These are really interesting times in Nigeria. Some ball-less men who got into high offices they had no business with are toing and froing, standing on their heads. Do they have children? Do their children have friends?
Do these men have mentors or confidants or friends who can look power in the eye and tell truth? The answers to the foregoing battery must be in the negative. Otherwise, the moral free fall that politics is throwing up daily especially among some Nigerian governors would not be happening. Please help, puke is coming.
Clearly, these men -yes, it is all men- have nobody who can talk to them. No mentors, no confidants, no friends, no children, no family to call them to order. Their children themselves have no friends who would have poked fun at them over their father. These things work in strange ways.
A life without checks and balances is not life, it is dead life. No matter the height and quantum of your political power, you must have people you are accountable to; people you fear; people you consider before your every step -or misstep. What would my children or family or mentor or confidant or friend think? How would people look at them; what would people say to them because of me?
This is the life that is worth living; a life of honour and integrity. I remember Mr Donald Duke, unarguably one of the best-ever Nigerian state governors. He told an evergreen story of how in his governorship heyday, First Lady Onari (Duke) got him in the dead of the night to drive with her to the home of one of his aides whom he had, earlier in the day, rather uncharacteristically treated as most Nigerian big men do the human beings unfortunate to work under them. Gov. Duke -as he then was- and his wife went to the home of his own boy -which is how most Nigerian politicians call their male assistants- and apologised to the guy in the presence of the guy’s wife; all because Mr Duke has a wife who is a good woman and whom he respected.
Can we say the same of a lion’s share of our current set of state governors, especially the latter day crosstituters? Sssh, stay on the issue even if you can’t. Sssh, please answer the question. Whatever you say to defend the indefensible though, those who know would tell you that loose canons listen to nobody.
The point this writer has laboured hitherto to make is this: a person in power must at least have a good spouse, to whom they must listen. Mr Donald Duke is a blessed man. He has First Lady Onari. I ask again, can we say the same of most incumbent state chief execs and sundry men of power who all seem to have no one they listen to?
And, why we are at that, how exactly does the mind of a Nigerian elected political office holder work? Before, during and after an election, they go to any lengths to demolish and demonise the political party that poses the toughest challenge. Alas, when they succeed, if that other party (they had badmouthed and defeated) suddenly holds a better future for them, they suddenly crosstitute. How much I love this South African word; how it so excellently shades these pros of titute -whatever that means!
If you don’t gerrrit, then forget abourrrit. As we were saying, these men have dwarf memories. They conveniently forget they had sponsored, directly and indirectly, mostly unprovoked total rubbishing and tarnishing of that other party. And, many times, it is not just the party they targeted; they also took aim at its candidate(s) or leader(s).
Here are some of their evil lines. “That party of drug addicts. That party of killers. That useless party.
“My opponent sleeps with people’s wives. My opponent did not go to school. My opponent’s academic certificates are fake. My opponent is a thief”.
My opponent, bla bla bla. Never believe any of those because they are mere Nigerian electoral rhetorics. The sole purpose is power capture. They have no qualms selling themselves or their body parts or their name or their family or assassinating anybody’s character -in the process.
They can destroy or steal the destiny of or kill even God, so long as it helps their tenured cause. Such crying shame. A big man committing small idiocies against another man just to keep him small and himself big. We assassinate character and later, at the nick of time, cross over and smile gleefully like some born again armed robber who had been caught red handed many times.
Politics Nigeriana is tiring. To win, you must join them to do and talk the way they do and talk, it does not matter that you are a Bishop of God or Great Imam of Allah. If you are able to brag and curse and insult and pretend and rant exactly like them, welcome to the political big league. But, be warned, God is not there!
I hear that most of God’s people even have to recant before the devil himself would find them fit to join. I do not believe though, that such foolery exists. I mean, how can I ever leave God to join Satan when I know that the latter only came to steal, to kill, to destroy and that his benefits last too short? How can I ever choose a stealer, a killer, a destroyer over the Provider, the Life, the Protector who created me in the first place and who owns Heaven and earth and everything in them?
