Climate of Fear by Wole Soyinka Read Free Book Online

“the end of history”—had been bestowed on the theocratic class by the electorate itself. Who can argue against the proposition that choice remains the bedrock of the democratic process, and if a people have made a choice that eliminates all further necessity for the ritual rounds of choosing, well . . . that argument appears to have reached its terminal point. History has been fulfilled.
    The problem with that argument, of course, is that this denies the dynamic nature of human society, and preaches that the purely fortuitous can substitute, at any time, for the eternal and immutable. Such a position opens the way for the triumph of a social order that is based on the concept of the Chosen—a mockery of the principle of choice if ever there was one!—and totally eliminates the impulse to change as a factor of human development. On the political field, it entrusts power permanently into the hands of a clique of rulers whose qualification could rightly range from membership in a military class to that of a Masonic order, or perhaps a labor or scientific union where specific circumstances have placed such a body in a position to resolve an overwhelming catastrophe or even dilemma. Wherever history is conceded its hour of fulfillment, revelation replaces inquiry or experiment, dictation replaces debate. For us in Nigeria in 1992, these were no abstract issues, much as we wished Algeria would simply go away or choose another time to pose a dilemma that provided ammunition for our own stubborn dictatorial order.
    Let us quickly recapitulate, for those to whom both Nigeria and Algeria belong on an alien planet—or, as in some encounters I have had, are indeed the same nation since they sound alike. What happened was that in both countries—in 1993 in one case, 1992 in the other—a recognized political party looked all set to win an election. At that point, however, the process was truncated by the military for no other reason than that it did not like the face of the winners. There was a critical difference, however. The victorious party in Nigeria did not promote a manifesto that would abrogate all further democratic ventures, while in the Algerian case this formed the core of its manifesto. You will understand therefore why, whenever anyone approached me for an opinion on the situation in Algeria after those elections, I quickly looked for an escape route. Easy enough to simplify the issue and say, yes, take the democratic walk to its logical conclusion, but then, as we have attempted to question, just what is the logical conclusion of the democratic option? Dictatorship of a kind different from the dictatorial status quo?
    Perhaps we can approach this dilemma obliquely, citing a very recent, and instructive, development within Nigeria—one that is, however, only a partial and tepid echo of the Algerian situation. Following the May 2003 elections, the second since that nation’s return to democracy, the Sharia pioneering state, Zamfara— progressively followed by nine others—declared that its governance would henceforth be comprehensively based on the Sharia in its strictest Islamic application. One of the later subscribers to Sharia rule was the Yobe state. In December that same year, the governor, himself a Muslim, found himself obliged to take stern measures against an extremist movement that named itself after the Taliban. This group rose against the state government, claiming that it had failed to keep strict adherence to the Sharia. The sect launched an insurrection, took over some police stations—one of which, incidentally, it renamed Afghanistan—inflicted a number of casualties, and sought to overthrow the elected government. It was subdued by state forces, the movement banned and the Council of Ulamas, the religious leaders, dissolved.
    Would it be totally illogical to project that this could also easily have been the fate of Algeria if indeed the victorious