SPEECHES

Muson Center

Speech

By

Consul General

Brian L. Browne

Thursday, May 17, 2007
 

I feel honored and pleased to be here among so many distinguished people and so many of my friends.  Establishing this Think Tank is a fine and noble effort that should be applauded.  In the life of a nation and for the well-being of that nation it is always a good thing to think. 

To be a thoughtless people, to be a thoughtless nation is to relegate oneself to the shadows and of human history.  It is to see opportunity come, only to scoff at it.  It is to beckon folly to enter your house and treat as if it were a cherished relative or family heirloom.

Let it never be said that Nigeria did not employ its tremendous human capital to strategize about its present conditions and the future of this land.  On the other hand, let it be said that Nigeria; by putting its collective mind in action, attempted to climb and did in fact reach the upper rungs of the ladder of human progress and development.  Let it be said that those of us gathered here today thought wisely and well so that we shaped Nigeria’s future in a manner that improves upon the contours of its past and present.

Now caution would dictate that I skirt around a certain rather large issue as if it did not exist.  But a much larger concern and care from this country and the people who inhabit it demand that I do otherwise.  Thus, for a moment let me not talk to you formally as a diplomat, but informally as a friend.

In every nation, at every point in its history, there will be political divisions.  If you examine any grouping of human beings, it is impossible for all to believe the same thing, the same way, at the same time. 

This diversity when properly channeled leads to constructive debate and positive innovation.  However, when poorly managed, it will enervate the body politic and lead to a typed tense stagnation.  It is precisely because of this inherent diversity of the human species that democratic government has through the years and centuries of man’s struggle against his own vices, slowly become established as the best form of government.  For democracy, when practiced correctly, recognizes, respects and protects this innate human diversity.

However, although some type of political diversity is part and parcel of the human condition, statesmen in society must strive to manage and minimize the severity of these divisions.  The greater the division a nation faces, the more uncertain becomes the pace of that nation’s progress. 

The events of the past few months have exacerbated the Nigerian political divide.  I am not here to cast blame or aspersion nor to commend nor condemn any person or party.  The time is too short and the moment too heavy for that endeavor.  What I would like to do is offer a bit of friendly advice. 

For Nigeria to attain the pace of progress that we all would like to see, this political divide must be narrowed and it must be done by peaceful, constitutional means.  In this regard, the courts have a cardinal role to play.  Let them play it in the best tradition of the judiciary and without undue pressure placed upon them.    However, we also must realize that because this rift is intrinsically political, it is not fully amenable to judicial resolution.

This is where politicians must now become statesmen.  This is where political partisans must look beyond the boundaries of their own self-interest to integrate the interests of others into their calculations.  In a contested election, there must be a winner and at least one who did not win.  To win an election means to assume responsibility for the welfare and well-being of all including those who opposed you.  To run in an election, is also to assume the risk of defeat.

There comes a time where you must graciously seek out your electoral opponents.  For Nigeria, the moment has come.  Thus, those who emerged as winners in the elections must be magnanimous.   You must extend the offer of true dialogue across the divide.  For those who did not emerge victorious you have every right to pursue your grievances in a lawful, proper manner.  But you also have the social responsibility to grasp the hand of meaningful dialogue should that hand be extended in your direction.

When you distill this issue to its essence, it comes down to this point.  Hopefully, we all participate in public service not as a mistake in that we thought the terms meant the public should serve us but in the correct belief that we should serve the public. 

If this statement is true, what we do here today is not primarily about our personal or partisan ambitions.  Instead, it is about the people out there – the common man and woman in the cities, villages and hamlets across this nation -- who will never sit in an exquisite hall such as this, who will never hear their name mentioned when the roster of notables is called. 

What we do here today is about whether we can channel the dynamism that is Nigeria in a way that makes us all better than we are now.  As we better ourselves so does the nation.  Can we work together to build the roads, the schools, the ports, can we work together to generate power and opportunity to bring peace to those regions of the nation that have grown tense and beckon for attention? 

