As voters in the State of Osun go to poll on Saturday to elect their governor for the next four years, the old question of the place of ideas in politics has again come into focus. It is a sad commentary on the nation’s political development that instead of debate of issues that should define the election, the discussion is rather about the unwarranted militarisation of the electoral atmosphere, dangerous use of religion. It is instructive that in some respects there may be a rehearsal of 2015 in Osun.
Waziri Adio (the Pundit!) discharged his responsibility as a public intellectual on this page two days ago in efficiently interrogating some of these issues especially the hugely diversionary factor of religion. Rather than repeating the points well put together by Adio, this column today is an adaptation of the review of a book on the efficacy of progressive ideas because of its relevance to the moment. The review was presented during the launch of the book in Lagos at a ceremony presided over by the governor of the old Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa.
The candidate to beat in the Saturday election is the incumbent governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, who is the subject of the book. A good reading of the book would show why Aregbesola should not be judged using a religious yardstick, but by the potency of his progressive ideas in action. The book entitled Oranmiyan Phenemenon And the Trinity of Progressivism that on the basis of politics and policy Aregebsola is not religious bigot, but a convinced progressive politician.
For instance, in the well-researched book the author, Mmuen Kpagane, who is the Director of Ogoni Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, recalls a conference held 32 years ago when ideas still mattered in Nigerian politics. It was in December 1982 when some politicians, activists and scholars gathered at the Bagauda Lake Hotel in Kano for a conference with the theme: “Towards a Progressive Nigeria”. The host was the government of the old Kano State under the leadership of Alhaji Abubakar Rimi. The conference attracted elements from the broad progressive movement in Nigeria. There were politicians in and out of power, labour activists, Marxists, socialists, social democrats, liberals, members of registered and unregistered political parties and others. The participants belonged to different loci of the progressive spectrum. Presentations were made from divergent perspectives that are typical of a progressive gathering. It was an exercise in serious disputation about what a progressive Nigeria should be and how to achieve it.
The context of the meeting was also instructive. The political mood of the nation was expectant of the 1983 elections. The elements of the broad progressive movement saw in what was to come a battle of ideas and not electoral manipulation to capture power. It is, therefore, an intriguing mark of decline of politics that while 32 years ago conferences were called to discuss ideas on the most appropriate path to take in the journey to a progressive future, today conferences of ethnic groups are called to create more states and tinker with the arithmetic of sharing the earnings accruable from oil exports. It should worry the progressives in particular that the sort of gathering in Bagauda Lake Hotel 32 years ago is now a rarity. Perhaps those progressive elements who believe in the efficacy of national conferences in solving Nigeria’s problems should reflect on the report of the progressive conference which is fairly touched upon in the Mmuen Kpagane’s timely book.
That historically important conference is recalled to remind us of the central place of ideas in politics. In those days of the Second Republic, ideas were found to be important to politics and policy. The progressive badge was proudly won by those who believed that the purpose of politics should be the advancement of human progress. Even when some governors decided to form a club, it was a forum of progressive governors from different parties and regions of Nigeria. What linked them together was the embrace of progressive ideas.
By writing this provocative book, Oranmiyan Phenomenon And the Trinity of Progressivism, Mmuen Kpagane is offering us a telling reminder about the necessity of thinking in politics. It was the late radical economist, Professor Bade Onimode, who once observed that at the root of Nigeria’s underdevelopment “is the notion that rigorous thinking was not essential to policy.” In other words, regardless of the conservative cynic may say, politics cannot do without ideas. The most potent lesson to learn from the book is that progressives in government should develop their own ideas for if they fail to do so they would be under the influence of ideas that could be inimical to the fundamental interests of the people.
Kpagane is unambiguously ideological in thoughts and he employs enormous philosophical rigour to make a case for the embrace of progressive ideology. In a sense, the political battles of the book’s subject, Aregbesola, are essentially battles of ideas. Hence, in approaching his subject, Kpagane embarks on a sweep historic survey and examines issues of development and leadership. Embodied in the book are rich documents about Aregbesola’s thoughts and policy statements as appendices. In a thoroughgoing manner, Kpagane makes a distillation of Aregbesola’s progressive thoughts issuing from his ideological background. If you like to examine closely the ideas propelling Aregbesola in action, Kpagane offers you an ideological capsule: the Oranmiyan Phenomenon. By the way, Oranmiyan was the youngest son of the progenitor of the Yoruba people, Oduduwa. It was Oranmiyan who founded the Great Oyo Empire.
