On being a politician and a political scientist…

ONE of the opening pedagogical directions in any political science or political philosophy beginning classes is to make a comparison between being a politician and being a political scientist. The teacher then asks the students how both can explicate our understanding of what it means to be political from their different endeavours. How does a political scientist and a politician contribute to our understanding of the political or politics, both as an art and a science? Is one better than the other in terms of their specific contributions, one as a practitioner and the other as a theoretician? Can a political scientist function effectively as a politician? The issues involved go beyond pedagogy. A personal example suffices. When I eventually opted to study political science and graduated from the University of Ibadan, my late mother was eager to know whether I would need to wait for the return to civilian rule and the era of politicians in governance before I could get a job. Much later in graduate school, when I was to start working for the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, as a research assistant, my parents thought it was clear what my career trajectory was to be; they thought because I studied political science, then I would become a “politician” or work for one. My parents therefore demonstrate how common it is to equate political science learning with politics and the politician’s vocation.

It is clear that a politician has a vocation to pursue the practical practice of politics by running for elected offices, trying to gain political power so as to be able to make significant decisions that will affect the political community. The political scientist, on the other hand, is professionally charged with the responsibility of theoretically understanding the vocation of politics, and how politicians behave under certain conditions. And yet, despite this distinct difference, we cannot assume the impossibility of one merging into the other. In other words, we cannot assume that a politician cannot be a political scientist, or vice versa. And this is so because, across the globe and specifically in Nigeria, there have been demonstrations of this possibility.

Let’s cite the most prominent global cases. I start with Woodrow Wilson. He was the 28th president of the United States. But he was also a foundational theorist of the discipline of public administration. He occupied the same theoretical spectrum that threw up Max Weber in the articulation and understanding of the theoretical foundations of public administration. Of course, he had a doctorate in history and political science. And he was the chief architect of the emergence of the League of Nations after the First World War. Then we have the redoubtable Henry Kissinger, who was also a political scientist before becoming the 56th United States Secretary of State, from 1973 to 1977. His pragmatic approach to geopolitics advocates the concept of realpolitik. Lastly, in Spain, there is Pablo Iglesias Turrión, who was first a political science teacher before becoming a member of the European Parliament. The situation is not different in Nigeria. Professors Humphrey Nwosu and Attahiru Jega are the most recent examples of political scientists who entered the space of practical politics of a different era as chairmen of the Independent National Electoral Commission, who were given the opportunity to transform electoral institutions and processes. There is also Professor Tunde Adeniran, a political scientist who became Minister of Education and later Nigeria’s ambassador to Germany. We can also talk about Ukpabi Asika, Dr Chuba Okadigbo, Professors Bolaji Akinyemi, Omo Omoruyi, Isawa Elaigwu, Adele Jinadu, Yayale Ahmed, Amal Pepple, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, Eghosa Osaghae, Julius Ihonvbere, Taiye Simbine, and many more, who are key players in the policy articulations of the ramifications of federalism and of foreign policy, governance, the bureaucracy and politics.

The successes or failures of these figures would depend on historical analyses, and the way posterity often judges historical figures and characters within the ambit of complex circumstances and situations within which they were forced to make political and policy decisions that affect millions of citizens. How would posterity judge Woodrow Wilson, who, for instance, pioneered public administration scholarship as an intellectual but imposed racial segregation in the American federal bureaucracy? How would future Nigerians, reading the annals of electoral reforms in Nigeria, assess the contributions of Prof. Attahiru Jega, or of Prof. Humphrey Nwosu for that matter?

What makes for a very interesting discourse is whether a political scientist, by reason of a theoretical understanding of the vocation of politics, can by that reason become a sterling politician. Did Wilson’s brilliant public administration scholarship prepare him for the presidency and the turbulence of politics in the United States in the nineteenth century? How did Humphrey Nwosu’s political science scholarship enable him to navigate the annulment of the June 12 presidential election by the military junta? In general, does the sanitised space of theoretical contestations prepare a political scientist or an academic for the murky domain of politics? How many Nigerian professors and vice-chancellors are prepared to be inducted into the Nigerian electoral processes, and their zero-sum competitiveness, especially when many participate in it as a means of making ends meet?

Scholarship operates on a rational model of argumentation and analysis. Politics possesses its own modus operandi, which is not often logical in the ways that a political scientist or economist would understand politics or economics. The variables, forces and factors that modulate politics and power play, especially within a postcolonial and plurally charged context like Nigeria, do not often conform to rational dynamics that could be studied within a laboratory.

Socrates’ critique of Athenian democracy sheds some light on this discourse. He asks us to imagine who we would like to have make critical decisions when a ship we are in is facing a mighty storm—fellow passengers who lack knowledge of the ship and the sea, or expert sailors? The answer seems clear enough when seen this way. Transposed into the understanding of a democracy, Socrates asks that we consider decision-making in a democracy and what that will mean between handing that process over to uneducated masses or the deliberate wisdom that emanates from the expertise of the few.

Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, insists that until philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers, the political community cannot know any peace. This statement is a gesture towards the understanding of political wisdom as a form of expertise that is required to facilitate the understanding and governance of a society. Governance, from this Socratic perspective, is a function of knowledge and not popular acclamation. You qualify to be a governor or a president because you have the requisite knowledge, like political science, rather than the mere statistical issue of choosing who gets the most votes in a popularity contest. And yet, Socrates grossly underestimates what politics is, not only within the small ambit of the Athenian city-state, but also within a modern state like Nigeria and its postcolonial dynamics. Socrates’ warning on the possibility of democracy leading to tyranny induced by demagoguery seems to have been vindicated by the rise of fascism and nationalism in supposed democracies across the world, from the United States and Hungary to India and Brazil.

However, both the political scientist and the politicians are involved in the understanding of what it means to govern and govern well, in order to generate a framework of the common good that will elevate the life prospects of the citizens. This, in my opinion, demands all hands to be on deck in the often complex tasks of making political decisions. To put it starkly, the task of governance is too serious and critical to be left to the whims and caprices of politicians alone. This has several implications. The first is that the task of governing—and the political vocation—is not the sole preserve of politicians. It is an open space for all who believe they have the intent and the capacities to make some good things happen for the benefit of the citizens. This therefore redirects us back to the demonstration of academics and scholars who have stepped into politics. Their failure is not a function of having been mere scientists. The political vocation can make anyone fail. Being a politician is not a guarantee of success in the political arena. And there are those who are not politicians but who have succeeded as politicians.

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Second, governance demands cooperative considerations to succeed. This means that politicians—whether those who are purely involved in the political process or those who are academics and are considering getting involved—need all the help they can get in making a success of the governance imperative. Here, I am critiquing the gross anti-intellectualism of the Nigerian political space; the unwillingness of the government, any government, to recruit intellectual and academic powers towards the complex responsibility of making governance work for the flourishing of the citizens. Politicians need all the help they can get. And what better help than that which comes from those whose vocation is to theoretically understand the working of the political space and its contestations and policy dynamics? And the key issue here is not to subsume this intellectual power under a selfish partisan political agenda. Rather, it is to facilitate a grand alliance that enables the articulation of policies for the common good. Then, we will not need to make the distinction between the politician and the political scientist again. Both are critical players in the task of governance, and of governing well.

•Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration