Lores, on the Russian Bolshevik revolution of October 1917, ooze with revolution and counter-revolution elements, resulting in massive revolutionary purges.
What would chroniclers write about Nigeria’s current era of change — from a Conservative (centre-right) to a Progressive (centre-left) ruling elite — a lore of change and counter-change agents, with its inevitable intra-elite power purge?
That should agitate the mind of power scholars, particularly with the unfolding Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) high drama, involving Senate President, Bukola Saraki.
On one-on-one comparison, but attaching absolutely no values, moral or ideological, Saraki may well pass for the Trotsky of this era.
Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was the communist theorist and purist, who at different times, famously fell out with both Lenin and Stalin, Soviet communist icons, because of his rather liberal mind.
Now, you won’t, by any stretch of imagination, compare Trotsky with Saraki on ideological purity or liberalness of mind or even perceived championship of the common good. Yet, their odysseys appear uncannily similar.
In 1913, Trotsky who, before declaring himself non-aligned, had joined and dumped the Menshevik (minority) and Bolshevik (majority) factions of the emergent Russian Communist Party, had written a rather strong letter to Nickolay Chikheidze, a Menshevik leader, protesting the Bolsheviks’ appropriation of Pravda, the name of Trotsky’s rested newspaper, for their new workers-oriented newspaper in St. Petersburg, the then capital. Though he harshly criticised Lenin’s role in the matter (Lenin was Bolshevik), he soon forgot all about it.
But unfortunately for him, the secret police got a copy of the letter and filed it away. When Lenin died in 1924 — Lenin that would rather Trotsky, his No. 2, succeed him — the letter surfaced from nowhere: as “evidence” of Trotsky’s hatred for Lenin! The letter, 11 years after, was of course, the handiwork of Stalin and his scheming power troika: Stalin, with Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev.
Stalin would not rest until the exiled Trotsky was state-assassinated in 1940, in his Mexico home. His crime? He was a counter-revolutionary!
Saraki left office, as Kwara governor, in 2011. The allegations of irregularities in assets declaration, for which Saraki has been dragged before CCT, are at least four years old (2011-2015) or, if you count from 2003 (considering allegations of anticipatory assets declaration), 12 years old (2003-2015)! Now, see the uncanny similarity between Saraki and Trotsky?
“Saraki’s messy win was a brazen legislative counterpoise to presidential puritanism, on which the 2015 election was won and lost’
So, is somebody, somewhere in the change movement, as the Stalin troika did of Trotsky, trying to undo Saraki? Maybe. Maybe not.
But even if that were the case, it is only valid on the emotional front. On the legal lane, the case is not statute-barred; so the length of years would appear immaterial.
Still, Olisa Metuh, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesperson, has gone on overdrive, in what Prof. Olatunji Dare, The Nation columnist, would call “hysterical screeds”, alleging the Muhammadu Buhari presidency’s descent into dictatorship and fascism.
But how so — and what is PDP’s especial interest in a Senate president that doesn’t even belong to its fold? To protect its deputy senate presidential “loot”?
Lai Mohammed, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesperson, has riposted in no less vigorous drama, dismissing the PDP shrill as ignoble campaign against President Buhari’s war against sleaze; and extending the PDP man an umpteenth invitation to come learn how to do “proper” opposition criticism!
Senator Saraki’s supporters too have been all tears and all growl, gruffly bellowing queries over the prosecution’s timing — why now? they snap — and figured (rather triumphantly, even in depression) that the CCT drama is all about the senate presidency; which they insist Saraki won fair and square.
Saraki’s opposers, nevertheless, counter he corralled that office in the vilest and most crooked of manners.
So, how does Saraki himself come across in this whole saga? Hardly more sinned against than sinned!
At best, he cuts the picture of the Yoruba quip: doomed to a fiery end, yet merrily frolics with fuel! If he goes down with this, it would be hubris yet again taking its costly pound of flesh — hubris, that implacable enemy, posing as friend, to (wo)men of means!
Truth to tell: Saraki’s senate presidency win was desperation-fired perfidy classically unveiled — and maybe, in his quiet moments, beyond the din of subversive whoop of support, he would perhaps wish things had panned out differently.
To be sure, Saraki’s and opponents’ intra-APC quibbling over party position, supremacy and allied claims are equal-opportunity assertions, neither here nor there. Really, at that period, with different factions of the APC amalgam trying to annex the soul of the new ruling party, how would you define the “party”? And if you could not, in all good conscience, how would you honestly come up with “party supremacy”? Which party — and which supremacy?
But Saraki’s despicable sell-out of his party, crassly trading off the senate deputy presidency to the opposition PDP, was the limit of perfidy, which would always come back to haunt him, even if he weathers this present storm. His blunt refusal to compromise with his intra-party opponents, in the filling of other principal positions, unlike Speaker Yakubu Dogara who wisely did that, only worsened matters.
The rather rotten method of Saraki’s win has burrowed a big chink in his moral armour, even as his supporters go now on an emotive binge, claiming their principal is being “persecuted”.
Emotion is sweet. But it hardly changes the grim and objective situation — what lawyers would call “notorious facts”. The notorious fact is that a case is before a tribunal; and the Senate president is obliged to avail himself of doughty defence. Motives, no matter how dodgy or suspicious, hardly turn prosecution to persecution, so long as the alleged offence was committed; and the accused had his or her fair day in court!
Saraki’s messy win was a corruption of the parliamentary process. A corruption of political conventions. A corruption of public decency. A corruption of basic morality.
That was a brazen legislative counterpoise to presidential puritanism, on which the 2015 election was won and lost. For the scion of Baba Oloye, it may well prove costly, if not outright politically fatal.
But don’t count out Saraki — a political cat with nine lives! Besides, these are just allegations, allegations that amount to nothing until rigorous prosecution, scrupulous defence and a fair and transparent verdict: whether of shameful conviction or triumphal acquittal.
For the APC, however, this must be a sober moment. The party would appear in a flux; and its ability to deliver on its electoral promises of positive change, and even its future integrity, appears on its ability to resolve the furious war between change and anti-change agents among its own ranks; after its rainbow coalition, of moral and ideological neuters, has coasted to federal power.
How it resolves its internal contradictions may well decide its future; and Nigeria’s wellbeing — after a failed military rule; and PDP’s callous frittering of hope in the first 16 years of this democratic republic.
NATION
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