“If you run a lootocracy, you have no conception of sufficiency. You set up the rules to grab as much money as you can, as if you’ve won a supermarket shopping spree. You also concentrate power, the better to arrange the world for your benefit. Unchecked by modesty, satiety, or shame, you take all you can get away with. You loot until someone stops you.” Paul Rogat Loeb
Definition is everything. The denotative meanings of certain words show in their essential usages and forms. Take the phrase nascent democracy for instance. Nascent in its denotative sense describes a process that is just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential; it describes something that is not yet fully developed. There is a Nigerian meaning for nascent though, especially when democracy comes after it. Nascent Democracy was the generally used term to excuse the early abuses of the electoral process, the wanton looting of public funds and everything in our democracy that made it look alien to democratic realities elsewhere, but had to be excused in the face of the public’s concern for a democracy that looked very much like an illegitimate child of the mother called democracy. To calm nerves, the learned amongst them smartly came up with the hope inducing and soothing phrase nascent democracy. It worked. It worked because everything was excused under that phrase. A full blown free-for-all in the house of laws – nascent democracy. A Governor gets abducted by his own orderlies – nascent democracy. A whole village gets wiped out under the pretense they killed a couple of soldiers – nascent democracy. A president consistently abuses the constitution -nascent democracy.
And so did our nascent democracy continue until today that it has evolved into a kind of home-grown democracy ( Home-grown democracy has been credited to General Sani Abacha in Literature for his kind of democracy where all the political partties, all five of them adopted him as their candidate for the presidential elections he was so willing to contest but for cold apples, hot girls and the cold hands of death). This Home-grown democracy has crystallized into a Lootocracy even though we always were a lootocratic society.
Now that we have Lootocracy in reality and practice, what are we gonna do with it? Well we can at least define it and its principles.
DEMOCRACY AND LOOTOCRACY: Definition, Principles, and Examples
1- FREEDOM OF SPEECH, DEBATE, AND ENQUIRY
DEMOCRACY: This is a principle of democracy because it is essential to the open debate upon which a vibrant political culture is founded and maintained.
It’s been said that the strongest power is that which can forbid its own mention. Anybody who attempts to suppress political debate should be suspected of trying to defend illegitimate power.
LOOTOCRACY: In a Lootcracy however like Nigeria’s home-grown democracy, rousing the air of debate makes you an enemy of the president. Even Nebuchadnezzar never debated so there they have something in common. Lions do not debate either but monkeys can be trained to debate and may be this is one of the situations you could say a monkey has more intelligence than human Doctors of Philosophy in zoology whose lives were supposed to have been spent learning about monkeys. I can bet my meagre earnings to state that a monkey trained for the years it takes to train a human from cradle to Ph.d level would be able to understand that laws are not laws except they bring about justice, that members of a country’s cabinet are also citizens of that country and not weingovernmentizens – a special specie that is allowed to loot without question and govern without any form of criticism. Political debate can be suppressed in a Lootocracy even though there is an air of legitimacy about the government – an air not a tsunami because the Justices that will hit the gavel on whether the president’s mandate was fairly won were selected by another president of a court whose selection by the president who holds the mandate had nothing to with an appeal to justice and order, even though every appeal from the ruling party’s characteristic rogbodiyan and magogo at the elections will be upheld for once irrespective of how they won. Obasanjo thought he has a Lion but he was not such a smart animal say a monkey to know that you don’t just rig elections, you also rig the judicial process.
2- POPULAR DEMOCRACY/ UNPOPULAR LOOTOCRACY
DEMOCRACY: This is where the people, as a whole, are the government, and where the people retain and exercise their governing authority on a perpetual basis.
In a Popular Democracy, the government is the servant of the people, not their master. Its job is to listen, respond and deliver to that which is demanded by the people.
These is no suggestion however, that this concept, or any political concept, should be imposed upon other peoples or cultures, or that it is in any sense a morally “superior” system.
LOOTOCRACY: Well this is not a popular one. It is an exclusive government. The beauty of Lootocracy is that the people are part of the electoral process – you need them to feel and think they matter for Lootocracy to be sustained – but they are not factors after the elections. It is assumed that since votes were duly purchased from the people, the dividends of that investment should be exclusive to the investors. Investors here include ogogoro-drinking political god-fathers, loyal party members and friends of loyal First Ladies. The ruling class is superior to the ruled, hence when the Emperor – the president in a Lootocratic government – comes to towm all economic and social activities must be at a stand-still like Herbert Macaulay’s statue in front of CSS Bookshop in Lagos.
3- OPEN, ACCOUNTABLE AND DIVERSE MASS MEDIA
DEMOCRACY: The national mass media is crucial to the national democratic process.
It is the national mass media which forms and validates most people’s understanding of what is “real”.
