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Onye Nnodim, PhD

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If Yar’adua was to govern efficiently and productively, many Nigerians will say, as a friend in Lagos already said last Tuesday: “Yar’Adua dey try ooo”. But what kind of political legitimacy will this be?

Can Good Governance Bestow Legitimacy on Yar’Adua’s Government?
by Onye Nnodim

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On Tuesday the 26th of February 2008, the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Nigeria ruled in favor of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. It upheld the results of the 2007 presidential election in Nigeria, which brought Yar’Adua to power. The election was widely criticized by the European Union and international observers as fundamentally flawed in various respects. Today, the international observers are gone and the European Union is comfortably silent. I remember writing another article on this issue in May 2007, shortly before Yar’Adua was sworn in: “The Western World and the Myth of a Post Election Orange Revolution in Nigeria”. In that piece, I debunked the claims and allayed the fears of those who were expecting a revolution in Nigeria Viktor Yushchenko style. I also predicted that the European Union and the rest of the West will recline to their shells: “Nigeria bleeds crude oil. Thus, their (EU) initial brouhaha has turned out empty and gone mute in the face of rising energy cost. Nigeria pumps and pops out oil, and from May 29, the name Yar’Adua will resonate thunderously in the West: oil, oil, and more oil!” Nigeria is a country of immense contradictions. It is at best an oxymoron symbolized: a vibrant-complacent, stubborn-docile, rich-poor society. Nigerians are the only people that can grasp the Nigerian entity, and thus, the ones that can solve the Nigerian problem. Almost one year after the presidential election in Nigeria, some questions remain recurrent: Would the Yar’Adua government be accorded any legitimacy?  Is there anything like a retrospective legitimacy for a controversial mandate? Can a government merit political justification through good governance? Has the Yar’Adua government already achieved some political, social or economic justification? Elsewhere, these questions would attract enigmatic answers, but not in Nigeria. As an ardent supporter of democracy in Nigeria, I share the view that political power is only justifiable when exercised in accordance with the principle of legitimacy. In other words, the state’s coercive legal power can only be legitimate, if the political principles governing a state bear on political values shared by all citizens. A government becomes oppressive, when it demonstrates the willingness to coerce citizens on grounds alien to their political conception of justice. In such a situation, the dissolution of government becomes an imperative However, public justification of a political office or government legislation in a democratic society does not imply that every individual citizen must be satisfied with every law or policy promulgated by the government. Nevertheless, public justification of government in a democratic society does require that every citizen be able to comprehend the processes of governance and morally endorse the institutions from which political principles and legislations derive. On this account, the Yar’Adua government would cease to exist, if the geographical standpoint of contention was anywhere in the Western world. But we are talking about Nigeria. Hence, the question of retrospective legitimacy for the Yar’Adua government is not redundant. It is rather a plausible conjecture within the Nigerian political culture. First, let’s examine the Gestalt of an average Nigerian to know why Yar’Adua’s government may gain legitimacy in the future, if it had not been accorded one already. A detailed analysis of the mindset of many Nigerians reveals some critical changes in moral psychology, especially within the last two decades. For instance, some Nigerians frequently choose between good and evil interchangeably, and at whims without losing a night’s sleep. A Nigerian can conveniently swap one religious institution with another, as well as one deity with another in a given situation, fluctuating as the situation demands.  Such instances portray the average Nigerian as a circumstantial, opportunistic relativist. However, such instances also show the pragmatic and practical nature of many Nigerians as they navigate their way through the difficult terrain of every day being-in-the-world. In the scheme of things, the practical and the pragmatic seem to trump the moral. This is why chief scammers receive chieftaincy titles and ex-armed robbers can become local government chairpersons. Nigerians of today are rarely moral absolutists. They are more or less consequentialists: the end justifies the means. President Yar’Adua could tap into this prevalent moral psychology and achieve retrospective justification for his government. Good governance could make many Nigerians forget the large scale INEC makeshift that brought Yar’Adua to power, and steadfastly defend his regime. This will not be the first time such a thing will be happening in Nigeria. For example, a military regime that spanked sense and nonsense in and out of unruly Nigerian citizens, generated queue mentality among “scavengers”, was hailed by many Nigerians. The idea of coup d’état as an Urgewalt, was easily relegated to business as usual. If Yar’adua was to govern efficiently and productively, many Nigerians will say, as a friend in Lagos already said last Tuesday: “Yar’Adua dey try ooo”. But what kind of political legitimacy will this be? Many Nigerians would then position Yar’Adua as a victim of Obasanjo’s do or die electoral dictum. They will blame OBJ for tainting the image of an honorable and innocent, “God-sent” man with electoral malpractices, a man who would have won the presidency in a clean and fair election albeit with less than the 70% votes that INEC gave him. To confound critics and skeptics, they will zealously re-elect him in 2011. On the other hand, stark mismanagement and misrule will put Yar’Adua’s regime constantly on the fringe of collapse. President Yar’Adua, after accepting the verdict of the Presidential Electoral Petitions Tribunal, has one more hurdle to jump: good governance. If he had rejected the Verdict, he would have enjoyed a “hurdle-free” life.   Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com