The problem in Wahala Plaza

Political parties exist to win elections and clinch the mantle of power. When they fail, they get disillusioned. In Africa, a party not in power is a party in political purgatory. That simply means ogling the winners taking all while the loser gets nothing and even barred from ogling the party as it goes on. […]

Political parties exist to win elections and clinch the mantle of power. When they fail, they get disillusioned. In Africa, a party not in power is a party in political purgatory. That simply means ogling the winners taking all while the loser gets nothing and even barred from ogling the party as it goes on. This is why Naija’s Party of Desperate People, PDP has become a polycephalic specimen hibernating in political Siberia.
Sixteen years ago, its pompous and arrogant minders declared they had our nation by the balls and would continue to ruin it for the sixty years in the first instance. At that beginning, Ibrahim Mantu never failed to remind anyone who cared to listen that theirs is the largest political party in black Africa. It was at the height of political arrogance when, to quote an epiphyte of the party, Ibrahim Babangida; the party was not just in government, but also in power.
For a while, the PDP looked like a formidable obstacle that cannot be moved from the political landscape. Barely a year ago, the electorate realised that true power resides in their thumbprints and having exercised that power; they thought they were rid of the parasites sucking the life out of their dreams. With two tomatoes costing more than the price of a load of yam in a country with over 80% arable land; an information minister declaring the state broke and a presidential spokesman denying that the poor are groaning, Mr Ordinary Man is fast discovering how difficult it is to get out of a bog with just one leg free.
Since its ouster from office, a lot of tragedies has befallen the PDP not least the mind-boggling revelations of the monumental waste and flagrant abuse of office that characterised their time in office. Funny enough, those who are sitting in judgement against the PDP in the All Peoples Congress, APC were either major league or divisional masquerades. As archetypal fair-weather friends, they have abandoned ship. The leopard does not change its spots and I put it to those who think that the tales that daily regale us from the EFCC is revelation to wait until APC has done itself out of power. It may look long, but ours is bound to end like the proverbial okra farmer who got angry that the goat was eating his crops and gave supervision of his farm to the antelope. In the end, many APC supporters would eat their words.
Four things are alike, the epiphyte, the leech, the vulture and the Naija politrician. The first attaches itself to the tree and sucks it of life-giving juices. Even when the tree falls, it clings on until there’s no sap left and it’s too late for it to survive. The leech sucks the blood of its victims, hoping to move on when that blood dry up. The vulture does not have the capacity to hunt down its prey, but waits until stronger animals or diseases has taken down its prey, then swoops on it. Put the first three together and you have the average Naija politrician.
The Naija politrician has been sucking the life out of the nation since the first set of nationalists heckled colonial marauders from power. They recycle themselves and teir ways because they cannot survive outside of political office even if they have big titles. They are either too lazy or too unconscionable to build institutions that outlast them.
The Naija political phenomenon forces most of the things it comes in contact with to adopt its deadly forms and ways. Hitherto morally upright men and women transform into weird caricatures of themselves overnight. A check on the names, number and status of those currently under investigation locks your jaws.
It is not surprising that PDP seeks to rearrange its humpty-dumpty image only to end up with three factions. Ali Modu Sheriff under whose tenure Boko Haram festered and matured refuses to accept that he has been relieved of his duty. Ibrahim Mantu’s faction calls him the coordinator while Ahmed Makarfi sees himself as de-facto head. If you think the old new APC minions are learning from this turn of events, your brain has been poisoned.
It’s a shame that of all security concerns demanding police attention, a whole divisional office has been moved to Wahala Plaza. What for? Who cares if those who put Naija in dire straits lock themselves in one big hall and set themselves alight? It would’ve been good riddance to bad rubbish as long as they kill only themselves. Unfortunately they won’t, they’ll push the children of those whose lives they have blighted by their conduct to die in their place. The reason we are waiting is to see what happens that day when those who have nothing else to eat turn against those who stole their yams. As it stands, they are on either of the two teams -PDP’s first eleven or APC’s first league – and that is bad news for the poor.