Nigerian politicians and their lousy sense of choice -and colour. White is black. Black is white. Even the masses, who insist on their apoliticalness, understand the drill; which is why they applaud or acquiesce in every nonsense by so-called leaders.
That must change. Politics Nigeriana is sinking, with everything and everybody. Stop suffering and smiling, dear people of God. You were created free and given the inalienable power to choose between day and night; between right and wrong.
So, in the Name of God or in the name of all the other things we now know you believe in, change course today. Stand up to man, for God. Stop this madness. Specifically, if you are a Nigerian state governor craving to join them since you could not beat them, take a seat and listen!
When democracy returned to our shores in 1999, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo of People’s Democratic Party was the greatest beneficiary. From prison to presidency. Then, second term (2003) came on his radar and politics seized the soldier-turned democrat. He was desperate to win the six states of own southwest region all of which had been won by opposition Alliance for Democracy (in 1999).
There is no trick in the political book of Nigeria that then President Obasanjo did not employ and deploy to lure AD governors over. The man played the ethnic card, he dangled carrots, and he intimidated those six governors until five caved in. Even then, they were not as weak as the 2023 crop of south south and southeast PDP governors. Exactly two decades ago, the five who acceded to the president’s anti-party plea, at the time, said they could not abandon their political party but would support his reelection.
Just like that, the president swept those five states and was returned reelected. Unfortunately, the electoral flash flood swept away his five friendly opposition governors. The only AD man reelected was the Asiwaju of Lagos, the current president. Gov. Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Lagos -as he then was- had taken on the president like a man -to the very end; lost much along the way but never chickened out.
This is the reason I find the developing tragedy in the Nigerian polity quite sobering. Where were these governors jumping ship all over the place today, when a Gov. Tinubu took on a no-nonsense President Obasanjo? How could they so conveniently forget this one history that they all witnessed? Even a Gov. Victor Attah of Akwa Ibom looked at a President Obasanjo eyeball to eyeball, to his personal detriment, and won fiscal victories for his people the dividends of which we enjoy to this day.
What did Nigeria do to be cursed with these self-centred subnational leaders, oh God? See how they crumble, one by one; like a poorly built hut. What on earth did President Tinubu do or say or show to them that they could not do to him what he did to then President Obasanjo? How would posterity asterisk away these ones?
Above all, in his heart of hearts, in his private moments, how does President Tinubu rate these men? I ask because I suspect, among his family and inner circle he steals jokes and laughs at them. Please help me with humorous Yoruba insults. How can people hold very big offices but carry on this small?
And, dear President Asiwaju, why? By the way, you know I am your man -or used to be. Why did you as governor oppose one-party system in the country but now that you hold the yam and the knife, you sing another tune? Are you, Sir, not scattering the same foundation you say you fought to lay?
You have hurt this country and people who thought they loved you in ways I am not sure can ever be fixed by democracy. For instance, where I come from, the governor has drawn inspiration from you to create something he calls United but which disunites the state down the middle. A very deceptive stratagem which hides not only to foment trouble in another political party but also to promise jumbo salaries to officers of that party; the same people he used to pay peanuts the two years he hibernated with them. Pray, is it not important to these men how posterity would measure their stewardship long after they had left office?
And, do they not know that judgement is coming? Do they not know that leadership is more about liberalisation? Do they not know that one’s time after power are far more powerful and reflective than the in-power years? Or, do they believe the lie that Nigeria and Nigerians shall never get over this chronic memory loss?
Whatever, now is time for leaders and the led to realise that politics Nigeriana has been a curse, pure and simple. It can do, going forward, with far less dishonesty, far less drama and above all, far less hypocrisy. It chokes beyond choking. Nigerians deserve far more forthrightness from helmsmen across all strata of our political government.
God bless Nigeria!