Before and beyond 2015: A fight over nothing

When a few arrogate unto themselves the voice of a particular religion or region, geopolitical or tribal zone resulting in emotional issues and create unnecessary tension by heating the polity, there is bound to be anarchy that will make all look foolish over a fight over nothing.  When a few get themselves armed, or are […]

When a few arrogate unto themselves the voice of a particular religion or region, geopolitical or tribal zone resulting in emotional issues and create unnecessary tension by heating the polity, there is bound to be anarchy that will make all look foolish over a fight over nothing.  
When a few get themselves armed, or are armed by politicians to unleash mayhem on helpless and hapless voters  as vigilantes, tribal cult groups, thugs and religious extremists, the nation is bound to groan and send many into early graves over a fight over nothing. When the electorate fight for desperate leaders who have been squatting or sitting on the floor of corruption like bloated toads and are now putting their two hands on the sand of ease of corruption, it is a fight over nothing.
But the efforts of these negative forces, whether sponsored or catalysed by politicians who play god, in most cases is bound to affect all of us.  It is like a man throwing a stone in the market place.  No one knows on whose head the stone will land.  Many Nigerians are now ready to give evil people a dose of their own poison.
Some of our politicians are behaving like madmen and specialists in glass houses, threatening to pull the edifice down in the face of eminent loss of an election.  Civilised citizens, women and youths of this nation should not allow them.  
No individual or group has a monopoly of violence.  At the end of the present exercise, most politicians would have used their hands to slap themselves because of their careless utterances and negative actions that are against the corporate and peaceful existence of the nation.  Very soon they will begin to nurse the wounds of their actions.   When there is a state of anomie, politicians would have no place to hide as they would have constituted themselves as the enemies of the people.  
The people themselves will subsequently demand their pounds of flesh by the simple reason that those they expect to change their predicaments in poor medicare, housing, dilapidated educational and other systems, have severally and serially turned out to disappoint in the long run.  It is payback time for such politicians.
Many of our contesting politicians have, in one way or another, contributed in the system failure that we are presently experiencing in all sectors of our socio-political and economic experiences.  Many lives have been wasted unnecessarily.
Now, some of them indulge in verbal condemnations of what they helped to build or install, and electorate, who are long pauperised in poverty, are busy clapping their sapped hands in singing different hallelujah songs to thieving and depraved politicians.  They do that when other politicians with vision and mission not rooted in tribal and religious idiosyncrasies are left marooned in the gutter of lack of political supports. As we fight over nothing and make brothers to rise against brothers, tribes against tribes, religion against religion, and foolishness against the wise, let us remember our local, state and federal systems long killed by the greed and avarice of a few that are ever smiling to the banks when there is mass poverty and anarchy in the land.
Our youths are continuously getting restive, and may not, as compliant minds, continue to watch helplessly while analogue leaders continue to market their ignorance in leadership and general maladministration.  We can no longer use yesterday’s analogue solutions to solve present digital problems.  And we cannot expect change in our system if we continue to do things and recycle old leaders to do things the old way.  The world is moving too fast for non-compliant politicians.
Can’t you see desperate politicians forming new alliances by discarding age- long friends and allies? Can’t you see these politicians defecating on the stools they sat on when they are about to leave? Can’t you see many of them dumping the ladder they used to climb to the top? If they can do all these without qualms because of power, is it you the bloody electorate that they would not dumb in their hours of glory? Use your tongue to count your teeth and do not fight over nothing.
Dr S. A. Shaibu is a former director-general, Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN).