Today is my birthday. But beyond the satisfaction from the company of a wonderful wife, exceptional children and a few genuine friends, the byways of my mental process are scrabbled by Nigeria’s political and economic woes. While I appreciate the Almighty God for the gift of good health, sparing me from all the inexorable snares in the adventures of life, the situation in Nigeria restrains me. Therefore, no celebration. Even if one would like to celebrate, Nigeria’s political theatrics and all the associated economic matrix give many reasons to be sober. The country’s political atmosphere is suddenly populated by puppets divested of any shred of honour. Puppets, by their nature, are modelled after human beings or animals, sometimes for satirical and comical objectives. Real puppets are harmless, but the puppets populating the country’s political veranda are not only harmful but also surreptitiously invidious. They easily call white black and lie with unparalleled impudence. Indeed, the devil has come down to us in the likeness of men. Tufiakwa!
Our current politics has sired compatriots who, as puppets, deliberately repudiate all shreds of moral decency. They openly advertise treachery and guile as ancestral trophies. These puppets have assumed a life of their own. It doesn’t matter to them that they may be journeying to guaranteed perdition. Fear such puppets. It is unthinkable that any well-meaning mind, a product of some basic moral or religious doctrine, either as a child or an adult, would descend so low to lap up political excrement for self-serving purposes. Politics, even political idiocy, must have a limit. But our current political puppets have collapsed all the boundaries of public decorum to pollute our fragile political spaces with fetid, offensive pronouncements. Gone are the days of real men in Nigeria, men with convictions and principles. Although these past men were not perfect, they erected an irreducible moral code by which their departed souls are remembered and venerated today.
Recently, the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC), held its national summit at the Presidential Banquet Hall in Abuja. There is nothing wrong with a political party having a national summit. However, what offends the host of heaven and all the terrestrial elementals is the open endorsement of Bola Tinubu to contest as the party’s sole candidate in the 2027 presidential elections. Again, there is nothing wrong with endorsing a president who has painstakingly steered the ship of state to new, favourable heights for the citizens. But it becomes a mortal sin to openly endorse a president who has, in the first two years of his administration, unleashed misery on the citizens, ushering them into an economic crucible.
Instead of communicating to the president the real, honest situations of hardship in Nigeria and encouraging him to do better by pulling Nigerians out of mass evisceration before 2027, our political puppets, one after another, marched on suffering Nigerians by asking the president to continue with his brutal onslaught on the people. When critics assess Tinubu negatively after his two-year circus in office, his apologists insist that the period is too short to properly assess a new government. However, these same apologists cognitively regress by judging the current administration favourably and endorsing the president for another term within the same period. The time is too short to judge Tinubu negatively, but not too short to judge him positively.
One after another, the APC stalwarts mocked Nigerians openly at their summit. Leading the way, the party’s national secretary, Ajibola Bashiru, spewed profanity on Nigerian soil. He averred that the many defections to the party demonstrate the confidence Nigerians have in Bola Tinubu’s administration. The question is – which Nigerians was he referring to? The same Nigerians decimated by terrorists and bandits? Nigerians living in febrile anxiety over the hovering sword and bullets of terrorists and bandits? Nigerians stewing in the furnace of economic hardship and survival challenges? Nigerians grovelling under the crunching weight of inflation and an almost worthless local currency? Nigerians facing skyrocketing prices of goods and services, especially food items? Nigeria, where unemployment has enthroned an army of youths deeply immersed in prostitution, internet fraud, armed robbery, gambling, and ritual killings for gain? Indeed, Mr. Bashiru must be referring to alien creatures and not Nigerians or perhaps, he was only advancing the APC culture of aggregating the economic circumstances of Nigerians based on the well-being of affluent politicians.
Following in the heels of Ajibola Bashiru, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, extended the frontiers of the collective advertisement of debauchery by moving the motion for the endorsement of Mr. President as the sole candidate of the party towards the 2027 elections. The motion was immediately supported by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas. In fact, Mr. Akpabio insulted Nigerian democracy by insinuating that Tinubu will become the unchallenged, unopposed candidate because other political parties will inevitably adopt him as their candidate. Such an open declaration violates the inner sanctum of a normal person, but since the Senate President was behind the microphone, one needed not be surprised, given his political antecedents devoid of convictions or ideology. It was the same Akpabio who, as chairman PDP’s governors’ forum, endorsed Goodluck Jonathan with all the PDP governors and lawmakers towards the 2015 presidential elections. The rest, they say, is history. Ordinarily, in a functional democracy, the legislative arm of government, headed by the Senate, acts as a check on the executive arm, headed by the President. However, because Nigeria’s democracy is not functional, the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary all drink from the same trough of conspiracy against helpless, despoiled Nigerians.
There is a tolling bell in the APC national secretariat inviting all ideologically deficient politicians to the table for a Greek gift. Nigerians are fully aware that the defections to the APC are not due to any conquest or germane policies of the government. The defections are for different reasons – some of the politicians are crooks, they have fat files with the toothless EFCC, and the only way to escape the long arm of the law is to join the ruling party. Birds of a feather flock together. Many of the politicians defecting to the APC are only concerned about their second-term ambitions and in their warped estimation, joining the ruling party provides a soft landing for guaranteed victory at the polls. The people are inconsequential. Anambra State governor Chukwuma Soludo, in all his puerile, small-minded politics, endorsed Tinubu as APGA’s presidential candidate but Tinubu refused to endorse his ambition for a second term as governor. If it were possible for Soludo to defect to APC, he would have done so, but unfortunately for him, APC already has a gubernatorial candidate in Anambra State.
The very regrettable and offensive reason all the governors and legislators cite for endorsing Tinubu is the increased state monthly allocation and constituency projects. That Nigerians are afflicted on all fronts means nothing to Tinubu and his APC as long as the politicians – governors and legislators – feed fat from the people’s collective patrimony. Thus, it is a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. Students of politics must find a name for this complexion of politics. Sadly, the puppets in Nigerian politics lack any sense of history. Many folktales narrate how the echo of “long live the king, long live the king, long live the king” ended in a composite disaster. If folktales are too far away, we can easily relate to Sanni Abacha when almost everyone endorsed him to become the sole candidate to contest the presidential election. If Sanni Abacha’s case was under a military dispensation, we can easily remember Goodluck Jonathan and his PDP. After all the endorsements and defections to the party, the monumental collapse of the party, seen then as the largest political party in Africa, reverberated across the world. It still does. PDP lost the election to Nigerians.
While puppets in Nigeria’s politics pursue unconscionable intentions, they pose a present danger to the country’s democracy. Bola Tinubu should also be careful with the current trend where politically vacuous people sing his praises. They did the same for Goodluck Jonathan. It is sad that after only two years of ascending the throne, Tinubu has abandoned governance to embark on a train, a mechanical contraption for a second term. The truth is, Nigeria’s political puppets may do all they want; they may dance naked in the marketplace as much as they want, but Nigerians, the ordinary people, are angry with the Tinubu government, very angry. The angry electorate will be the ones to vote in 2027. Talks of rigging and an already compromised electoral outcome will certainly backfire only if Nigerians are truly tired of their stymied conditions. In 2027, it will be the puppets versus the people. Who wins?
