Peace
It was the legendary Fela Anikulapo Kuti who coined the words that I have now used as the title of my piece. He had coined the phrase as an alternative to “very important personality”, the overused acronym usually reserved for politicians and those in power. He had described vagabonds in power in the context of those who use their authority to steal or, if you like, those in authority and stealing.
But the dictionary description of a vagabond is that of someone who has no permanent home, but wonders from place to place. Interestingly, the dictionary also describes a vagabond as someone that has no visible means of support. What do the descriptions say about the incidence in the house of national assembly last week?
First, many have described last week’s fight in the House of Representatives as shameful and embarrassing; as if it was surprising. The truth is, it was not surprising in any way. This has been happening for a while, and those who monitor the history of fights in the House will say it is now about the third time that it has happened. When people also allude to the fact that it is shameful and embarrassing, they give the impression that it is only in the Nigerian Houses of Assembly (remember that some state Houses have had fights as well) that members fight, but this is not the case.
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Members of parliaments do sometimes fight. There have been reported cases in some other African and Asian countries, and perhaps some will be able to tell of similar fights in Europe or the Americas. So, fights do happen when members of parliaments have been annoyed (not interested in the reason for now), to the extent that the volcanoes in them erupt when they believe that their arguments can no longer be heard without some recourse to physical aggressiveness.
So, it is possible for people to fight, but it should not be encouraged, and I am not doing that here. And make no mistake, the parliament is supposed to be the place for superior and matured arguments of the many fights on the streets of many countries. So, in the case of Nigeria, the Nigerian parliaments are supposed to be about the arguments regarding fights on the streets of Nigeria. As far as I know, the fights and struggles on the streets of Nigeria today are about poverty, illnesses, ignorance, lawlessness, brutality, ethnic strife, and religious intolerance.
If you now consider that the situation out there on Nigerian streets is tough, you will expect that the situation in the National assembly should be tough and the arguments should be tough, and may thus sometimes boil over into fights. These kinds of fights will now be described as principled fights because they are genuine and there is a cause for which the fights are conducted. But what we have is not like that. What we have are people that have become so aggressive to the extent of fighting because their incremental pecuniary interests are threatened. These are people with no visible means of support from elsewhere, and sharing in the house is thus the only reason they are there. Of course, they are vagabonds in power.
Nigerians are not deceived in any way, thinking they have some sort of representatives in the House. The fights we have seen so far are all about the sharing of loot. What we see is what happens after robberies, and some section of those that carried out the robberies want to outsmart the other, and under such circumstances, fights ensue. We should also not make the mistake of thinking that all over the country, there are some people holding public office who put the benefits of all Nigerians above that of self.
Now, I have written about this before in many variations, but the argument remains the same. Until we begin to work for the money the country, and specifically, the government spends, it is very unlikely that we will see the end of “sharing”, corruption and waste. In 2007, I wrote on ETTEHnomics, the economics of sharing, looting, non production, and as the only economics government officials have ever known. The oil resources which account for over 80 percent of government revenue, is shared from federal to states and local governments. This kind of economics has never worked, is not working and will never work.
Are we cursed? Perhaps we are. Indeed, it was the Richard Arty, the British economist who first coined the words “resource curse” in the early 1990s, describing the phenomenon that resource rich countries are prone to low productivity, corruption, low growth and violence. I am sure many Nigerians will recognize all the characteristics in Nigeria. Well, if many Nigerians recognized low productivity, corruption, and low growth before last week, the violence in the House of Representatives can also count as a nature of violence associated with resource curse.
However, in various ways in which I have written about this mess that is called economic management in Nigeria, the question I am simply asking is: if we are cursed, can we not refuse the curse?
