Will there be elections in 2015?

You are not alone; I have asked myself over and over again, at the rate we are going will there be elections at the end of this festival of gore?Don’t tell me that elections held in Iraq and Afghanistan in the midst of strife. God will never let Nigeria degenerate to the level of fratricidal […]

You are not alone; I have asked myself over and over again, at the rate we are going will there be elections at the end of this festival of gore?
Don’t tell me that elections held in Iraq and Afghanistan in the midst of strife. God will never let Nigeria degenerate to the level of fratricidal decimation those countries have achieved. Some professional opportunists who have no other claim to fame except that they are professional lickspittles of any government in power always throw brickbats at anyone who dares warn that since we have fallen into the pit of violence we dug with our own hands, the best thing to do in the circumstance is to stop digging.
Blessed is the nation which has men of conscience to warn it in times of danger. Einstein did it for America. The establishment paid only lip service to the equality of the races. Blacks were still treated like vermin. It was not politically correct for Einstein to denounce White hypocrisy and make a case for Blacks, or Negroes as they were then called. But the great inventor and genius chose the path of forthrightness:
“The more I feel an American, the more this situation (discrimination against non-whites) pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out. Many a sincere person will answer: ‘Our attitude towards Negroes is the result of unfavourable experiences which we have had by living side by side with Negroes in this country. They are not our equals in intelligence, sense of responsibility, reliability.’
“I am firmly convinced that whoever believes this suffers from a fatal misconception. Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man’s quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition….
“I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognise how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes.
“I do not believe there is a way in which this deeply entrenched evil can be quickly healed.
But until this goal is reached there is no greater satisfaction for a just and well-meaning person than the knowledge that he has devoted his best energies to the service of the good cause….”
That was Albert Einstein, the German-born Jew who achieved eternal recognition as a peerless theoretical physicist and philosopher of science. The American establishment could have labelled him a saboteur or communist. But those in power chose to listen. Inch by inch, the campaigners against racial discrimination made unprecedented gains. The battle against discrimination in America is still ongoing as evidenced by the massive protests against the recent killing of Blacks by white policemen. But there is no doubt that the battle is on.
In this connection, I can’t help saying how disappointed I am with the level of mediocrity exhibited by those in our public space, especially in the last one year when campaigns effectively started in defiance of the electoral law. We have our own intellectuals who regularly intervene in the public space to vent their perspectives. Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka is one of them. The man whose hairdo reminds you of Einstein has not been known to take a back seat in matters concerning human rights or social degeneration. His antecedents bare him out. Mokwugo Okoye did exactly that till he died. Gani Fawehinmi made it his life’s work to such an extent that many of his critics showed up at his funeral to shed crocodile tears that their traducer was no more. Yusuf Bala Usman was a leading light of this school but our government is typically so hard of hearing that President Obasanjo reportedly walked him out of a public event shortly before the famous historian ended his earthly sojourn.
When a Soyinka talks, the proper thing to do is to challenge the facts if one disagrees with his perspective. But all we have seen are those who are unfit to undo the thongs of Soyinka’s intellectual sandals resorting to what they do best — insults, diatribe, innuendoes, blackmail.
What those “bolekaja” responders want us to believe is that all is well with the nation and that the Soyinkas of this world are only crying wolf where only Alsatians are to be seen. I wish them luck. Indeed I wish that we weren’t in dire socio-economic straits. I wish there wasn’t any need to devalue the national currency, the Naira. I wish Boko Haram wasn’t depopulating a section of the country and hoisting its blood-stained flag. I wish political gladiators were not to hell bent on resorting to self-help. I wish the suffocating tension in the political space was diffused instead of denying its existence.
I wish Richard Branson, Chairman of Virgin Atlantic, hadn’t said the following of my country: “We fought daily battle against government agents who wanted to daily make fortune from us, politicians who saw the government 49% as a meal to seek for all kinds of favour…watchdogs (regulatory body) that didn’t know what to do and persistently asking for bribes at any point…Nigeria people are generally nice but the politicians are very insane…that may be irony because the people make up the politician… The joint venture should have been the biggest African carrier by now if the partnership was allowed to grow, but the politicians killed it…Nigeria is a country we shall never consider to doing business again.”
I wish Mr Branson would call a press conference tomorrow and not only eat his words but announce that he was encouraged by the investment of General Electric in our economy and was returning with his Virgin brand.
If wishes were horses, said Shakespeare, beggars would ride. I wish we hadn’t started seeing the same kind of frightening spectacles as happened in the run-up to the 1965 elections, leaving us with a sickening déjà vu feeling.
Now I ask, in the midst of all the turmoil which if not promptly stemmed could lead to a veritable democratisation of violence, can anyone say definitively that the 2015 elections will hold?