By John Amoda
PAMELA HORN begins the first chapter of her book titled The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant with two quotations one from the Lord Jesus and other from Aristotle.

“The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his Lord.”-Jesus. “From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”-Aristotle

Both statements are two sides of the same coin. There is no disciple without a master just as in the same way that a servant cannot be above his Lord. The relationship of disciple and master is one of acknowledged superiority and the relationship of the servant to his lord is one of domination.

Aristotle goes one more step further when he asserts that it is the nature of society, for some to be marked out for subjection and others for rule. He asserts that all societies are class structured; in every society there is a class of rulers and a class of subjects.

The Lord Jesus only calls attention to existing relations of influence and power. Aristotle claims that to be a member of society is to be either a member of the class that rules or of the class ruled. While Aristotle’s statement may be reflective of an aristocrat bias, Roberto Michels in his Iron Law of Oligarchy observes that all efforts at reform ends up establishing the rule of the reformers over society.

This is so, he argues, because the every process of administering the common good vests authority in the administrator which authority in spite of constitutions and manifestos to the contrary changes into domination. His conclusion was reached studying cases of equalitarian and revolutionary changes of order.

The deterministic arguments of Roberto Michels can be critiqued. Is it posited that reformers cannot learn from the history of others? Must reformers be condemned to repeating the history of their predecessors? If any group should be able to learn from history it is those who have been, as it were, marked for subjection, especially the African ex-slaves and ex-colonised. Contemporary post-colonial history seem to confirm the observation that the more things change in Africa the more they stay the same.

This need not be so. Things need to be so in the Nigeria of 2011 but they are likely to be so, even with INEC’s success in organising free and fair elections. A free and fair election that leaves unchanged the growth in the numbers of the poor may indeed fuel insecurity and embolden those who have not been able to effect change in their condition of subjection to imitate the Tunisians and Egyptians.

From the case of Cote D’lvoire we see that elections do not necessarily resolve structural conflicts of ownership and of subjection. Egyptian’s election have also yielded a harvest of unrest for an end to Mubarak’s 33-year rule. Egyptian elections, it would seem, have not addressed the issues that are now the raison d’être of the mass demand for change of government.

The question to be addressed to the leaders of Egyptian mass protest is, what should be the goal of this mass protest? Is it enough to force the resignation of Mubarak? Should the objective be change of government without change of regime; that is, without change of those with power who determine those who will be in office? African elections are showing that change of government is difficult because governments are used by regimes to maintain a regime-structured society; one in which some, the majority are marked for subjection and some, the few, are marked for rule. What can the Egyptian mass movement teach us about political change? Who and what is driving the Egyptian movement for change?

External interests now want change! What kind of change? Mubarak has been driven to accept the urgency of change? What kind of change can the Mubarak regime live with? The leadership of the mass movement, for there is some measure of direction being given to the campaign, what do they want? Is their demand for democratisation of the Mubarak regime or is it for more? Who is speaking for the Egyptian poor, the Felaheen? How much change of society will be produced by a democratisation movement?

The streets that are being liberated from the control of the police and security forces are manifestation of political power. How can a democracy mass movement emerge from this street movement? What lessons is INEC learning from the Cote d’lvoire and the Egyptians crises? It would appear that INEC cannot limit itself to only planning and administering the 2011 elections and not address the pressing issues of national security, for its operations are obviously contextualised by pervasive insecurity in the Nigerian society.

There is now a need to think through the process, to factor into election administration how its results can advance resolution of conflicts over proprietary control of society. Managing elections for office, this is the less difficult task, even though it is not an easy task as our friend, the INEC chairman knows only too well. Managing elections with sub-texts of regime change, this is the African challenge of the moment, and Nigeria can learn from the two ongoing crises of state power, Ivorian and Egyptian.