There are convincing indicators that Nigeria’s president, Mr Bola Tinubu, is committed to exterminating democracy in Nigeria. Although he has adopted veiled, pretentious tactics, the enlightened, discerning mind is aware of his underhanded, invidious, and manipulative procedures, which threaten democracy as we know it. Basking in his otherwise stale moniker, “master strategist,” it is obvious to all Nigerians of good conscience that the president is subtly pursuing self-serving, egocentric objectives. It is an experiment that commenced in the APC’s putrid political laboratory in 2023. The experimentation has so far attracted willing goons, turncoats, and accolades as apparatuses to achieve an aim viewed by them as a class act, but which in reality, ushers in misbegotten conditions for Nigerians. When the first citizen declared that power was not served on a platter and elected to adopt a boorish tactic of “snatch it, run with it”, many people did not take him seriously, but those who knew his political antecedents were circumspect of his pronouncements. Today, Nigeria is disingenuously gravitating towards a one-party state as a consequence of one man’s ambition to perpetually remain in power, but unwittingly etching his name on the country’s register of political infamy.
When the president summarily suspended the elected governor of Rivers State, Mr. Sim Fubara, over very flimsy, implausible reasons, many people thought he was acting in the interest of the country’s democracy. The elected governor was replaced by a military Sole Administrator who immediately betrayed his power-drunk idiosyncrasies. The president’s action was beyond Rivers State. It was a tactic to instil fear in all the governors, politicians, public servants and many elected officials across the country. Immediately after the Fubara incident, many governors, public servants, politicians, and elected officials started to see Tinubu differently – as the proverbial bull in a China shop. They understood the message clearly – what happened to Fubara could happen to you, and nothing will happen, suspension is at the door. In a re-enactment of the Biblical occasion in Acts 16:30 when the jailer asked Paul and Silas, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”, Nigeria’s political class filed out one after another to ask the question, “What must we do to be saved from suspension?”. The muted but loud response came, “Join the APC, the ruling party, and you would be saved from suspension”. Straightaway, the APC gates opened, and the gale of defections started. Given the ideological deficiency of Nigeria’s political elite, they accepted the unspoken invitation to join the ruling party to save themselves from probe and imminent disgrace. Surely, their oozing chambers of corruption must be preserved.
The tactic to threaten elected officials and other public servants with suspension by suspending Sim Fubara is surreptitiously motivated to ensure that Nigeria becomes a one-party state, in which case, opposition would be dead in the country, and democracy would be decimated. Unlike OBJ, who was very elementary or perhaps more puerile in his quest for a third term, Tinubu would have third, fourth and fifth terms if he so desires because the legislature, which should ordinarily be a check on the executive, is firmly in his pocket. The process that brought the Senate president, Godswill Akpabio, to power was well orchestrated to ensure that the fear of suspension would keep him in check and have him lick the president’s boots. It is only in Nigeria that a character like Akpabio would become a Senate President with all the allegations of corruption hanging over his neck. Thus, checks and balances as vibrant instruments of democracy are completely lost on Nigeria’s governance menu. Indeed, Nigeria’s brand of democracy does not exist anywhere in the world, but it testifies to the presence of mendacious characters who, unfortunately, have viciously seized the country’s power levers.
In response to the concerns raised by Nigerians that the country is gradually sliding into a one-party state, the former governor of Kano State and current APC chairman, Mr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, stated that there was nothing wrong if Nigeria became a one-party state like China, because the Asian giant is a highly developed country. However, Ganduje, a man reported to have been caught on camera accepting bribes in hard currency and stuffing the same into the pockets of his overflowing clothes, forgot to tell Nigerians that a one-party state is not the main reason China is highly developed. Ganduje forgot to tell Nigerians that if Nigeria were China, he would have been executed with many of his political allies for one form of corruption or another. The truth is, if Nigeria were China, 90% of Nigerian politicians would have been executed because hardly any of them is free from one form of corruption allegation or another. If Nigeria were China, the level of docility among the populace, which allows the political class to engage in crass idiocy, would be gone. If Nigeria were China, with the massive natural endowment in the country, it would have been one of the richest countries in the world. But unfortunately, Nigeria is not China therefore, the country is mired in backwardness, sycophancy, and retrogressive realities.
The decimation and desecration of the altar of democracy in Nigeria is maintained and sustained by a recruited, voluntary army of sycophants motivated to daily increase the decibels of the government’s achievements when situations in the country suggest otherwise. The praise singers come across as people suffering from existential psychosis, bluntly refusing to see the economic and political blind alley into which the current government is leading Nigeria. The apologists of the current purgatory, which Nigeria has become under the present dispensation, suffer from a smug contamination of the mental process, which rejects anything positive and true. In the face of crying facts that the Nigerian ship is capsizing under Mr Tinubu, our fawning praise singers insist that the ship’s capsize is the best thing for Nigeria. Given these conditions, democracy in the country stands naked, debased, and disgraced and will ultimately cease to exist if there are no urgent revival remedies in place. It is ridiculous that the toadying minions have termed some of us on the left as unpatriotic because we insist that criminality and corruption are antithetical to the survival of genuine democracy.
The consequences of encouraging these democratic infractions are too implicating and disastrous to the country. Although all may seem well for the APC political actors and their grovelling procession, the negative undercurrents of our present macabre dance to democratic dirge may provoke insurrection or armed intervention at any time. The continued political compromise and defections, which will ultimately turn Nigeria into a one-party state, are cataclysmic and destructive. The PDP, in all their dance of shame, was never this averse to reason and common sense. Nobody saw PDP’s spectacular collapse, but when the behemoth party crashed, it did not crash with the populace. Will Nigerians be lucky a second time? Insightful prognosis and hindsight show that APC will definitely crash, no matter how rosy it seems for the actors now. Tinubu and his APC have collectively retarded Nigeria in every conceivable way as they continue to diminish the fountains of democracy in the country. The defections can continue, but millions of Nigerians know they are not motivated by any ideological conviction but an urgent need for political survival and freedom from corruption probes.
Bola Tinubu and APC will never achieve a 100% alignment across Nigeria as long as there are ideologically motivated leftists in the country. Although hunger is a motivating factor why many people easily swallow a humble pie and join the rancid bandwagon, the need to preserve democracy should concern all well-meaning Nigerians. The offensive talk about the 2027 elections while Nigerians are stewing in the juice of poverty and lack is a pointer to how low we have fallen in this country. It may seem that these radical musings on the pages of magazines, newspapers, and social media are ineffectual, but one is consoled by the apparent certainty that the real vectors of social change are reading and paying attention. All the governors, elected representatives of the people, and various public office holders can easily defect to the APC, no problem. It may also seem that the Bola Tinubu tactic of sacking Sim Fubara as a way of intimidating politicians is working, but when the wind of change blows, its geographical reach will extend to those who think they are protected by power, wealth, and influence. There is no ingenuity in a tactic which ultimately plunges a whole country into anguish, despair, and suffering.
