NigeriansTalk

My Busi­ness­Day col­umn of Decem­ber 22.

Nige­ria is not known as a coun­try that has con­tributed a lot to the devel­op­ment of democ­racy, what with very many years of dic­ta­tor­ship and all. But the Athens-born mode of gov­er­nance might just be get­ting a big make-over from the state of affairs in Nigeria.

If the way Nige­ria has been run in the past few weeks is any­thing to go by, it seems that there is really no need for a coun­try to have a pres­i­dent. Don’t get me wrong, I think the pres­i­dency is an insti­tu­tion that is extremely impor­tant. It pro­vides a lot of jobs for a lot of peo­ple. Maybe at a later stage of our evo­lu­tion, Nige­ria can make another big leap for demo­c­ra­tic gov­er­nance, totally erad­i­cat­ing the presidency.

For now, the office of the exec­u­tive stays, only the post of the pres­i­dent would have to go. Really, we have not had a pres­i­dent in the coun­try for close to a month now and the coun­try has been run­ning per­fectly well. It has been medi­oc­rity as usual. Except that every so often, mem­bers of the leg­is­la­ture turn up to give dif­fer­ent rea­sons for the vice pres­i­dent not to deputise in the absence of the pres­i­dent. In the new scheme of things, that post too will have to go.

What to do with the post of the pres­i­dent? Well, we will need a sym­bol that every­body can rally around and iden­tify as our sym­bol of the pres­i­dency. I nom­i­nate football.

The ‘beau­ti­ful game’ has been sug­gested on sev­eral occa­sions as the most uni­fy­ing fac­tor in Nige­ria. Form­ing a national foot­ball team is one instance in which peo­ple do not insist on ‘national char­ac­ter’, that very inter­est­ing prin­ci­ple that very often sac­ri­fices merit for the imper­a­tive of includ­ing some­one from every state in the coun­try in gov­ern­ment agencies.

Add to that the idea that the ball is always sur­rounded by so many peo­ple at the same time. The ball, for these rea­sons and many more (which we can­not go into because of space lim­i­ta­tions), qual­i­fies as the NSP – National Sym­bol of the Pres­i­dency, the acronym that is to replace the title President.

I do not wish to devi­ate too much from the famil­iar, so I will advise that the colour of the ball be what we know well. We already have green and white as our national colours, so we can have the ball coloured green and white. No, not green white green, but green and white. In cuboids, like the colours of a reg­u­lar ball. Some­where in the cen­ter of the whites of the cuboids the acronym NSP will be written.

It is well known that the National Assem­bly can meet wher­ever the mace is. In the same line the Fed­eral Cab­i­net can meet wher­ever the ball – the NSP – is present. The NSP will be placed on a spe­cial seat at the head of the table, where the pres­i­dent would nor­mally sit. The spe­cial seat will be high so that the ball can com­fort­ably pre­side over the meet­ing of the cab­i­net from an ele­vated posi­tion. We are all famil­iar with the idea that a per­son whose head can­not be seen above the table might not com­mand as much respect as his author­ity might require. Same with the NSP. The ball has to sit com­fort­ably well above the top of the table.

I know that my detrac­tors might be won­der­ing how a sym­bol would attend inter­na­tional meet­ings and speak on behalf of a coun­try. Well, we can have the Sec­re­tary to the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment (SFG) do the speak­ing – under the con­di­tion that the NSP is right in the posi­tion it deserves as the National Sym­bol of the Pres­i­dency when­ever the SFG is speak­ing. If this plan sails through – and I think it will – other coun­tries will start choos­ing their own National Sym­bol of the Pres­i­dency. The United States might go for the base­ball, which would make Nige­ria a lot big­ger than them. And good old Cuba could go for the base­ball stick, which would mean that for once, they can really bash the USA.

That, I think, is one thing that (1) the absence of a pres­i­dent in Nige­ria, (2) the lack of any con­fu­sion despite that fact, and (3) the effi­cient run­ning of the coun­try despite all that, can teach the world about democ­racy. We have shown them that you sim­ply do not need a president