By John Amoda
THE media, especially the print media, is often the worst offender when it comes to reducing vision and mission statements into labels and mantras. Vision 20-20 is replaced with Vision 20-20-20 and there is another symbol to be treated as if it is the Policy Documents, too bulky to be subjected to critical review.

So we transit from 7-Point Agenda to Transformation Agenda and Transformation becomes an adjective to repackage yesterday’s manna for today’s subsistence. This 3 part series is devoted to an appreciation of the Transformation Vision of President Jonathan Goodluck.

It is devoted to an appraisal of the feasibility of Transformation Governance presented as the President’s Nigeria Development Strategy. Under the present circumstance of fire fighting on all fronts at once, there is danger of our throwing out the baby with the bath water; a danger of deducing the process from policy outcomes.

President Jonathan has presented his governance vision for Nigeria. What is the present institutional context of
Nigeria’s existence? President Jonathan has programmes for implementing this vision. What are the security analyses assuring this Administration of the sustainability of its present policy leadership during and after the expiration of its tenure?

The President has presented an agenda of transformation. What is the intelligence analysis justifying hope of the transformation of the role of the Armed Forces in the governance of Nigeria? These three questions are dealt with in the series.

The first essay provides a description of the institutional context of Nigeria’s political economic structure. The context is described as that of the continuity of colonial governmental functions informing change of governmental structures.

The Presidential Structure of Government has replaced the Parliamentary; the Regional Federal Structure has been replaced by the State Federal Structure; Structures of colonial governance have been changed without change of the colonial functions of government. Transformation if it is to be effective must embrace both structures and functions to effect transition from the colonial to the anti-colonial postcolonial.

The second essay dealt with the need to reckon with the insecurity of Civilian Rule. A transformation Agenda must address the present security condition of Civilian Rule, for the notion of transformation without institutionalized security of Civilian Rule is an incoherent policy.

The third and concluding essay addresses the matter of the ambivalence of the Armed Forces to constitutional Electoral Regimes. As long as governance is instituted under Constitutions promulgated by the Military, for the 1999 constitution is essentially the 1979 Constitution, the Armed Forces role is not subject to critical examination.

A review of the extant constitution that subjects that role to sustained critical appraisal will highlight this issue of ambivalence that every transformation agenda must address. For transformation entails critical review of the history and relevance of all institutions of government.

These three themes of transformation governance serve as perspective for appreciating the process or course of governance as instituted by policies. They hopefully should further our understanding of the structural determination of Nigerian politics. We make a distinction between politics in Nigeria and Nigerian politics.

The former is both national and international while the latter is the politics of Nigerian politicians, civilian and military. In the first essay we attempt at explaining the continuity of “colonial” conduct of government in the context of change of governmental structures.

We seek to explain why the spirit of post colonial governance is still the same as that of colonial governance- continuity of political cultures of governments is explained by functions of governments not by their structures. In the second essay we offer an explanation of the insecurity of civilian constitutional rule.

In the concluding essay we focus on the ambivalence of the armed and security forces towards constitutional electoral regimes. The issues addressed in these essays are not only Nigerian. They are African and thus address the fundamentalities of the raison d’etre of the African Union as a Collective Security Statecraft Organization.

Events in member states have immediate and potential relevance for the African Union, and thus the Nigerian case study is of paradigm importance to the ECOWAS sub-region and provide lesson learnt information to the other sub-regions.