The return of the prodigal
Where pointed our moral compass when we applauded the doctrine of necessity rather than ask for a general election after the death of Yar’adua? And where was our senility when we chose to debate zoning only to watch the maverick, Goodluck Jonathan train, pollute our landscape with sycophantic groups baying from every rooftop until they […]
Where pointed our moral compass when we applauded the doctrine of necessity rather than ask for a general election after the death of Yar’adua? And where was our senility when we chose to debate zoning only to watch the maverick, Goodluck Jonathan train, pollute our landscape with sycophantic groups baying from every rooftop until they took us through the mockery of a convention and crowned Jonathan flagbearer at the Eagle Square?
Today, the political landscape is so polarised; the priests of isms and schisms have upstaged national political discourse by defaming every opponent of the PDP. How many of us have not heard that Buhari would take a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious country like Nigeria into the Iran-type Islamic revolution? Or the beer-parlour talk that Nuhu Ribadu’s party is going to return us to the IBB-era type of institutionalised corruption? When Buhari picked a fire-spitting if only slightly rabid, Pentecostal pastor as running mate, they discovered that this running mate should be stoned to death for guilt of the law of apostasy having converted to Christianity from Islam. And to Ribadu, they have moved from alleged inexperience to how his anti-corruption credentials are tainted by his closeness to an ex-governor he once vowed to prosecute. Anything that stands on the way of their candidate to be recrowned must be maligned.
We are also usually reminded that this militant candidate would excise us from our economic links – crude oil if we make the mistake of voting someone else. For a country which derives its milk from the oil that flows in the Niger-Delta having systemically annihilated other sources of sustenance; and with the brigandage glorified as militancy in the Niger-Delta, we are reminded that to keep Nigeria united to its crude, we should allow one of its own to ruse.
The pro-Jonathan group have nothing to point to for achievements in one year. For our future, they have made no promises and can’t be expected to spring surprises. In all these political chiaroscuro, nothing has been said about moving the nation forward; about a blueprint to improve on our economy; rescue our sliding educational system beyond granting political licenses for federal or feudal universities; about ending the carnage on the Plateau or the tension in the North-East; about tackling the social crisis – crisis of insecurity; non-availability of power, water, good roads and other essentials of life. We are encouraged not to ask questions about the future that awaits our children. Our foreign and crude reserves are gone, NNPC was not supposed to be broke until the cat was let out of the bag – the nation stands still, waiting for April. We are a nation adrift with a future cataclysmically flummoxed.
It is perhaps not difficult for us to then understand why a man like Obasanjo, who, in normal climes should be completing his unfinished jail term before beginning a new one for the murder of the innocent in Odi and Zaki Biam to mention a few, is the Baba Isale of PDP politics. Indeed, there are more shockers coming from the stable of the PDP as Jonathan coasts home to victory. The veracity of Nigeria being a theatre of the absurd is playing out practically. The shame of our nation is about to be telecast to our shame. Our political incongruity would become ready materials for lecture of political tragic-comedy across continents. For those expressing shock at the jeremiad of Bode George, they better talk to their psychiatrists, because this wanton prodigal is coasting home to a presidential pardon and a pride of place where he nominates his wife or any of his children for ministerial slots before our very eyes.
We are moving to the era where to shun political corruption would be a mortal sin. And if Jonathan fails to realise his morbid ambition of entrenching the turn by turn presidency, they will behave like wanton rats that disperses the beans it cannot crunch. This is the tragedy of Nigeria. A tragedy that is more shameful than throwing parties for an unrepentant returning prodigal. Already, nothing is moving, nothing of course except the subtle laying of the carpet of ineptitude – a new electoral law that makes it impossible for the courts to remove a governor installed by electoral fraud. A FOI Bill to be passed but certainly not to be endorsed by a president so engrossed in his own self-succession. A group which has not even gained political ascendancy but scorns at other ethnic groups by asking them to forget ‘their so-called slot’ is a nation dancing on the precipice. When the likes of Bode George come straight from prison to be accorded a VIP status on the presidential campaign train, the joke is on Nigerians if they allow these gang of clueless revellers a chance in April.