The Ancient Mariner

It is an ancient Mariner,And he stoppeth one of all.‘By thy large, rotund tummy and dreamy eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? The leader’s door opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set:May’st hear the merry din.’ He holds him with his muscular hand,‘There was a ship,’ […]

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of all.
‘By thy large, rotund tummy and dreamy eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

The leader’s door opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.’

He holds him with his muscular hand,
‘There was a ship,’ quoth he.
‘Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard loon!
Efstoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his dreamy eye-
The nation stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child:
The Mariner hath its will.

The nation sat on a stone:
It cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The dreamy-eyed Mariner.

And the Mariner speaks really well. By his critical and wicked choice of words; by the accuracy of his critique and apt timing for maximum damage; by his blunt and sometimes quite insensitive frankness; by the abundance of his native intelligence; and by his deceptive and unsophisticated-looking countenance; and, above all, by his nonnegotiable patriotism, he has taught the country to listen-and to listen well whenever he has something to say.  And it is always take-it-or-leave-it.
You may like him for his ability to call a spade a spade; you may hate him for having such a megalomaniacal sense of his own importance; you may loathe him for fighting and winning the war; you may detest him for sheltering the corrupt who toe his line; you might hate him for going after those who tore his line; but it is not with former President Olusegun Obasanjo that you will conspire to destroy this nation; and he will not so much as be complicit by his silence. And that is why he always speaks-at critical junctures whenever the polity is in danger of being shortly short-changed, especially one that is the result of misrule.   
President Olusegun Obasanjo has again spoken of rumours of an interim national government and a possible military takeover of the country. He said the one is not known to the Nigerian constitution; and of the other, he said soldiers are ‘not trained to run the affairs of any nation.’
The former president was speaking at his residence in Abeokuta while receiving a delegation of All Progressives Congress women leaders led by Hajiya Aisha Buhari, the wife of the presidential candidate.
“I do hope we will get things more right. A lot of rumours are flying around; I think we have gone away from the rumour of Interim Government because that is not in our constitution,” he said. “I hope we will soon go away from the rumour of handing over to the military because the military is not meant to run affairs of a nation in terms of running government.”
Obasanjo warned that the international community, particularly the African Union, will not tolerate any undemocratic form of government. “And the intentional community will not condone it, particularly African Union where we have a situation. We have said-and it is part and parcel of the constituting act of the African Union-that any government that is not brought about on the basis of the constitution will not be accepted, will not be tolerated and will not be a member of the AU until that government is dismantled.”
He campaigns of hatred. “We have serious issues of security; we have serious issue of our economy; we have issue of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment; we have serious issues of infrastructure-these are issues amongst others that I believe the campaign of those who are interested in the present and the future of this country should be directed at-how are we going to get them, what are we going to do; not trivial issues of certificate, no certificate.”
“It shouldn’t be – we are the largest country in Africa, we should be a model, setting examples, we shouldn’t be drawing Africa backward. I hope we will not. I hope at the end of this exercise, we would be where we should be, leading Africa and showing examples for the rest of Africa and indeed the rest of the world,” Obasanjo stated.
And he cautioned that Nigeria should not be led the way of Cote d‘Ivoire after that country’s last presidential election. “I said it. This is what they had in Cote d’ Ivoire that led them to a very serious problem; not issue of religion, not issue of tribe, not issue of section but issues of unity of this country. The hate campaign that we have embarked upon now, I hope this will be the last time in the history of this country that we will have this type of campaign of hatred or division. I think the emphasis should be on what unite us, not what divide us.”
And, even more ominously, according to the opposition, security personnel have been deployed all over the country but especially to several selected states, not to keep the peace as is their bounden duty, but to disturb it as it is their current order; and this way help create the insurrection that will save the government from having to face or participate in the upcoming elections.
Nigeria has become a nation of rumours, of true lies and of gossip, a place where the truth is not privately encouraged and never officially told: what is confirmed is not true and what is denied is not necessarily false. They plot and plan and scheme for an interim government or a military regime or more the same of an elongated tenure of an adulterated failure, but never for the popularity-elected one to which they pay so much lip-service.
This is a system that is afraid of its own essence-a so-called democracy manifestly living in mortal fear of elections and in determined flight from them; and a government creating obstacles on its own path and in direct conflict with its own agencies over the desirability and necessity of, and preparedness, for elections.
Perhaps, those who oppose elections may in the main have given up on Nigeria; and it is in order therefore to assume that if they do really go on to lose the election, they may attempt to drag the country down with them. Opposition to the election, reaction to its outcome and the prospects of a post-election new order look like good opportunities. And with all the fault-lines fresh, refreshed and frayed, this will not be a very difficult thing for a very determined villain to pull through.
Such an insurrection can be caused by security personnel as the opposition alleged and as many have suspected for long, or by a reserve armed groups at the ready to cause mayhem, or by uninformed partisans that, to all intents and purposes, constitute what is clearly a tolerated private army within our midst-or indeed a resurrected Boko Haram.
Any of these can be used to create the kind of situation that will make the elections difficult or their aftermath impossible to manage in all or in selected places; but it shouldn’t be difficult to determine who can be behind it, because there is only one entity that is interested in postponing, sabotaging and stopping the elections-and that is the government. It has already done the first once; it remains to be seen whether it will attempt the other two.
Luckily whatever happens henceforth, it is clear that our people have woken up sufficiently to resist any attempt to reintroduce the emotive religious angle that was so successfully utilized and exploited in the aftermath of the 2011 elections. Even though the effort to preach hatred is being rekindled within the past few weeks, Christians and Muslims are brotherly enough to make it all come to naught.
And for the moment, Obasanjo has spoken and the nation has listened-and like the Oracle, he must speak again when the nation demands. And the nation demands it now as new plots are hatched. The nation demands it as it goes to the polls tomorrow. The nation demands it as polling runs its course.
As they say, democracy is not in the election; it is in the counting. The nation demands that Obasanjo speaks as the votes are counted and collated, and as they are announced and broadcast. Do speak, please, because we are all voiceless and alone.

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony

O Nation! This soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely ‘twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

Farewell, Farewell! But this I tell
To thee, thou Homeland!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

The Mariner, whose eye is dreamy,
Whose head with age is bald,
Is gone: and now the Nation
Turned from the bridegroom’s door.

It went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
The nation rose the marrow morn.