There was a time in in this country when today’s turncoat activists of Nigeria were mouthing pat phraseologies of Marxism and hollering: “Dictatorship of the Proletariat!”
These ill-assorted characters later morphed into what they termed “The Progressives” of Nigerian politics.
These mortals shall remain nameless in this piece, as mentioning their wonky and crooked names shall rob my verbs and nouns of their elegance.
Of what benefit, for instance, is mentioning the name of the former recharge card seller who magically turned into a billionaire during the regime of the highly-ballyhooed anti-corruption president who happens to be his uncle?
It also goes against the grain of the sublime to note that the disgraced anti-corruption ex-leader prophesied that Nigeria would only start missing him after he had left office, a pathetic prophecy that is already being borne out before our very eyes and inside our empty stomachs.
A tear for Nigeria!
It struck me as quite ironical that in 2015 the self-advertised progressives backed this most feudalistic and incompetent so-called anti-corruption bloke to take power.
After the catastrophic eight-year, two-term tenure of the insufferable sheikh of prebendalism, the occidental septal helmsman of the progressives asserted that it was his turn to grab power.
He minced no word in stressing that all there is about power is to grab, snatch and run with it by hook or crook and all.
His retinue of sycophants and court jesters grovelled no end at his feet and hailed him as a master strategist.
The power-grabber’s first call upon taking the seat of superintendence was to gleefully rant that “fuel subsidy is gone.”
Not a few Nigerians were surprised to recall that this fellow had led protests against the former president despised as “the clueless one” who had removed the fuel subsidy on January 1, 2012.
There were enough governmental plans to contain the pitfalls of the subsidy matter back then, but the progressive man of today had no plans on ground whatsoever before making the tragic announcement.
The ace-turned-menace in power was acting like Rip Van Winkle in Washington Irving’s short story who woke up after 20 years of sleep to behold a changed world.
The Dictator of the Progressives has been making bold claims that he’s a revolutionary who discovered the magic of the removal of fuel subsidy as the saviour of Nigeria.
The devaluation of Nigeria was put into full throttle, and the country’s currency started a neck-and-neck race in value, or lack thereof, with toilet tissue paper.
Armed with an overdose of the useless currency in his custody, the worse-than-the-clueless-one boasted that he’s now giving more money to the governors such that they should be blamed for the woes of the woebegone country.
In Lagos State where he used to reign supreme as more than a sovereign, outraged members of the House of Assembly deigned to remove their loathsome Speaker only for the Progressive Lord at the Centre to come storming to make them swallow their vomit by restoring the impeached windbag to the speakership position.
Every word of the dictator of progressivism is law.
Everything has conduced to a totalitarian state where the legislature is in the progressive baron’s back-pocket while the judiciary is in his breast-pocket.
Journalists are now known as “Jeunalists”, serving as the sedulous lapdogs of politicians bearing the armour of progressives of dictatorship.
The terms of the game these days are ethnic cleansing and baiting, gaslighting, jingoism and servile prostration.
It’s all to the good of the dictatorship of the progressives that a Supreme Court judgement can be written authoritatively on an executive presidential letterhead.
The ill-fated Governor of Rivers State received such supreme judgement, and before anybody could spell Democracy with all the vowels and consonants, a state of emergency was clamped on the state and the hapless governor was suspended from power.
Many attorneys have cried blue murder that it’s constitutionally beyond presidential powers to suspend an elected governor, but these lawyers appear not to understand the superior constitution of the dictatorship of the progressives.
Even the two-third majority of votes needed for the Senate and the House of Representatives to ramp home the state of emergency fix had to come via voice votes after $5,000 Salah gift, just like market thugs outshouting themselves in Jankara market.
There was the injunction that the money of Rivers State should not be given to the elected governor because he does not boast of a constituted assembly, but the money has since been released to the appointed military sole administrator.
Military rule can be very fast.
Many commentators have raised voices as per the fact that the much maligned military dictator, General Sani Abacha, could not have acted this brazenly.
Let’s just say that Abacha was only unfortunate because he did not have the correct aboriginal tribal marks.
It’s so cool these days to practice democracy with military jackboots, complete with commands and orders in the regime dictatorial progressivism that has replaced Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
In the garlanded annals of the dictatorship of the progressives, anything goes and even the president can serve as the errand boy of his appointee in Rivers’ matters.
It’s a well-known Nigerian maxim – not my name, biko – that things change only to become the same.
All the rage now is that no coalition can ever garner the power to unseat the incumbent on his re-election date in 2027.
I do not indulge in such futuristic arguments as I cannot boast of having enough food to eat to survive till 2027.
The coup against the constitution has been instituted such that voting is neither here nor there, whether in 2027 or 2031 or whenever; after all Paul Biya keeps ruling Cameroun from France or wherever.
It’s my patriotic suggestion that the Nigerian authors of Dictatorship of the Progressives should strive to break more records such as keeping in power the eternal dictator who rules forever even in death as depicted by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch.
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Image: Pixabay remixed