As I said before, caution would have dictated that I remain mum on this subject, but there are people whom I know and respect on both sides of the political divide.  It pains me personally and professionally to see such people at loggerheads.  Moreover, the compassion I have for Nigeria and its people, from the deepest creek in the Delta to the most arid reaches in Arewa, led me to say that which I felt I must say.

For Nigeria has a monumental heavy responsibility before it.  Its destiny is leadership.  Its destiny is to drive this continent into a new age, into a new prosperity and into a new and just ordering of things.  Do not let destiny’s knock at your door go unheeded.  Before you recognize destiny it has recognized you.  It will not come to you dressed as you want it.  It will come as it must.  You can’t ask destiny to bend to fit your dictates; you must fit destiny’s.  If you exercise such wisdom and flexibility, later generations will thank you and venerate you as a noble lot who acquitted themselves heroically at a moment when this nation had reach a great and historic cusp.

However, if we continue to stumble about because we are busy trying to walk over each other, these same later generations will castigate us for allowing destiny to walk toward us with cup running over only for us to slap the cup to ground and to bellow at destiny that it is not wanted here.

Thus, in your deliberations, please keep in mind that the political divide has widened.  This National Think Tank must direct your endeavors in such a way as to begin to narrow that divide. 

With this somewhat lengthy diversion at a close, let me turn to what I came here to talk about today.  For some reason, today, I feel the urge to engage in what I will term “constructive mischief”.  So let me here admit that I will not direct my remarks directly to “public participation in policy-making” as the agenda suggests.

Instead what I want to speak about is the need to further and more deeply establish a democratic mind-set and political culture in Nigeria.

I raise this issue because I believe if you can make progress on this fundamental psychological point, then the political economy of the nation will further gear up in a manner that unleashes the vitality of the private sector.

Once that mind-set is created, then we can better establish the structures and institutions needed to channel public participation into policy and formulation. 

For you can have constructed the best organizational charts and the mandates of governmental bodies ministries can be exquisitely drawn in the finest prose.  All will look well and good.  But if you do not have the democratic mind-set, those beautiful charts and well-drafted mandates are for naught.

Those who are supposed to uphold them will be their violators.  Those who are supposed to benefit from them will instead be burdened by them.  That which is up will be down, what is east will be west and what is an unalloyed wrong will be seen as  the peak of rectitude.

While we must strive to perfect the institutional forms, there is no greater achievement for the advancement of good governance than to refine our minds and hearts in the crucible of democracy.

What is essential is that the people with whom government institutions are entrusted must carry the values of democracy and good governance within themselves. 

A constitution, a flow chart, an institution’s charter, they are all pieces of paper.  No matter how beautifully written, these things can be easily shred.

The true constitution that begets good governance is not found on any paper, it is etched in the spirit and thoughts of living men and women.  For democracy to be real, it must be engrained in our daily routine, our discourse; it must be a part of how we relate and interact as human beings.

Too often when people assume office their vocabulary becomes confused.  Instead of believing they were elected or appointed to serve the public interest, they transmute that august notion into its opposite.  The mandate becomes one of getting the public to serve that person’s individual interest.  The extent that the public servants are slaved to this perspective is the extent that institution building and public participation in policy discourse will be diminished.  If an official believes the circumference of his mandate goes only as far as his own hands extend, there is no need for public participation in policy making.  The only public discourse will be the grumbling of average citizens heard on the roads and in the houses of the territory encompassed by these officials jurisdictional writ.

To ensure meaningful public participation requires a great degree of tolerance.  In a democracy, an official must have a soft heart so that he cares for the populace but also a tough hide so that he can withstand the sting of public criticism.  Too often, however, officials have gotten this truism turned around.  They have hard hearts and a soft hide.  They can not bear criticism nor do they bear well the burden of care for the general public.

