Obama And The Challenge Of Nigeria —Abubakar Momoh

By Abubakar Momoh

Obama made history as history made Obama. For whatever reason that John Kerry invited Barack Obama, then Senate aspirant from Illinois, to deliver a speeech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, certainly the speech won him the Senatorial seat. The speech, aptly entitled the “Audacity of Hope”, was a critique of conventional American politics which, instead of perfecting the Union has created imperfection, instead of providing opportunities for many it has disempowered minorities and weak social classes, instead of bridging the racial divide it has exacerbated it. Obama saw the United States as a paradox, which has not lived up to the dreams of its forebears. A land which gave his own father opportunity, out of nothing, but which then suddenly slipped into the abyss, with less and less opportunities for the coming generation. According to Obama this created a sense of cynicism and despondency in the American people. He blamed the crisis in America on the failure of politics–the “broken” politics of Washington. Obama made a critique of politics, asserting that conventional politics in America divides rather than unites. This manifests along the lines of red states, blue states, religion, race, gender and so on. He urged the people to have “hope”, as that was the legacy which has kept Americans going, which had broken barriers and surmounted enormous challenges.

Obama’s message was new, original, authentic, persuasive and inspirational. His youth, humility, equanimity, personability, charisma, sagacity, oratory, confidence, moderation, and measured approach to issues which were informed by his wisdom, knowledge, maturity, innocence and straight talk, easily endeared him first to the youth, and then to many independents and people who had given up on politics in America.

Obama always saw and projected himself as the unconventional politician. He dissociated himself from the politics of Washington,which he blamed for the woes, anxiety and crises in the American polity and society. He called for an alternative - hence his mesage of change, inspired by the slave slogan Yes, we can. He challenged Americans not to complain about their reality but take bold political action by contesting the political space in the name of change.

While in the US Senate, Obama easily gained national and international recognition; he was invited everywhere to deliver speeches. In no time a small group approached him to run for the US presidency, having just spent two years in the Senate. In January 2008 in Springfield, Illinois  this was announced to the world. Hence started a tortuous journey. The accusation that Obama lacked experience for the job was the most dominant critique of the Senator. But Obama’s reply was that, the kind of experience needed to change America is not acquired in Washington. He asserted that the politics of Washington corrupts and no politician should stay too long to be infected by that politics. Rather, he noted that it is the experience that is acquired while connecting with the people and mobilising them that brings about change.

Put differently, Obama’s main credential for running for US presidency is not his Political Science degree from Columbia University, New York, nor his Havard Law degree; rather it is his unsung and uncelebrated credential in “community organising” in south-south Chicago, where Obama organised black people who were living in squalor, with many of their children being out of school, hooked on drugs or unemployed. Obama, even with his Ivy-League degree did this job on a dignified monthly salary of  US$1,000. Certainly, money was not the incentive for Obama. He wanted to bring change in the quality of life of the ordinary people.

Obama’s experience in community organising was his strongest weapon in the election, alongside his message of hope and change. Obama organised a core of his ex-class and school mates, friends and adroit supporters around Illinois. This served as the original core of his political team. In so doing, he almost totally abandoned the core structure of the Democratic Party. In a word, Obama started with fresh people who were either new or not so old in conventional American politics. These people, mostly youth and middle aged, had personal loyalty and commitment to the cause of Obama. They were inspired by the message of Obama. They believed in him and his message. Obama went out to sell his message to the people, using focal points. In this way, Obama won national appeal.

Earlier, the key chieftains in the Democratic Party saw two main candidates – Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Quite inadvertently, everybody in the party and the US saw Hillary Clinton as the “heir apparent”. She, in turn, saw John Edwards as her main opponent. Soon, however, John Edwards became very weak politically as he consistently placed third as a candidate; he dropped out after the primaries in South Carolina – the state where he was born. This left the space to Clinton and Obama. But while Clinton was not prepared organisationally and financially to continue beyond Super Tuesday, the Obama team saw a long-drawn battle. They appealed to the youth who registered enmasse to vote and served as volunteers, they used the internet to fundraise; contribution as small as US$5 was collected from people across social and generational divides, who in the process of making  financial contribution also claimed ownership of the Obama train – a social movement was born.

Obama was  able to build the most elaborate and financially solvent electioneering machinery ever known in American political history. His campaign became one of  stakeholders, it was inclusive, participatory and energising, everybody bought into it and claimed collective ownership. More and more volunteers  turned in on a daily basis from all states where primaries had been concluded to assist in challenging states such as Texas, Pennsylvania and so on.

Obama and his team worked quietly and assiduously. They were focused and knew their goal, they were  hopeful even though there were hiccups-Jeremy White, Tony Rezko and Co. Yet Obama took those issues majesterially and head on, and delivered what may be described as the most perceptive speech on race in the last one hundred years. Obama spoke about the issues of injustice raised by the Jeremy White YouTube case, in a way that nobody could call Obama a racist. Some began to refer to him as a post-racial candidate. It became difficult for anybody to claim that Obama was a Black candidate running to be President, in the same way Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton did. While Liouse Gates Jnr, Director of the Dubois Centre at Harvard  University tried to make the claim of race and heritage – namely that Obama’s forebears did not suffer the heritage of slavery – others said he was not “black enough’ because he had a white mother. Hillary Clinton, shattered by the defeat at Iowa, and in order to appeal on racial lines to win White voters in New Hampshire, began to play the racial card, noting that if Lyndon B. Johnson had not passed the Civil Rights Act, African-Americans could not have enjoyed the basic liberties they had; more like claiming that the struggle of Martin Luther King Jnr was in vain. This had a magic effect which the Clintons never anticipated. Most blacks felt insulted by that remark. Again, after Obama’s win in South Carolina, Bill Clinton made the derogatory remark that the state was won by both Jackson and Sharpton, implying that it was a case of African-Americans of the South voting for their fellow brothers. This sang Hillary’s nunc dimitis. After South Carolina, things were never the same again.

During electioneering, the economic crisis deepened and Obama became more focused on policy issues than his inspirational message or sloganeering. He identified with the middle class and linked McCain to Bush.

The lessons for Nigeria are legion. Obama had no godfather, he had no moneybags behind him, he was involved in what he called “common sense politics”. He brought a message and a movement into being that served as auto-critique of conventional Washington politics. He worked from the “outside” to capture the attention and  respectability of the SuperDelegates in his party. He worked from the outside to build a popular national coalition which transcended the bifurcated politics of America. He learnt from the mistakes of both Al Gore and John Kerry; and he studied the political topography of America.  He talked about transcending liberal individualism to taking interest in the public affairs and the common good, taking care of the children and the havenots. In Nigeria we must ask ourselves the following questions: How can we unite our people across religious and ethnic lines? How can we restore hope to our 40 million unemployed youth? How can we make our health care system and public schools to function? How can we ensure accountability in governance and corporate social responsibility? These are the challenges the election of Obama raise for Nigeria. Obama’s praxis has proved to us that with the right message and by building a movement from the bottom-up, in a systematic and focused way, we can alter conventional/elitist methodology of politics. And that if we played politics according to the rules of the dominant forces, in an elitist way, we should never expect to be victorious. To be sure, Yes, we can is not a nonsensical phraseology, it is a metaphor for emancipative politics; of bringing the people back-in.

– Dr. Momoh teaches Political Science at Lagos State University.