It is the national mass media which holds the key to reaching the millions of voters. If you control the mass media that informs the voting choices of the people, then you can control the democratic process.
It is essential therefore that the mass media is:
Open – transparent – so we may know the people behind it and their agenda.
Accountable to the public, so we may acquire a remedy when it is inaccurate. The “freedom of the press” must be balanced with its accountability.
Diverse in the sense that media monopolies should not be allowed to develop and dominate.
LOOTOCRACY: Government is closed and unaccountable. The supposed largest television network in Africa – in terms of how much has been looted in its name – is exclusive to report the daily activities of the emperor. At least they are smart enough to murder the sound when madam Umblerra speaks to avoid the murder of the English Language on national television and incur the wrath of the Queen of England as a country.
The citizens have no rights to know how much their president earns. If they know sef can they stop his Lion-hearted madam for change First Lady from storing millions of dollars as ornaments of democracy, afterall the coming government can always tell the EFCC to look the way of yahoo-yahoo boys rather than try to peek into the protruding belly of a madam whose only guilt could just be that she swallowed money.
This is not Nebuchanezzar, it is Goodluck Jonathan Nigeria's amiable President
There is no accountability in a Lootocratic government like ours. Nobody is accountable to anybody and that is fair enough because at least you see “accountable” on paper but never in reality. We are running a government solely on God’s grace as we have no Nebuchadnezzar to at least scare looters from looting the economy. As they are also Lootocratic leaders, they must exhibit the values and ethics of Lootocracy. Pretend to fight corruption but look the other way when corrupt Governors are leaving office, allow madam to pack millions of dollars in her private jet under the pretense of we-are-going-for-international conference, like they speak pidgin at any conference sef – may be we have also paid for exclusive pidgin translators for madam. Well well at least they shake hands and you don’t need grandiloquence or even a bit understanding of language to shake hands with a Secretary of State especially if unlike your Emperor husband you don’t bow before an official of another country’s government. *sigh.
1st Lady Patience Jonathan. She is well loved by Nigerians and has been cleared of corruption by the EFCC.
4- ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY FOR THE PEOPLE/ OLIGARCHIC LOOTOCRACY FOR WEINGOVERNMENTIZENS
Economic Democracy is the democratisation of economic power.
This requires decentralising economic power, and economically empowering smaller units — whether it is the individual, or the community, or the people collectively — through democratic mechanisms.
The present method of money creation, whereby virtually all money comes into society as an interest bearing debt owed to the private banking system is contrary to the democratic imperative that the creation of money should be a public service, under public control for the public good.
The present method of money creation gives great power to those private individuals and organisations who create the money.
Economic Democracy would empower the people with the means of creating and controlling their own money supply. It would democratise the creation and control of money.
LOOTOCRACY: As long as you ask Dangotay and he grants permission, you’ll have cement prices come down and build houses at will. While at it don’t dull because if him vex no house for you and your father. Isn’t it simpler to operate this Lootocratic Oligarchy where you as a president won’t have to think and thank God for that because it takes having sound brains to think anyway.
5- EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW
DEMOCRACY: Much is made of “the rule of law”. This means that judgements are made in accordance with a written law, rather than being made in an arbitrary manner.
Just as important as “the rule of law”, however, is equality before the law — meaning each citizen has an equal ability to seek and receive justice.
In our society, the ability of a person to defend himself successfully may often depend upon his ability to pay for his defence. It often seems that there is one law for the rich and one law for the poor.
A democratic society would ensure each citizen is truly “equal before the law”. It would ensure that everybody has free access to the law, just as we have free access to health care.
Dimeji Bankole is tired of the looting culture in Nigeria's lootocracy
If Democracy is government of the people, by the people and for the people, then it is easy to define Lootocracy.
Lootocracy is government of weingovernment, by weingovernment and for weingovernment.
If you don’t like it create your own kind of democracy because in our home-grown democracy – Lootocracy for short – every illegal thing is legal and every legal thing is not justice.
Lootocracy is the daily and consistent raping of the people, the fagging of the laws of the land and the masturbation of the people’s common-sense for adulterated orgasms. In reality the people will never have the real thing as long as we have empty heads and shameless hearts where we are supposed to have men of ability.
PS: Thanks to Alistair McConnachi and Sonala Olumhense whose works on Democracy and Lootocracy helped with the legalisation of writing the very first BOOK ON LOOTOCRACY. Content was supplied by the disheartening, clueless and shameless acts of Nigeria’s weingovernmentizens.
Follow me on twitter @omojuwa where we can discuss how we can make Lootocracy an acceptable government the world over. All hail the emperor.
STOP PRESS: The word lootocracy was originally coined to describe the corrupt cartels that have ruled and plundered countries like Nigeria, Kenya, and some of the former Soviet Republics
CLUE: Google “lootocracy” under Google images. The president whose face appears on the first line is erm the most lootocratic of all.