An official has to understand the difference between being given a public trust and being accountable to no one but himself.  We must first and thoroughly endow leaders with this spirit for this is a prerequisite to public participation in policy making.

This country must seek ways to inculate those coming into office with the correct attitude regarding their relationship with the public.  They are the executors of a sacred contract between the people and their government.  Such a solemn agreement should not be lightly breached.  Thus, as you explore ways to enhance public participation in policy making you must devise ways to get government officials to understand that they must open the doors for the public for the public is their master and not the obverse.

One of the things Nigeria lacks is a commonly shared and understood vision that unites the people of the different parts of Nigeria.  Creating this vision is a task the think tank should think about.

I know some of you are thinking I say this because I am ignorant of all the different documents written about Nigeria’s future.  I respond to you, if you truly thought those documents fully did the job, then this meeting, this think tank itself, would be superfluous.

I know there have been countless blueprints and I know them by their names.  There have been so many written visions that one’s eyes could become blurred trying to read them all.

Please do not get me wrong, I am not down playing the utility of these documents, nor the fine work that went into creating them.  They are important.  They are necessary.  But they are not both the beginning and end.  These documents are useful manuals but they are not of the species likely to stir the national soul to action.

These documents are excellent and to be commended.  But to the average person they are nigh indecipherable.  For the average Nigerian, they are mounds of paper upon which thick words and dense sentences are written.  Those documents are for policy experts, bureaucrats and academicians.  Thus, the bulk of the people feel estranged from the process and are purblind to the vision you want them to see.  These documents say what should be done but they do not inspire because they do not tell people in language they can understand.  The people need to hear that they are living in a historic moment and are now being called to a purpose greater than themselves.  They need to be told and convinced that Nigeria is going to move forward and be put to work in an unprecedented way.  They need to be told that by joining this endeavor they are securing the future for the next generation and the one after that.  Without such a call, your work is but an intellectual vision.  It is not an organic one that sufficiently imbues the national psyche with a sense of great purpose.

To move the nation forward, you need to figure out how to tell the people in language that they understand but which also elevates them to a higher level and sound consciousness and sacrifice that they are part of a great enterprise and a great nation. 

You need to translate into the common vernacular those sublime reasons why it is good to be a Nigerian.  You need to re-state in a plain but creative tongue what the social contract is between the citizen and the state.  You need to articulate to the different constituents that make Nigeria be they religious, regional, ethnic or political, what benefits they should expect from this partnership called Nigeria and what does the partnership expect of them. 

If you can do a better job energizing more of the great mass of people, then that mass will push its representatives in civil society and in the private sector to greater assertiveness in their interface with government and the public sector.  If you do this, then you would have gone far in achieving the public input into policy making that you desire.

Another important psychological aspect you must tackle is the balance between control and freedom is its political economy.  The balance is yet too skewed toward control.  Some progress has been made in achieving a more conducive equilibrium.  But the effects of this vestige of military rule needs to be better understood and discussed.

Because this balance has been an imbalance Nigeria has not grown as it should.  The way military governed itself and had governed the nation is hierarchical.  It places a primacy on control and order.  Creativity and imagination are not highly valued traits. 

Yet the traits of creative imagination are nutrients necessary to a healthy economy.  Too many times in this nation’s past, when its former leaders had to decide whether to allow a change that fostered greater economic growth through enhanced  creativity and productivity, the decision makers balked fearing greater economic openness would result in individual independence from government control.  They deliberately decided against innovation and productivity because they feared they would lose control. 

The economy became a manacled one because of this desire to maintain too much control.  Any economic activity of any consequence first had to get government approval and that lead to certain inequities and distortions in the national economy.  Thus, Nigeria’s economic system became politicized and its political system became monetized.

Let’s visualize this in very practical terms.  In order for you to control something means you have to be able to hold it in your hands.  To keep it firmly in your hands and thus firmly in your control, you must keep it small enough to grasp. 

