Happy Democracy Day!

–Ehm!  What are you doing?- Mutum announced himself, standing over me with a leering smile on his face.— You’ve eyes. Surely you can see what I’m doing.–Of course, I can see that you are removing maize from their cobs. But what for?-–To plant—–And doing all this yourself? C’mon man, don’t let people come and see you […]

–Ehm!  What are you doing?-
 Mutum announced himself, standing over me with a leering smile on his face.
— You’ve eyes. Surely you can see what I’m doing.
–Of course, I can see that you are removing maize from their cobs. But what for?-
–To plant—
–And doing all this yourself? C’mon man, don’t let people come and see you like this. You look ridiculous doing it-
–Well, I choose to do it myself to relive all over again how we did it long ago. Call it nostalgia for the ol’ days. Come, try it and see how it brings back soothing memories of life lived the hard way which you and I went through and profited from.—
–Suit yourself. I’ll never touch the maize on the cob, except when it has turned to tuwo. Anyway, I didn’t come here to shear maize from its cob. I came to celebrate DD—
–And what’s that?—
–It’s the short form of Democracy Day-
–Then you’re persona non grata in this house.  You can as well go back to where you are coming from because we have no time for such frivolities—
— You call marking Nigeria’s nascent democratic experience frivolities? My friend, aren’t you carrying this negative attitude too far. This attitude of not seeing anything good in anything is becoming ridiculous, much like the activity you are engaged in right now–. Mutum waved contemptuously at the maize strewn on the ground.
–It is you that have not put on your thinking cap. Democracy Day –DD as you call it connotes what? That Nigeria has been under democratic rule for some length of time. So what? How many countries roll out the drums, with clamorous fanfare as we have been doing every May29, merely because Nigeria has become a democracy? Tell me how many?  Virtually none. The UK is reputed to be the oldest democracy; she does not celebrate anything about her democracy. For the British, the grandeur of its everyday practice in parliament such as the robust debates in Whitehall is enough celebration and they do not shut down the whole country while the debates are going on. The US, France and even Ghana that is close to us do not. What is the matter with us?—
-Nothing the matter with Nigeria. In fact she is a perfectly healthy country, may be a little sold on comfort and leisure. The Owambe thing, you know, that every now and then a country should allow her people some carousing, to let them let off steam or if you like as George Orwell called it, to ‘’come up for air,’’  I can’t see anything wrong with that.
–You think you can trivialise the matter. Go ahead and have a swell time doing that. By the time you wake up from your revelry –which is another word for your carousing—Nigeria would be worse off than it is.-
–Ok, what exactly is your point, why don’t you want DD marked?—
–It should be obvious to you, that is if you take time off from your carousing to ponder it-
–Seriously, what is eating you about marking Democracy Day—
—Ok, if you want them spelt out. First, Nigeria already has October!, the National Day that is memorialised every year. The ND is Nigeria’s Independence Day—marked fittingly so because it commemorates its attainment of nationhood, when it became self-governing, complete with an Anthem—which everyone including kids in kindergarten commit to memory—
–You are wasting my time. What has DD got to do with ND, don’t ramble, we all know the facts of Nigeria’s national life—
–I ‘m not rambling. It’s not my fault if your bird brain can’t capture the essence of my point! I’m saying that we already have National Day, or if you like, Independence Day, so Democracy Day is superfluous and unnecessary. Therefore marking the latter by declaring holiday and shutting offices amount to a waste of valuable man hours. When added to the many other public holidays, it is not surprising that productivity is so low in Nigeria. Not only this, the way we are going, soon no one will remember the ID or ND because the DD would have eclipsed it in importance.  Indeed a few years ago a huge cry of foul arose from the people when the government then down played the ID by marking it in a lukewarm manner but rolled out the red carpet for the DD, complete with Air force displays, military and para-military horseback riding and March –pasts.
—Except for the too many holidays causing loss of man hours and low productivity, your aggravation goes to no issue at all—
—I’m not aggravated. People like you are incapable of sustaining arguments without using abuse words. It shows lack of civility and poor knowledge of the issue at hand.—
–Now who is abusing whom?—I was merely saying that marking DD also has its strengths which includes that having failed at sustaining it several times before, it is worthwhile to mark it every passing year to show democracy is, to use a popular phrase, being deepened. Its observance therefore underscores  that it has come to stay as the only way to govern the polity permitted by law and that any martial incursion to truncate its continued existence would be resisted stoutly—
–I grant that democracy’s continued existence should not be negotiable. It should be a given and that fact must have sunk into every stakeholders’ skull by now, including the long suffering people, the over pampered and overpaid politicians, the indolent and money grubbing public servants and their contractor leeches and above all else by the military class which should be contented with gorging itself with its bloated budget.
–You’re rambling again. Why go to that detail? It is enough to say democracy has come to stay and anyone who wants power should join a political party because it is the only channel left to attain power—
–Well said. But it must also be noted that it should not be an excuse for the deplorable governance to continue. And what’s more, I dare say that this poor level of democratic practice brought about by abysmal political behaviour on the part of politicians, is the more reason why DD should not be put on show as it is being done every May 29—
–I disagree. I say warts and all, marking DD should go on. It is good for our democracy—
—And I also say the only good way to showcase democracy is good governance and selfless stewardship, not parading on stage in garish dresses and mouthing empty platitudes.