Amazing how the issue of zoning or not produced gra gra and brouhaha and even exposed our democracy to a far more savage form of political, cabal and social polarization under our watch. The North, orbiting between madness and depravity, still feels decidedly queasy that the straw of zoning is about to be crushed from the polity. Conservatives oddballs, wounded and retarded cabals led by blood suckers and hegemonic crusaders descended into gratuitous attacks on zoning enemies to make it clear that the North/South collective train journey will self destruct disastrously someday soon.
The profundity of the Hausa/Fulani angst, tedious tension, warring rhetoric, hacking cough, threat of consequences and semantics fudging have all proved the lie behind the moralizing sermon of our unity. That we are less of brothers but more of enemies is gone past grand cliché. Even under their own sky, the Northern Governors are in disarray over the zoning question. There is increasingly a deepening and fractious relationship between touchy feely liberals and stuffy conservatives who are steadfast in their opposition to any form of social and political change. Theirs is a hopeless desire to curb the ambition of any future southern president. It must be said that our failure to develop a robust sense of the public interest inevitably encourages narrow, egotistical considerations on national questions as in the case of zoning. The North is defiant, unbowed and are still dazzling in circumlocutory language and worse, promising shock tactics come 2011.
Perhaps, the emerging Northern political extremism and hyperbole is necessary to set President Goodluck Jonathan on a rethink which may quicken an early embrace of radical predisposition if elected as president next year. His political and intellectual imperative during his first quadrennial term must of necessity be of a radical variant. Nigerians are yearning or shall we say in desperation for a leader that will reconnect with radical egalitarianism which will destroy the stranglehold of the odium called cabal and introduce social change for the masses. Radicalism here does not portend an apocalyptic dark visions of doom and disaster but rather a positive track for our politics to create contexts which will favour public interest rather than the unbroken mélange of our selfish behavior, unparalleled corruption, shocking incongruities, acquisitive appetites, moral crime, ignoble practices, misplaced compass, social wreckage, political thuggery and sordid, daily melodrama of our elected enemies. Our politics is staid, out of joint and needing re-engineering. Jonathan’s minority credentials has given him a fortuitous advantage to navigate a new path to be characterized be reinforcing public good, slaughtering of sacred cows, new patriotism, new values, new and radicalized social, political and economic orthodoxy. ‘Lazarus Nigeria’ or ‘Arise Nigeria’ is a possible agenda any radical and self-respecting leader could initiate to end the ugly tapestry of our shameless failures as a nation. Radicalism as a hopeful take on our new politics will muzzle the angry clamour for bloody revolution from dormant human volcano flowing in the trenches and itching to erupt. Here, the assumption seems to suggest that if President Jonathan will not usher in a peaceful radicalism then a ticking revolution is nestling at his lush backyard. This is his moment to arrest the gathering tempests with potential to unleash a great storm. Restive fighters for justice are beginning to gather at the barricades. Again, this is his moment to demonstrate his gifting of feline political intuition and see the dangers ahead.
Already there is a strong split in the enlightened public space between different vanguards. Revolutionary ideologues are uninterested in the neutrality of radicalism. It is seen as a paperweight option to the problems of Nigeria. The revolutionaries further argued that this nation has past pretence and the only way for national recreation and development is atonement for our sins through bloodbath. This nation, to the revolutionaries, has been so much tragically verticalize that it would take a revolution to equalize it. This is the bitter fruit of the Nigerian truth. There is a stunning logic here—a crudely verticalize nation must be bloodily equalize through bloody revo!
Nigeria to them has had the opportunity through both military and civilian trajectories to refashion a new nation but blew the chance on the altar of clashing paradigm, stubborn self interest, unbudgeable conceit, disrespect for the masses, political arrogance, studied blindness, shameful amnesia and reckless daredevilry. To them, half a century of pain and punishment against Nigerians must be overthrown through bloody revolution. To them, the convenanted enemies of Nigeria’s progress had been the same, but few unchanging, stubborn, hard hided, treasonable cabal, aka, criminal gentry, scattered around some cloistered, gated haven.
This set of national lechers who glory in the devilish idea of Nigeria as their own private fiefdom include retired Generals, ex-heads of state, Governors, Ministers, business moguls, Obas, Chiefs, Professors, Bankers, Lebanese, Chinese, Indians, police officers, naval personnel, ambassadors and countless others. The revolutionaries’ moral view of bloody death as cleanser-renewal and harbinger of national rebirth is so sacrosanct that they could not consider any other peaceful transition.
This is Jonathan’s shining moment. The only educated option to save the above lechers who have been slated for bloody slaughter is to forcefully take back this embattled nation from the hand of private seizure and return it back to where it belongs. This is a radical ideal worthy of pursuit by a Jonathan administration. The enduring power of the cabal, in the destiny of Nigeria, which transmogrifies as ‘hidden hands’ has to be amputated.
Jonathan should defy both the North and South cabals, promote the triumph of radical ideas, of good over evil, transparency over corruption and uphold the will of the majority against the few. A radicalized Jonathan will emerge to be our renaissance man in a renaissance nation of true progress, zero corruption and ethical governance. Jonathan should be prepared to fight the good fight, throttle out radical change, instigate class confrontation and end the myth of our corruption gene. This time calls for Jonathan to live outside the realm of the predictable, business as usual, the safe and the expected. Again, if Jonathan will not usher in a peaceful radicalism, then a bloody revolution is imminent. Can Jonathan save this bloody revo?
