Did They?

As the scandal in the US Justice Department involving the firing of nine US attorneys unfolds and makes things look clearer to the lay public, it does seem like Mr. Olusegun’s out-going autocracy and his PDP in Nigeria borrowed a page or two from the scripts written by whoever has been the hidden architect in the workings of the Bush White House in the last six years plus, to achieve their desire to retain power. In the case of Nigeria, the process has been predictably brazen particularly for the reason that Nigeria is an autocracy. But the nature of the system in the US has compelled the actors to be insidious.

In today’s editorial, The New York Times has argued that: “A disproportionate number of the prosecutors pushed out, or considered for dismissal, were in swing states. The main reason for the purge — apart from hobbling a California investigation that has already put one Republican congressman in jail — appears to have been an attempt to tip states like Missouri and Washington to Republican candidates for House, Senate, governor and president.” The editorial insists that: “It is hard not to see the fingerprints of Karl Rove”, the acclaimed architect of Mr. George Bush’s electoral successes, in the unfolding scandal. In other words, the firings constitute a chapter in the scripts written by Mr. Rove as a manual that would help him build the permanent Republican majority that he once boasted he would establish in Washington, DC. Some people who still recall how the then Bush-Cheney campaign tenaciously fought to achieve victory over Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election have had no problem seeing the logic in The Times editorial. The tactic is to use the Courts and the Justice Department to sway elections if they don’t favor Republican candidates. The Atlantic Monthly did a story some time ago that showed when and how Mr. Rove invented that tactic and tried it out before 2000 in parts of the country.

It will not be impossible for the swarm of lobbyists who service Mr. Obasanjo from Washington, DC to have copied a page or two from Mr. Rove’s script. Going by the nature of US political system, dismantling the architecture for a permanent Republican majority in Washington, DC is possible and can be achieved by the Congress, which The Times insists must be done by compelling the attorney general, Mr. Alberto Gonzales, who is currently embattled by the scandal to resign, and restoring the Justice Department’s “traditions of professionalism and impartiality, and re-establish that in the United States, the legal system does not work to advance the interests of a political party”. In Nigeria, the task can only be accomplished through means that are more innovative. But it is a task that must be accomplished in order to imbue politics in Nigeria with relevance and sanity.