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Nigeria Needs a New Progressive Movement

August/September 2024Nigeria
Progressive

Photo illustration by Dami Mojid / THE REPUBLIC. Ref: Protest images / PEXELS.

the ministry of POLITICAL affairs

Nigeria Needs a New Progressive Movement

Nigeria needs a new progressive movement; one that is not domain-constrained and disuniting like the Izala Society and Christian Social Movement of Nigeria, not extremist and exclusionary like Boko Haram, not tactically constrained like SERAP, not discrete like the End Bad Governance protest movement, not ideologically constrained like the Obidient movement, and not diachronically and synchronically constrained like Nkrumahism.
Progressive

Photo illustration by Dami Mojid / THE REPUBLIC. Ref: Protest images / PEXELS.

the ministry of POLITICAL affairs

Nigeria Needs a New Progressive Movement

Nigeria needs a new progressive movement; one that is not domain-constrained and disuniting like the Izala Society and Christian Social Movement of Nigeria, not extremist and exclusionary like Boko Haram, not tactically constrained like SERAP, not discrete like the End Bad Governance protest movement, not ideologically constrained like the Obidient movement, and not diachronically and synchronically constrained like Nkrumahism.

On 1 August 2024, Nigerians launched the #EndBadGovernance protests, marking the third major spate of protests we have experienced since the return to de jure democracy in 1999. Protests, however, have been only one of many forms of perceived acts of progressivism that several groups and social movements have undertaken in Nigeria since independence. Given the scale and depth of Nigeria’s governance and socio-political challenges, these many movements have been limited in the scale and depth of positive impact they have had.  

What Nigeria needs is a progressive social movement that is ideologically robust, domain-extensive, multi-tactical, geographically extensive, and proactively inclusive. This movement needs to emulate the strengths of existing social movements and progressive initiatives while avoiding their weaknesses. 

THE SCALE OF NIGERIA’S PROBLEMS

It is generally the case that countries in the ‘Global South’ face more formidable governance and developmental challenges than those in the ‘Global North’. The quality of democratic institutions, enforcement of the rule of law, minimization of unproductive corruption and maintenance of stable economic growth rates is strongly influenced by the nature of capitalist forces and the distribution of power across society. In the case of corruption, for instance, because most countries in the Global South have very large informal sectors, low tax capacity and high poverty rates, political mobilization of coalition partners and masses can be more easily undertaken on the basis of distribution of rents from off-budget expenditure and corruption proceeds than programmatic politics. As a result, liberal democracy in Nigeria, as with the rest of the Global South, tends to involve greater levels of corruption and pork barrel politics.  

A weak and undiversified capitalist class and a small middle class further ensures that the volume and quality of public services remain poor and prone to systematic inefficiency and corruption by civil servants, as such public services are neither sufficiently funded from taxes nor pressured by powerful capitalist and middle classes to deliver better outcomes. 

On top of this, Nigeria is characterized by greater social cleavages than these countries, with ethno-religious fragmentation deepened by ethnic inequality. A major outcome of such cleavages is that contenders for political power and ruling coalitions feel forced to make more side payments to co-opt powerful elites who are outside the ruling coalition, as well as to maintain elites that are within the ruling coalition. The deeper cleavages also mean that ruling coalitions focus more on short-term political survival than ruling coalitions in countries with less pronounced cleavages, such as Kenya, Rwanda or Ghana. The result is both higher levels of grand and bureaucratic corruption, weaker commitment to and consistency in pro-developmental policymaking, and less effectiveness in the implementation of pro-developmental policies.  

This situation persists for two main reasons: incentive and power. It is easier for ruling elites to finance the state by relying on a point-source resource such as oil than by building the administrative capabilities to tax the dispersed population of working-class citizens, and to support firms in building the productive capabilities they need to grow and expand the tax base. For elites, it is also easier to accumulate capital through unproductive rent-seeking and state capture than putting in the work to build the organizational and technological capabilities needed to be domestically and internationally productive and competitive.  

