On my way from the Abuja International Airport sometime last year, I saw a small billboard with the photograph of Sam Nda-Isaiah with a simple message: It’s time for the Big Ideas. Sam is the founder of the Leadership group of newspapers published in Abuja. I have been fascinated by his successful replication of the success story of the Daily Trust group. He and Kabiru Yusuf, chairman of the latter group, gave a lie to the hollow view that the soil of northern Nigeria was unhealthy for the survival of the print media industry. Other publishing entrepreneurs have similarly replicated their success stories. The Peoples Daily and Blueprint newspapers have done so. And thanks to them, Abuja is now home to a host of less known weekly and monthly newspapers and magazines.
His billboard was not about newspapering. It was about his political ambition. To be sure, Sam is not the first well-heeled journalist in the country to root for the presidency. Dele Momodu, publisher of the society magazine, Ovation, beat him to it. Still, it came as no small surprise to many, including yours sincerely, that Sam had set his sights on Aso Rock, determined to send the incumbent to his village. The terse message on the billboard introduced a welcome dimension to our dull and uninspiring game of politics in which the contents of one’s pocket trump the contents of one’s brain and heart. Perhaps, not many people at first took him seriously. Perhaps, some believed he was trying to be noticed. The number one political position in the country is traditionally seen as the exclusive preserve of the big men – rich and well connected; men who had gone through the drill as actors at various levels of our national politics.
His party, APC, is full of such towering aspirants – Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, former head of state and by Sam’s admission, his “role model and political boss,” Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, former vice-president and one of the smoothest political operators in the country, Dr. Rabiu Kwankwaso, governor of Kano State and Rochas Okorocha, governor of Imo State. Would Sam stand a chance against these towering figures, all of whom are practised hands in the election business? The prospects are truly frightening.
It takes raw courage and a dollop of a sense of personal destiny for a young man such as he to take on his ‘masters.’ These men all turned up at Sam’s formal declaration in Minna, the capital of his home state, Niger, last month. They were not there to humour him. My take is that they were there to demonstrate a sense of political accommodation. If they wanted to show that in APC there is room for the young and the old as well as the rich and the not so rich, then they got it right. I find that refreshing in a country in which the stifling of political ambitions is the norm characterized by the Tony Anenih doctrine: there is no vacancy.
I do not know what Sam’s chances of becoming the presidential candidate of his party are but his presidential ambition throws up some potentially interesting developments in our national politics. It could draw the line in the sand between yesterday’s men and today’s men. It could serve notice that there comes a time in the life of all nations when the old order dies and gives way to the new. It could signal the beginning of politics of personal conviction not subject to the whims and the caprices of the obnoxious political godfathers. Politics is not averse to tectonic generational shifts. I place some weight on his formal declaration and the presence of the high and the high to hear him out. As we say in Agila, if a boy washes his hands well, he can dine with his elders.
I have read and re-read his declaration speech several times. I am impressed by the depth of his understanding of what our country is up against in every aspect of our national life. He is nostalgic about the past but does not necessarily romanticize it. He said: “I have seen Nigeria when our country’s schools and universities were among the best in the world and foreigners from all over the world trooped into this country to acquire world-class education.”
It is all in the game of politics that Sam holds the PDP and its central government responsible for the comprehensive decay in our national life. Fact is, the rot began as a gradual process and reached its present nauseous level because we prefer to live the lie. I find Sam’s emphasis on the big ideas intriguing. He said: “I come to you waving the scroll of BIG IDEAS – big and bold ideas that will move our beleaguered country into the league of First World nations.”
I like his self-deprecating humour. Does he have enough experience to be president? He said: “I find my lack of experience in government a strength.. because I have not been part of the rot of the past.”
And his dig at Jonathan? “..you cannot have more experience than President Jonathan. He has been a deputy governor, a governor, a vice-president, and an acting president before becoming president and see what this huge experience has done to our dear country.”
No one seems to talk about it but the major missing link in our national development is that ideas no longer count in our country. We have a nation of all-knowing men at all levels of government. Their monopoly of political wisdom robs our nation of an important ingredient in nation building: ideas as stimulators of meaningful public discourse. We are all marginalized. In politics, ideas are about dreams for one’s country. And big ideas are about big dreams for one’s country. Public discourse helps in refining and implementing ideas critical to national development.
Not all ideas, no matter how big, are necessarily worth anything. Some big ideas are dumb and foolish. The idea to have a federal university in every state was a politically correct big idea; in truth, it was a foolish idea. The idea to remedy the mass failure in the WAEC by limiting the children to the five subjects they need to enter the university was a big idea in response to the embarrassing failure rate every year but it was a patently dumb idea. A big idea is a sensible approach to a messy problem.
As important as they are, big ideas will work no magic in freeing our country from its arrested development and set it back on a course to recover its lost glory. But ideas, the size Sam is talking about, are important sources of national discourse in the true sense of participatory democracy. Big ideas will smother petty ideas rooted in ethnic and sectional political, economic and other interests. Our country has for long been a victim of small-mindedness. Ideas, big or small, do not thrive in such an environment. Does anyone notice that there is so little talk about the Nigerian nation and so much talk about the political rights of our ethnic groups? This is the consequence of the absence of ideas and dreams for our country and its people.
I am a sucker for ideas because they are products of deep and reflective thoughts. I am all for those who think we deserve much more than the somnolent routine into which our national politics has sunk. I welcome Sam’s decision to preach the virtues of big ideas and hope that when all this is done, our nation will find it increasingly hard to regress into the politics of empty promises, devoid of deep and reflective thoughts.
Goodluck, Sam.
