I used to think that our military found a convenient excuse in obscure technical language for their difficulties in crushing the little inconvenience that was initially the Boko Haram insurgency in its first few years of existence.
I am sure I was not the only one who looked up ‘asymmetrical warfare’ when military spokespeople started throwing it around.
The term had made an appearance in the early years of the wars that tied the American adventure in Afghanistan and in proxy skirmishes with the Taliban, a poorly-advised inheritance from the Soviets, the Americans had felt too confident to scrutinise.
In truth, it was a thoroughly misleading term, giving the impression as it did that symmetrical warfare was predictable, preferable and honourable because it was conducted in a manner guaranteed to let the Americans win the war, even if it lost a battle here and there.
When the enemy will not show itself to be blown up, or it chooses unconventional methods that do not have their own chapters in standard texts on warfare in military training institutes, or even when the enemy would just refuse to lie down and bring an honourable end to the just war, the term is used to create worse images for an enemy unversed in modern conflicts, and justify why taxpayers should continue to fund expensive wars in places that are difficult to pronounce or locate on maps.
So, now you get the general idea that asymmetrical means something unusual, awkward, or even downright dishonest.
Because it is generally only popular with the side that finds it a bit exasperating because it would not sit still, it is also slightly dishonest.
The word steals an otherwise decent scientific term that describes a phenomenon or object that is defined by a high degree of exactitude, order and predictable uniformity.
Applied to warfare, it indulges in a bit of subterfuge by suggesting that there are wars from which you can extract enough similarities to establish patterns that military generals will speak of with familiarity and ease, and politicians will not lose too much sleep over.
It tries to sell you the idea that wars are designed to the finest details by both sides, presumably after a lot of haggling, war plans exchanged, battle orders approved by all sides and winners and losers agreed in advance.
At this stage, there should be no reason to violently disagree that all wars being thoroughly noisy, untidy and disruptive affairs, which tend to relocate lives, limbs and the general population rather rudely, applying the pretty word, symmetry, which engineers and mathematicians have painstakingly coined to describe harmony and order to violent conflicts, amounts to linguistic treason.
But can we try to see if, (as we do a lot of in Nigeria), we can borrow and adapt asymmetry to our politics?
Certainly, foreigners and some academics looking into the amazing dynamics and unpredictability of our politics will be comforted and may say,”Ah, Nigerian asymmetrical politics”.
It certainly will sit better than the attempt by hard-pressed military generals to explain why a handful of villagers in remote parts of the world keep embarrassing them by running away from huge conventional battles, and choosing to lob a grenade or blow up a bomb with an eye to being widely reported.
Still, if it will achieve some popularity, the term has to be respectably rooted.
It will have to derive legitimacy from the idea that much of the politics around the world is conducted around some fairly familiar rules and processes.
For instance, most political systems have constitutions, parties, politicians identified with parties, parties with generally familiar identities and membership, which exerts strong influence on the conduct of party leaders and elected officials, philosophies, ideologies and a substantially stubborn following that guarantees their survival, whether they win elections or not.
There is also the general practice that parties are ‘owned’ by members, and politicians are accountable to members and the public.
This prevents politicians from bolting away with mandates and large chunks of the party to the enemy’s camp and leaving party loyalists without a roof over their heads.
We will get away with a twist in the English language and hostile, uninformed critics if we claim with a straight face that Nigeria’s unique brand of democracy can be properly understood to be defined by the basic character of asymmetric politics.
We may need to strongly invite some attention to the undeniable fact that we do have a constitution, and those who doubt it can drive on the road in major streets and buy it from vendors darting between vehicles to reach Nigerians who are passionate about reading their constitution.
We may also need to remind the world that our entire political process is governed by the constitution, and the fact that the judiciary has become the most decisive influence in the manner politics is conducted is actually evidence of the foresight of the framers, who knew the Nigerian character very well.
Our asymmetric politics is defined by the concept and existence of the strong leader.
This will be people who will fawn and grovel before the multitudes; before being elected after bitter and bruising battles.
After that, they assume larger-than-life powers, pocket the legislature or fight it to irrelevance, privatise the commonwealth, crush the opposition by any(mostly reprehensible) means, corrupt the judiciary and turn the multitudes that elected them into beggars for services to be paid from public funds.
They give themselves powers to make billionaires, appoint thousands of cronies into choice positions, and remove any public officer with a whiff of independence, scare the public off roads with long convoys, and otherwise generally divide the population between those who hate them intensely and those who are paid to sing their praises to the high heavens.
In twenty years, since we resumed experiments with systems that attempt to locate real power within the citizenry, we have established strong cases for the claim that our asymmetrical politics has a sound basis for inclusion into the broad family of democratic systems, even if it may not enjoy a massive global following.
We have had strong leaders who pushed themselves into every face, wrestled vigorously around the margins of democratic boundaries with everyone who mattered and even attempted to create their own political lives outside the constitution.
We had leaders thrust at the nation, barely equipped to lead a complex and quarrelsome nation.
They left legacies that did not register their presence, or almighty chaos that showed they should not have been allowed near power in the first place.
We have leaders who see power as an end in itself, choosing to do as little as possible and hoping that things will right themselves.
Our system has places only for powerful politicians who will trample on the opposition for four years and a day after, they change dresses to lead it to victory against their former parties.
We have leaders who believe that to interfere in affairs of parties that brought them to power is to behave like the doctor who insists that severe hemorrhaging should not be stopped because the body is designed to correct itself.
The world may not be too impressed with our brand of politics, but we have earned the right and the patent for asymmetrical politics.