In addition to this incentive problem, the balance of power favours anti-developmental coalitions and forces due to tactical supremacy. Tactical supremacy refers to the condition where anti-developmental coalitions without moral and formal institutional restrictions have more tools at their disposal to dissuade, co-opt or neutralize pro-development reformers. These tools include bribery, entrapment, blackmail and slander (such as the 2016 to 2021 case of Yewande Sadiku who tried to reform the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission), propaganda, framing and false flag operations (e.g. paying thugs to infiltrate peaceful protests in order to delegitimize protesters), demotion (e.g. the demotion of Nuhu Ribadu, former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Chairman, in 2008), dethronement (e.g. the removal of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi from the governorship of the Central Bank of Nigeria), isolation, withdrawal of funding, intimidation (such as detainment by the Department of State Security Services or the EFCC to dissuade against challenges made against ruling elites), kidnapping (e.g. the kidnap of the mother of then minister of finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, in 2012, as she went against the fuel subsidy rentiers), and assassination (e.g. the assassination of head of state, Murtala Muhammed at the height of his anti-corruption reforms in the 1970s). 

It is, therefore, no surprise that in 1999 Nigeria was ranked, out of 99 countries, as the second most corrupt country in the world, based on the Corruption Perceptions Index. Nigeria also consistently ranks at the bottom of global rankings on quality of democratic institutions and government effectiveness and is behind many African countries on these measures. Despite oil and gas deposits that could have enabled the country to be as wealthy as other resource-rich African countries like Algeria, Libya or Botswana, the country lags behind both in Gross Domestic Product per capita and in development outcomes. 

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THE LIMITATIONS OF PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENTS

In response to the developmental difficulties that arise from this configuration, several social movements and coalitions have emerged. Over the course of the twentieth century following political independence in 1960, military coups, organized labour and the student movement were major efforts directed at progressive change. However, military rule was subject to the same structural configurations and incentive problems that civilian rule faced.

As the twenty-first century ushered in the Fourth Republic, new social movements emerged. Neo-Biafrans and the Islamic Movement of Nigeria on one end sought exit, while, on the other end, Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) sought armed conquest. In the middle are movements such as the Izala Society, the Christian Social Movement of Nigeria (CSMN), strikes organized by the Nigerian Labour Congress, protest movements (Occupy Nigeria in 2012, #EndSARS in 2020 and #EndBadGovernance in 2023), the Obidient movement, and dispersed good governance initiatives (such as efforts undertaken by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), Value for Money, BudgIT, the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, Transparency International, Amnesty International, and many others). 

Each of these movements, institutions and initiatives, on their own, suffer significant weaknesses. The Izala movement is domain-constrained, focused on reforms to religious beliefs and practices and not systematically on broad economic dynamics. The CSMN is similarly domain constrained. In both Izala and CSMN cases, the religious cleavage prevents the geographical extension of these movements, as Izala leaders advocate for expanding the role of Islam in the public sphere while CSMN leaders portray Muslims as undertaking ‘stealth jihad’. In addition, a key tactic advocated by these groups is the imperative to vote for a Muslim (in the Izala case) and Christian (in the CSMN case) for the presidency. 

The movements that have taken up arms have either been constrained to religious rhetoric (as with Boko Haram and ISWAP) or constrained to local struggles (as with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta). As a result, their rhetoric has not created pressure for more pro-developmental or redistributive efforts from national ruling coalitions. In comparison to the communist insurrectionists in northeast Asia of the twentieth century, of whose critique of the capitalist system and their real threat of contagion forced the emergence of developmental states in some cases and income redistribution in Europe. 

The progressive actions undertaken by SERAP and others, such as through Freedom of Information requests, publicizing cases of corruption and government ineffectiveness and litigation against government actors in court are constrained by the extent to which they can spur citizen action to correct the exposed acts of bad governance, as well as by the narrow set of tactics employed. On the other hand, while protest movements have incited wider citizen involvement, they have tended to be discrete in nature, spontaneously emerging with an initial focus on a single issue, and lasting for a short period of time, after which business-as-usual conditions return.  

