Without ignoring irony as a characteristic value of a mature literary work- the maintenance of desperate perspectives- I wish to regard it here as also a mode of interconnection, as illuminating discrepancy. Awareness of a discrepancy means awareness of at least the two elements required to create a discrepancy. In a non-ironic work such nexus would be lacking, and the texture would be correspondingly thinner. The ironic connection may be between elements close or distant; it may be completed in actional or verbal terms; and it may have different temporal aspects. It may complete itself in the present in which it comes into view, either a contradiction in terms within that situation or as an overturn of a universal expectancy.
Or it may bind past and present or present and future by a reversal of ordinary probability or of specific expectancies created by the term of the plot. And so, the standard dramatic irony in Nigeria today is that of a class of people- a clan of aggrieved individuals made up of expired warlords and frustrated pseudo-democrats- who have captured political power by hook or crook but who have failed to use it to benefit ordinary Nigerians and have thus set the country on fire due to severe and unbearable poverty and hunger. It is an irony of a character taking an action which does not lead to applause.
Nigeria has, indeed, been turned into a paradise for power-starved men who desperately seek power for the sake of it: for ego boosting, lining of their pockets, self-aggrandizement or to taunt their opponents. In this most endowed but most troubled Black Country in the world, the fight for power has taken on a particularly unpleasant form. The race for the 2019 general elections had begun with pomp and fanfare as politicians, both the contenders and pretenders alike, jostled for attention and space. For the Presidential race, the list paraded some interesting personalities. But, in terms of ideology and presentation of alternative programmes, Nigerians didn’t see anything different from what had always been.
What the citizens were confronted with daily were insults and virulent attacks on the personalities of the contenders. Since the emergence of the present civilian dispensation in May 1999, there has been a complete lack of courage and the will to play the game of politics according to the rules. First, is the complete absence of ideology and clear-cut distinction between one political party and another, and then the absence of issues-oriented debates on the hustings. Indeed, what we have is “bread-and-butter” politics as our politicians lack the necessary reorientation required to bring them into lasting acquaintance with the real essence of party politics and strong democracy. Hence, the nebulous fancy of politicians defecting from one party to another as political culture. This is a lamentable departure from the halcyon days of ideological divisions.
For instance, a critical study of the Nigerian party system, from the final decades of British colonial rule, reveals the interplay of three converging social forces namely, the thrust of nationalism, the persistence of cultural particularism and the crystallisation of emergent class interests. It will be recalled that political parties led the way in the movement for Nigeria’s national independence. Their origins lay in a multitude of associations that were devoted to community improvement, political reform and racial liberation. At independence in 1960, four political parties were firmly established on a broad territorial basis, each one incarnating a distinctive political idea. The National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroon (NCNC) stood for political democracy in its classical, individualistic form. The Action Group (AG) symbolised federalist democracy to safeguard the rights of cultural communities. The Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) exemplified the modernisation of traditional political authority; and its radical opponent, the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), espoused egalitarian democracy.
Evidently, these political parties and their leaders were truly representatives of the Nigerian society. But in all countries, dominant classes transcend the cultural or ethnic divisions of society more easily than subordinate classes. This development rather enhanced fervent opposition politics in the First Republic. Even in the Second Republic, when the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), represented dominant class interests more comprehensively than any other party, there was no murderous swagger on the part of any of the opposition parties to unleash violence on the nation in the name of power struggle. Similarly, there was no plot by the dominant party at the Centre to use ethnically deodorised violence to intimidate the entire country and to beat it to submission.
The avowedly socialistic Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and the more avowedly Marxian socialist People’s Redemption Party (PRP) were essentially very critical of the central government. But their criticism was centred on topical national issues, not carefree abuses on President Shehu Aliyu Shagari or members of the ruling party. The Nigeria People’s Party (NPP) and its twin, the Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP)’ were also not left out in the struggle to provide alternative policies to those of the ruling party, the NPN. But this was done in a more mature, professional and keenly procedural political articulation with a formidable intellectual content. The NPN also did not haul opposition politicians to goal or detention under the guise of fighting corruption.
Even though the consolidation of bourgeois domination at the national level since independence is a development of great significance, it has inadvertently created an open and competitive political order to foster pluralism in the political process. It is against this backdrop that this column condemns the mundane culture of primitive political inanities being displayed by Nigerian politicians who are allegedly plotting and working hard to disorganise the country. There is a thick smoke of political intolerance in the air. It is exactly what happened in the polity when former President Goodluck Jonathan was in the saddle. Since Jonathan won his pan-Nigerian mandate in the keenly contested Presidential election of April 2011 widely acclaimed to be free and fair by local and international observers, those who thought that someone from a minority ethnic group should not rule Nigeria no matter how popular he may be among the people started sponsoring the killings of other Nigerians and this triggered violent killings and subsequent declaration of war by the Bokom Haram sect in some parts of the North.
Unfortunately, you can build for yourself a throne of bayonet, but can you sit on it? Those who shouted Jonathan down in 2013 when he tried to declare Boko Haram illegal, those who told him pointedly in the public glare that Boko Haram was entitled to its freedom of association are themselves overwhelmed by the same sect they sought in the name of evil political culture to protect. The man who openly told Jonathan that they would make the country ungovernable for him if he failed to surrender power to them; the man who willingly gave them his private jet to campaign in 2015, is now regretting his past generosity. He has now been told in clear terms that he is not a Nigerian. This reminds us of Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil.
But it would amount to a fundamental misconception to say that Nigerian politicians have exhibited enough sense of maturity and ideological content in their approach to the game of politics in recent years when all they do is a declaration of war on the country they want to govern. As it stands, just two weeks to the inauguration of a new government after the 2019 general elections, the issue of who becomes President in 2023 is heating up the polity to breaking point. With their inherent fluidity and challenging negative party loyalty, violence has become our national anthem while corruption is our national identity. This, unfortunately, is the aftermath of the death of ideology. There is indeed a sorry lack of responsible opposition in the political arena leaving a great cloud of gloom still hanging over the whole affair. And anyone who is familiar with our recent political experiences will certainly understand why such thick layer of cynicism continues to undermine the whole process. It is to be emphasized that the second coming of the military on the political scene made nonsense of the conceptual essence of party politics.
Political parties for the first time became government parastatals, created and spoon-fed, their secretariats built, funded, and their manifestos written, by the military. The reality is that twenty years into civilian rule, politicians remain strange bedfellows in all the political parties and nobody is talking about real issues and programmes. As unfortunate as this situation is, what is even more terrible is the absence of sportsmanship on the part of losers to accept defeat with equanimity and winners to manage victory with magnanimity. The danger which the country faces as a consequence of the combination of these unsavory developments is underlined by the avalanche of hopelessness and instability in the country and vicious wickedness and witch hunt by desperate politicians. Ironically, our politicians have consistently shown demonstrable proof of ineptitude, corruption, intolerance and lack of gravitas in the game. If our politicians do not want to acquiesce in the subversion of their own future and that of their children, they must stop creating such deliberate enabling environment for the emergence of military dictatorships, a situation which has failed to redress our woeful circumstances.
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