While this might be a salutary outlook for running a military operation, it means stagnation for a national economy.   Some of this has been whittled down in recent years, but there are still institutional choke points that perpetuate this imbalance between inertia and creativity.

Recalibrating this balance is essential to economic prosperity and development.  If you do this recalibration, there will be some excesses resulting from the greater freedom but the overall benefits will far outweigh the transgressions.  Recalibrating this imbalance would allow the people to exercise their ingenuity to engage in more productive activity.  By letting people do more for themselves, this tank of yours will also benefit for it will have to think a little less.

Additionally, for you to truly figure out the right formula to employ in potential areas of public/ private partnership you must first allow the private sector greater freedom to find and establish itself according to its own abilities.  Right now the private sector still remains somewhat artificially suppressed. 

Thus your attempts at creating public/private partnerships at this stage must bear the caveat that, in most instances the private sector enters the partnership with a historic handicap.  If you do not recognize that handicap, you will not do things to overcome it.  If you do not attempt to overcome it, you run the risk of perpetuating this undesirable imbalance between control and creativity.

There is another related and key point that I would like to make.  Again this part is not one usually raised in the normal discourse of conferences such as these.

Yet, it is closely linked to the need to recognize what constitutes the essence of fair politics and good governance.

Politics and Governance is supposed to order society.  The political system is supposed to be a forum where contending interests are unveiled and where problems and where problems are solved equitably so that a nation and all of its component parts can progress in some degree of harmony, reason and justice.

Now permit me to introduce another factor into the equation.  That factor is speed.  The world is much faster paced than it was for past generations.  Thus, good governance not only means problem solving, it means solving problems at a clip that keeps pace with the rest of the world. 

It has been said that justice delayed is justice denied.  I will tell you that slowness in political problem solving constitutes opportunity squandered and this is as much an injury to good governance as wrongful policies.

As the expansion of technology makes every part of the globe more accessible to all other parts and as formerly disparate economies now interface across great distances, time and speed have become more important agents of political and economic performance than ever before.

If you look at the march of human progress, particularly the recent events of our current technological/information age, you will see that one of the driving forces has been the reduction of time it takes to complete an event- be it the assembly of a product or the completion of a transaction or the provision of a service. 

Those nations that understand and embrace the spirit of this postulate and maximize the velocity and volume of their transactions will prosper.  Those that do not grasp this essential truth will lag further and farther behind.  Their better days will already be behind them and their future will be one of watching the distance widen between them and those who have been more receptive to this fundamental precept.

Where government can significantly assist Nigeria to increase the velocity of its problem solving and thus maximize the number of productive transactions that occur within a given time period include its land use and land conveyance laws and regulations, the need for a more reliable physical infrastructure and the need to streamline government regulations of economic activity.

Again these things will help the private sector to approach its full potential.  In turn, as the private sector better defines and identifies its capabilities, then the more meaningful can be our quest to form public/private partnerships.

If you advance some of these fundamental mind-set changes then you will empower the private sector and civil society.  Once this happens, they you will begin to more clearly see the opportunities for public intervention in policy making and for creative public/private ventures.

In conclusion, what I have tried to do is give you a friend’s perspective of the road ahead.  Your task is to increase public participation in policy making.  Government has to be the enabler.  Yet for government to enable this also means government must restrain itself and much of its power.  There is an inherent tension here.  The only way to overcome that tension is to inculcate officials with a more democratic mind-set.  If you do so, then this process of public/private cooperation will began to take off.  In doing so you also will be better able to gauge in what sectors would such partnership be more productive and how they should be shaped as you learn more about the comparative advantages between government and a growing, maturing private sector.

Again, the work you are doing is laudable.  I exhort you to do it well so that your children’s children can look back at your efforts with a sense of admiration and a driving desire to further advance the good work that you will surely do here.