The 2022 Obidient movement sought to capture political power from incumbent elites through the support of a mass of especially young voters for presidential candidate, Peter Obi. The key tactic employed in this case was voter mobilization. However, the ruling party was ultimately able to maintain a hold on power. Neither Obi nor the Labour Party had a coherent, encompassing and unifying ideology beyond standard calls for good governance and generic democratic principles. This was unlike Nkrumahism and Sankarism, which had greater levels of ideological coherence and breadth that amassed larger sections of the populace and elites of 1950s and 1960s Ghana and 1980s Burkina Faso.  

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THE NEED FOR A NEW PROGRESSIVISM

Nigeria needs a new progressive movement; one that is not domain-constrained and disuniting like the Izala and CSMN, not over-localized like Boko Haram, not tactically constrained like SERAP, not discrete like the #EndSARS and #EndBadGovernance protest movements, not ideologically constrained like the Obidient movement, and not diachronically and synchronically constrained like Nkrumahism. In order to mobilize the greatest number of people, stimulate the hearts and minds of citizens and elites, exert the greatest amount of pressure, and persist beyond the immediate shocks that spur citizen action, such a movement would need to embrace six key features.  

Firstly, the new movement needs an encompassing and distinctive ideology, one with its distinctive approach to global relations, regional relations, and unique perspectives on a plurality of national topics, including economy, politics, culture, religion and gender. Such an ideology would need to be eclectic, neither socialist nor laissez faire, but robust enough to be broadly attractive, coherent and contextually applicable. 

Secondly, the new movement requires a leader with charisma, who can attract a variety of people to the movement’s cause by stirring up hearts and engaging in thought leadership that stirs up the minds of the intelligentsia, elites and populace.  

Thirdly, the movement needs a symbol. This latent desire for a symbol is observed in the use of hashtags by netizens and the use of the Russian flag by some protesters during the #EndBadGovernance protests. However, just as communism had the hammer and the sickle, jihadists the black flag, neo-Biafrans the Biafran flag, and the Black Panthers Party in the United States had the black panther, a new movement needs to create a visual and distinctive symbol early on; one that is not prone to misinterpretation as symbolizing an affinity to any existing religion, nation or rigid ideology. 

In addition, the new movement would need to undergo institutionalization in order to ensure continuity in the case of the death, exile or co-optation of its founder. This means putting in place a system of education of its adherents on its ideology, active debates on components of proposed policies, and institutional mechanisms for coordinating action nationwide, mobilizing resources for action, and attracting and onboarding new members. In the Nigerian context, religion has always been a key dividing factor against the emergence of truly inter-religious social movements, for instance, affecting inter-regional relations within the West African Students Association. The implication is that new movement leaders from southern Nigeria, for instance, would need to be more Islam-savvy than is the norm and demonstrate relatively sophisticated understanding of the public dimensions of Islam, especially if it is to attract partners from among religious leaders and commoners in northern Nigeria. 

Also, like eighteenth and nineteenth-century abolitionism, the movement needs to be tactically plural, making use of not only protests but also effective and sophisticated media persuasion, electoral participation and political office-holding, litigation, and other tools available to make advances. 

Lastly, like the British abolitionist movement, the American civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, the new movement should be able to garner the support and aid of powerful and influential progressive patrons who may be interested in seeing national reform but had hitherto been overwhelmed by the lack of power to make meaningful change. Such patrons include progressive members of royal families, religious leaders, business elites, political elites and technocrats.  

Nigeria is presently passing through multiple socioeconomic pressures as a result of bad governance since the onset of the Fourth Republic, from an inflation rate presently at a 28-year high to a rising unemployment rate. It is reasonable to expect more protest movements to emerge in response. In fact, compared to the decade from 1999 to 2010, when only four major national protests occurred, the decade from 2010 to 2024 has seen twelve protests, and one each year since 2020. The actual outcomes from these protests and broader social movements have been limited, excluding organized labour’s demand for a minimum wage increase in June 2024. Therefore, Nigerian progressive movements need to be intentional about pioneering a new movement with visual symbolism, ideology, institutionalization, leadership, and mobilization strategies that reflect the difficulties in making progress in the peculiar Nigerian context⎈

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