Saints and Sinners of Political Prostitution

There are more male prostitutes in the crooked field of partisan politics than there are female harlots in the brothels across Nigeria.

The prostitute politicians come armed with the bewildering dimension of wanting to be canonized as saints.

Their prostitution is so brazen because they do the act with public showmanship and in the midst of large crowds.

When I added the word “Buharig” to the lexicon, after the shameless rigging of the process by the self-advertised change-agent, I did not need any crystal ball to foresee that political prostitutes would abandon the political platforms of their election in droves for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Back in the days of yore when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) boasted that it would hold power for all of the 60 years, the movement used to be from the other parties to the then ruling PDP.

Now that “one-chance change” has come and actually transformed into the next level, the APC has turned into a brothel for political prostitutes.

No less a personage than the former chairman of the APC, Adams Oshiomhole, told the whole wide world that any politician that crossed over to the ruling bandwagon would have all his sins forgiven!

It is indeed the new Nigerian style that turning coat by becoming an APC cow is being showcased as canonization into sainthood.

The pursuit of filthy lucre is now an end to itself in the field of Nigerian party politics, and the clear and present danger is that the nation is faced with the damning reality of a one-party state.

President Muhammadu Buhari appears to have a more engrossing duty in welcoming defecting governors to his party than attending to the many ills of the wobbly nation.

It calls for pity that Mr. President had actually been touted from the beginning as an apostle of integrity and sincerity.

Insincerity in high places has always cost Nigeria so dearly in the course of her accursed history.

We are on that familiar road to near perdition yet again.

All the previous republics almost always came to ignominious ends through this kind of political bad behaviour.

It is all so obvious that our politicians have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, and what literally stares all of them in the face is self-destruction.

The country cannot continue for far too long in the name of democracy when brazen prostitution is all the rage.

The supposedly oppositional PDP has of course been hardest hit in the APC raiding such that the PDP spokesman, Kola Ologbondion, lamented the other day that the country was driving giddily toward the dead-end of a one-party state.

The PDP National Chairman, Uche Secondus, is obviously in the last seconds of his leadership as his imminent impeachment looms.

Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State, he of the “Budget of Olimpotic Meristemasis”, has just jumped ship from the PDP to the APC.

Faced with the shame of not having other party faithful following him in the jumping act, he has since seized the PDP office and painted it with APC colours.

When a hotel changes to a brothel, anything can happen!

It needs to be recalled that when Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State performed the “jumpology” from PDP to APC, Fulani herdsmen welcomed him by wiping out a village named Egedegede.

The canonization of political prostitution is one game that goes on without any qualm of conscience whatsoever.

It is an old game, as I can remember that back then in the PDP days, one governor did the political crossover by adding some grist to the show, to wit, the then Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State started out by marrying the then President Yar’Adua’s daughter before dashing back into the PDP umbrella, of course with his father-in-law quite present to welcome back his son-in-law!

In the case of then Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State, formerly of the Progressive People’s Alliance (PPA), then President Olusegun Obasanjo let the cat out of the bag when he disclosed that Ohakim was only fulfilling the promise he made of returning to the PDP before he was offered the governorship mandate on the platform of an opposition party!

What am I even wasting verbs and nouns on when the Supreme Court can now appoint a governor in the APC era?

The issue of the people’s choice has effectively been effaced from the politics of the change brigade.

All elections in Nigeria are fixed like American TV wrestling.

The APC can afford not to field a candidate and yet be able to win the election via orders from above.

That’s how we roll here in this country where democracy is coup at the polls.

All the political prostitutes of Nigeria are rushing headlong into a collapsing brothel.

The canonization of political prostitution in Nigeria is the icing on the cake of Buharig.

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Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is the author of God of Poetry, Satan's Story, A Play of Ghosts and The Missing Link. A 2008 Caine Prize for African Writing nominee, he wrote the text for Scottish photographer Owen Logan's caricature of Michael Jackson's visit to Nigeria entitled Masquerade. He lives in Lagos and is married with children.

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