Between courage and a fistful of dollars

What does it take for them to ignore the rot in the polity that crudely confronts them in the current dispensation, or the wanton insecurity that has made life in most parts of our dear nation such a hell hole for millions of Nigerians especially in the Northeast? What does it take for Nigerians to […]

What does it take for them to ignore the rot in the polity that crudely confronts them in the current dispensation, or the wanton insecurity that has made life in most parts of our dear nation such a hell hole for millions of Nigerians especially in the Northeast?
What does it take for Nigerians to embrace the prospects of an even more brutal attack on their socio-economic wellbeing by an inept administration which astounded Nigerians and the world alike in the manner it ceded large swaths of Nigerian real estate to marauding gangs of depraved maniacs masquerading under the banner of a religion they have so very little in common with?
What does it take for a few some supposedly elite groups of Nigerian across the broad Nigerian political spectrum to sneer at the positive change promised by the All Progressives Congress (APC), in preference for the retention of a status-quo that promises only the most gruesome assault on our collective well-being by the incompetent PDP administration under which the collective well-being of Nigerians was serially debased for over sixteen year? And; to stretch the inquest a little further, what made a posse of otherwise respected traditional rulers from the Southwest to throw all caution to the when they endorsed the candidacy of a president many Nigerians have already written off as the most incompetent in the entire history of the nation in an election scheduled to hold in a matter of weeks?
In the piece I wrote soon after General Muhammadu Buhari emerged as the APC Presidential candidate, I made mention of one important irony in the fact that most of the youths who now risk being stoned to death for insisting on lawful change from the status-quo through the ballot box were not even born when he became the military Head of state in the 1980s. They know next to nothing about his value system or his open resentment for the sort of corruption and abuse of office that has become quite normal at all levels of governance today beyond what they could grasp from second-hand sources or historical accounts. They have no incline of what Nigeria looks like or when government is structured to meet the broad expectations of Nigerians.
The same cannot obviously be said about our elites who are fully cognisant of what Nigeria resembled in the First Republic and even in the early days of the Second Republic when they earned their education on government scholarships at a time their hostels functioned like the best three star hotels we have today. These same elites, now in their fifties, sixties and seventies, were the direct beneficiaries of all the good things that Nigeria could offer when the government functioned properly with negligible corruption. They are also, sadly, the most willing accomplices in the current desperate attempts to perpetuate the sort of incompetence and mediocrity experienced in the corridors of power today.   
These largely imbecilic generation of Nigerians, being the poor students of history that they have become, see nothing funny when the same government that was AWOL for the nearly four years that it took the ragtag army of Boko Haram lunatics to annex almost a quarter of the nation’s real estate, only to give a dubious six-week timeline in which it expects to defeat the same insurgents.
This same generation of Nigerians, who are also among the most travelled in the land, appear so blinded in their buffoonery that they cannot see the obvious flaw when a particular candidate ignores his sordid records in office and instead campaigns using the pulpit to deepen the obvious cleavages that have existed among our countrymen since Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, and his group of misguided assassins overthrew the First Republic over allegations of – wait for it – corruption and nepotism. How I wish all those poor Majors that participated in the putsch were alive today!
In the past several weeks since the president and his party engineered a temporary reprieve from the humiliation that surely awaited him had the elections held as scheduled last February, President Jonathan has expended valuable time in shuttles to different Pentecostal churches now sadly under the leadership of this same pathetic generation of Nigerians who see nothing wrong in the anomaly.
Since the President owes his election to Nigerians across diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, it is either they failed to advice the Jonathan to also include visits to Mosques or traditional religious shrines, or he simply does not give a damn. It has become apparent that under this very dangerous president, the end is now expected to justify the means.
It now remains for us only to examine why the President sees nothing wrong in his campaign methods and why this infantile generation of the damned see nothing repulsive in his strategies. And very fortunately for Nigerians, the exact reasons behind their chosen pattern of behaviour no longer belong in the realm of speculation. We have a certain God-fearing pastor from the war-ravaged plains of Dikwa to thank for that. Addressing a well-attended press conference in Kaduna on Tuesday, Pastor Kallamu Musa Dikwa, who heads the Voice of Northern Christian Movement, last week once again accused the present leadership of CAN of betraying the vision of its founding fathers. Dikwa reiterated that the CAN leadership received the funds on 21st of January, 2015, and gave N3 million to each of its state chapters.
The CAN has not sued the Pastor for libel as I write this. Even the normally combative spokesmen of the Presidency like Femi Fani-Kayode and Doyin Okupe have been mute over the allegation.
Not surprisingly, Dikwa has vowed to protect that source of his information with his life, insisting that he will never disclose his name. “The states branches of CAN collected the money. But they don’t know how much it is, whether it is N6 or N7billion. I have sent text messages to the leadership of CAN telling them to repent or I will make it open. So that is why I have decided to let the world know. Some of the CAN leadership have called me and said what happened was wrong and that it must be corrected. I said yes, it can be done.”
With the type of courage exhibited by Pastor Kallamu, hope may still exist that Nigeria’s wasted generation may still redeem themselves for the benefit of a nation which pampered them in their prime. But they must hurry. There is precious little time left before they eventually expire like all mortals. But when you are also confronted with obscene pictures of pot-bellied monarchs from the Southwest blessing our failed president, you also fear the worst about their true motivation. Given all the stories that abound about inducements and all that, we are left with few options than to conclude that in their particular case, the allure of a fistful of dollars could have been very intoxicating.
A good leader unites people towards a common purpose, while a bad one is only interested in ‘ruling’ people. I suspect President Jonathan to be the latter. In his desperation, the president is completely oblivious of the fact that the vital institution he holds in trust for all Nigerians is diminished each time he is pictured crutched before monarchs or religious figures.
But we most proceed on the promise and courage exhibited by Pastor Kallamu and Father Mbaka. Honour and integrity may still return to the corridors of power one day, whether it is in Aso Rock Villa, or the hollowed chambers of churches, mosques, and other religious places