illegal targeting by Ghanian authorities and citizens.

There is very rich history of healthy and unhealthy rivalry between Ghana and Nigeria, but a number of issues have become fairly settled. Nigeria has a much bigger economy than Ghana, in a region which has a framework for improving benefits of collaboration. There are many economic benefits accruing to Nigerian firms in Ghana, and these employ Ghanians and pay taxes to Ghana. There are hundreds of thousands of Nigerians with investments in small businesses in Ghana and other West African countries. These Nigerians attract attention as rivals and competitors to Ghanian businesses, and Ghanian authorities have tightened the space for the continuation of many of these businesses. Intended or not, laws and regulations for businesses in Ghana appear to have targeted Nigerian retailers and distributors, and resistance of the latter has raised the levels of local hostility against them.

There are more serious reasons behind the tensions between Nigeria and Ghana, but they do not get mentioned openly. Nigeria’s closure of its border offended most of its neighbours, including Ghana, and the mechanisms for redress within ECOWAS appear too weak to activate against Nigeria, or Nigeria is too big and powerful to bother with protocols or the impact of its policies on economies of poorer neighbours. In any case, Nigeria’s action did not win it any friends in a region where it is a leader that should live by rules. Ghana is hitting back at Nigeria for this and other reasons. It detects a weakness in Nigeria’s commitment to defend its own interests in Ghana, including citizens with valuable assets that are being squeezed away or out of existence. It is also conceivable that Ghana understands that Nigeria had played its strongest card first, which is ‘closing’ its porous border that allowed most of its neighbours to feed from illegal and irregular trade. Nigeria may not have many other options to hurt Ghana back, and it clearly lacks the will to deploy the type of diplomatic assaults that will give its citizens some respite and reduce hostility of Ghanian authorities to Nigerians and their country.

It says a lot about the capacity of Nigerian leadership to manage irritations that its Minister of Information is more visible in stoking or killing fires than its Minister of Foreign Affairs and his officials. The resort to ‘parliamentary diplomacy’ with the visit of Speaker of the House of Representatives to colleagues in Ghana does not suggest novelty in diplomatic strategy by Nigeria. It may engineer all the public language that is needed to give the impression that the two countries are on their way to resolving deep-seated problems, but they do not fool Nigerians desperate for some respite. Nor does it put Ghana in a position where it addresses those grievances of Nigerians that are genuine, and protects those interests that are vital to its economy. Nigeria needs to put its best leadership assets to engage Ghana and other neighbours on major irritants in relations. One can only hope that these assets exist.