… On cabals and governments in government

A fatal error in following any political development in Nigeria’s public space is to adopt a mono-track approach, as such denies any observer the benefit of reaping the full value of lessons from the dispensation. The ongoing arraignment of the ‘Saraki  Four’ is not an exception. In reacting to his arraignment in court for trial over alleged use of forged Senate Rules for his election as President of the Senate and that of the Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, Bukola Saraki claimed that a cabal had hijacked the executive powers of the Buhari administration for nefarious purposes. According to him “what has become clear is that there is now a government within the government of President Buhari who have seized the apparatus of Executive powers to pursue their nefarious agenda”.

Not to be outdone in the game of spinning the arraignment beyond its traditional context the Presidency responded with a hyperbole in debunking the allegation. The stand of the Presidency which was announced in a statement by spokesman Femi Adesina described Saraki’s claims as “ridiculous and preposterous” stuff that belongs more to the land of fiction than reality. According to Adesina, Saraki’s claim alludes to Buhari as a stooge, which is hardly in the President’s character. Given Buhari’s public image especially as a man with an iron will many Nigerians will agree with Adesina. 
Yet in the context of the fact that the world is driven mostly by paradoxes that are often imitations of reality, the cross fire between these two camps has lit up a syndrome in the nation’s public space that qualifies for more than a passing attention – the epidemic dimension of infestation of  cabals and their nefarious activities. Indeed the real problem of the country over the years is not only the historical vice-like grip these cabals have on the polity and economy, but the serial failure of successive administrations to mitigate the syndrome. Infact the core appeal of Buhari’s administration is the promise that he will be disposed to tackle these cabals even if not destroy them, because they exist in every facet of public life in Nigeria, not sparing any nook and cranny of the Presidency, the National Assembly, the Judiciary political parties, to name a few.
To help the cause of this piece is the simple definition of the word ‘cabal’ which is a group of people who aggregate to conspire in pursuit of their personal interests even to the detriment of the general interest, often by intrigue. Against the backdrop of the foregoing description the incidence of cabal features in every public institution in the country. Beyond being associated with the office and person of the President of the country, the Presidency embraces the entire complement of structures and paraphernalia surrounding the executive arm of government with which it exercises its powers to drive the administration. In Nigeria it consists of the over 500 ministries, departments and agencies of government which constitute the executive arm of government.
It therefore flies in the face of logic and for anyone to deny the existence of cabals in the Presidency or even the National Assembly. This is just as it remains a dangerous gamble for any individual to defend what happens in these entities, especially with respect to the incidence of cabals in them.
In the light of the prevalence and pervasiveness of cabals, the challenge before the government and the country is less about why and whether they exist than how to deal with them in specific situations. While they may not always be easily identifiable, the fruits of their enterprise usually betray them. For instance in the Nigerian context cabals are the unmistakeable tell-tale signs of fragmentation in administrative structures. With historically weak administrative structures these cabals easily identify loopholes in the system and exploit same for personal aggrandisement.
Hence while Saraki may be pointing at cabals in the executive arm as the factors behind the travails of his co accused and himself, a bigger task facing the country remains the incidence and virulence of the operations of these cabals with respect to the widespread, serial plunder of the nation’s finances with impunity by innumerable public officials, in virtually every aspect of the country’s public space. Hardly a day passes without a shocking report of a hitherto respected public official arrested for looting public funds in the region of hundreds of millions of naira. The level of fragmentation of the nation’s economy has become so prevalent that the few months of implementation of just the Treasury Single Account (TSA), which was designed by the World Bank for countries with fragmented financial systems, have imposed strangulating financial pressures on the country. It may be asked if the Nigerian economy is averse to processes that facilitate orderliness, probity and transparency in it. Meanwhile there are other areas of reforms that need to be implemented such as IPSAS.
While it may be tempting to dismiss Saraki’s claim offhandedly, it nevertheless draws attention to the weakness of the country’s public service which has ample room for unscrupulous officials to exploit loopholes not only for milking the system dry but also directing the official paraphernalia of power and office towards pursuing personal goals. Stories abound of government officials deploying government facilities of any description for private purposes. In another vein armed police and military officers are routinely hired and deployed to attack and even kill real or perceived enemies by people willing to pay for such service. These are some aspects of abuse of public interest by cabals who are usually untouchable.
The syndrome of cabals in the Nigerian political space has assumed a dimension that may task President Buhari’s administration to the point of demanding all the arsenal and energy in can possibly muster. And Nigerians demand no less from the President, in the context of the change agenda he rode to power in the first place and his ultimate success will be measured exactly by how well he performs in this area.
It is in that context that dismissal of the incidence of cabals in the system with a wave of the hand by Presidency officials may not be the best approach to the problem.