Oranmiyan, the brave historical figure, was reputed for tremendous vision courage and exceptional administrative acumen. According to Kpagane, it is appropriate, therefore, for Aregbesola to adopt Oranmiyan as the symbol of the constellation of Aregbesola’s progressive ideas, which he calls “futurism”. What Aregbesola has done in the State of Osun in the last four years in education, infrastructure, job creation social protection etc. is to give this ideology of futurism a solid content. He presents Aregbesola as a pride of the progressives in the country’s politics today. Little surprise then that Kpagane posits that Aregbesola is a replicate of Oranmiyan “in thought, action and leadership”. Besides, Kpagane identifies the components of Aregbesola’s political personality as “conscience, integrity and character”.
Kpagane is passionate about ideas; he is also polemical in putting across those ideas. This passion is robustly demonstrated in “ A Letter to the Next President” which is a thoughtful addendum to the book. You may not agree with some of his postulations but you cannot ignore the genuineness of his purpose. Indeed, given the fractious nature of the progressive movement, it would not be strange if progressives of some hues pick holes in his arguments.
Kpagane’s approach is scholastic and political at once. He assesses Aregbesola as the third leg of what he describes as the “trio of progressivism” with Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as the first two legs. For clarity, Kpagane posits that his grouping of the trio is without prejudice to the remarkable roles of other progressives in Nigeria’s political history. He says the members of the trio were chosen because of their location and “the peculiarity of their circumstances in the pursuit of progressive ideals of politics and leadership.”
He has gone as far as the Greek philosophy to make an audacious comparison with a famous trio of philosophical grates – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. He likens Awolowo to Socrates, the city philosopher of Athens who famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Socrates died for his ideas. For Kpagane, Tinubu is the Plato of our time. A student of Socrates, Plato, the author of the idea of the philosopher-king, wrote the famous book, The Republic, canvassing the ideas of the ideal society. In Kpagane’s configuration, Aregbesola is the Aristotle of the trio. Aristotle was a student of Plato. Aristotle was the peripatetic philosopher who propagated the beautiful idea of the Golden Mean.
In other words, Aristotle taught his students to avoid extremes in all things and choose moderation. The point at issue here is that ideas should illuminate the path of action. From 1951 to 1959 that he was premier of the old western region, Awolowo demonstrated how progressive ideas could be put into action as the name of his party, Action Group, suggested. It is now little remembered that the turning point in Lagos State in Lagos State has not been in a vacuum of ideas. Indeed, long before Tinubu’s inauguration on May 29, 1999, men of ideas and progressive vision were assembled to work on the various themes of the blueprint to form the basis government’s action. The continuous progress that the state has recorded in governance cannot be divorced from this initial conceptualization of what constitutes progress. So ideas matter a lot.
In this progressive tradition the giant strides so far recorded by Aregbesola in improving the quality of and enhancing the access to education, phenomenal revamp of infrastructure and energetic focus on the human development are based on a well-thought out progressive ideas. A well-known part of Aristotle’s thought is that happiness is the goal of human life; for Aregbesola, the happiness of the people of Osun is the goal of his government.
In cold logic, Kpagane endeavours to give portraiture of Aregbesola as the Aristotle of our politics today. He has ample proofs for this categorical assertion from the widely acknowledged activities of Aregbesola in government. It takes a clear progressive thinking in policy to have an integrated concept in which a school feeding programme executed in such a way that would simultaneously boost agriculture and create jobs for textile manufactures and artisans. This is what Aregbesola has done in the state of Osun with resounding success.
The horizontal benefits of the policies based on progressive ideas are what connect Aregbesola with the people. This point is worth stressing in an age in which a parody of grass roots politics is now on display; it is an age in which a politician recently likens his people to a dog wagging its tail to acknowledge feeding from a pet-owner.
What a cruel deployment of metaphor! Such statements can only come from quarters where progressive ideas have no place in politics. This is in contrast to Aregbesola’s progressive politics that Kpagane’s engages in the book with reasoned arguments. The Indian sage, Mahatma Gandhi, categorised playing “politics without principle” as one of the seven social sins. Kpagane’s position is that Aregbesola cannot be accused of this social sin.
With this book, Kpagane has issued an open invitation to all those interested in the place of ideas in politics to think deeply about issues of human progress. In the book, the reader will encounter an eclectic author in Kpagane. For in deconstructing the Oranmiyan phenomenon Kpagane cites profusely authorities as ideologically far part as the revolutionary, Karl Marx, and the conservative British Prime Minister, Winston Churchhill. He quotes Martin Luther King as liberally as he invokes the authority of the liberal management guru, Peter Drucker. He borrows creatively and freely from several other authors in the book. And that makes his argument fascinating. He writes with rigour, so the reader should not expect to browse a political tract. Future editions should pay more attention to the organisation of the book.
Doubtless, Kpagane has made an important contribution to progressive thoughts that should attract the attention of readers.
SOURCE:www.thisdaylive.com
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