Over the past three weeks or so, some prominent members of the country’s political elite have engaged themselves in verbal exchanges, which even though seemed disgraceful, could do the country some good.
Adams Oshiomole, fiery labour leader turned politician had, in his capacity as the National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Party, taken on the Senate President Bukola Saraki who attempted to convince Nigerians that the failure of the APC government to deliver on its promises and the overdose of injustice meted out to him drove him out of the party he joined others to form just about four years ago.
In his own press conference, Oshiomhole punctured Saraki’s claim to priotising national interest and insisted that the latter’s political philosophy always started and ended with personal ambition. He capped up his rhetoric by promising Nigerians that the APC was going to reclaim its Senate Presidency “crown,” which Saraki has, in his word, inappropriately retained by his defection to the Peoples Democratic Party.
Just before Saraki could rest from the riposte in which he literarily took his erstwhile party chairman to the cleaners, former Lagos State Governor and National Leader of the APC, Bola Tinubu, threw down the gauntlet by supposedly exposing the inner working of the minds of Saraki and the Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, both of whom had exited the APC with bitterness.
Tinubu appropriated the duo’s exit from the APC to two things: the party’s refusal to grant their wishes of automatic tickets for next year’s elections and share national wealth and other offices and privileges. Of course, Saraki replied in kind, removing the garb over some of Tinubu’s well-kept political secrets. These stalwarts have dropped their bombshells, moved on to other things and left their supporters to settle the scores in the public space.
Now, this brings the reason why Nigerians may be the greatest problems militating against the country’s development. And here, one is not talking about the various vices which drag our country down. No doubt, those ones contribute to the state of the country but is there any country in the world where those vices have become extinct?
Corruption, stealing, and killings, be it for ritual purposes, vengeance or just sheer show of man’s capacity for evil, are rampant in so many countries, even the most advanced ones in the world.
But here is the only difference, most of these societies dispense consequences for all misdeeds against the state or fellow humans. In addition, meting out these sanctions is usually without regard to the type of car you drive, the type of house that you live in, the political party you belong to or the current office that you hold. In countries where the rule of law has its place, what you see is what you get and the only hope for not reaping the sour grapes that you may have sown is the luck of not being caught at it. Caught in the act, the law takes its full course and nothing other than a good conscience will set you free.
There are laws in Nigeria quite alright but unlike in most serious places, two sets of laws seem to operate here. The first is the law, vicious and unsparing, that governs the common man while the other one is the malleable and forgiving one that governs the power elite. While the one goes at the offender with all venom, the other is understated, endowed with the ability to merely ruffle (without doing permanent damage,) and leads you home to political correctness, where your sins are washed away and you become white as snow.
In 2014, when Saraki led five state governors amongst others to the APC after their disagreement with the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party, they became latter-day saints and joined the likes of Tinubu to demonise those who remained in the PDP. Although Saraki fell out with the APC establishment who saw him as over-ambitious with the coup de main that brought him into the office of Senate President in spite of the party, Tambuwal and anyone loyal to the APC have remained Nigeria’s foremost political puritans.
But Nigerians should begin to question the hypocrisy of our political leaders. That promoters of the APC did not realise or failed to act on the very discernible fact that Saraki and all those with whom he defected from the PDP did not do so for sheer love of country tells of their own desperation to attain federal power by all means possible. It is the same personal ambition which they accuse Saraki of that drove promoters of the APC into allowing anyone and everyone with any iota of electoral value into the party thereby creating the confusion that the APC became from day one. And it is hard to accept that any of these was done in the interest of the people.
But it is even more than that. Neither Oshiomhole, Tinubu nor any of the other person who may take the holier-than-thou postures at the moment can themselves be free from ambition and the pursuit of the same with might, sometimes tending towards the excessive ruthlessness.
For instance, why has Tinubu remained the main determinant of the occupant of the Lagos State Government House since he left that office in 2007? Why does he so easily fall out with anyone who seems to have their own minds after they attain office by his grace? Why is the structure of the party in the state his literal possession? What are the ingredients of the trashing that his wife, Oluremi, complained about earlier this year?
It is the same way that one can query Oshiomhole’s performance as a two-term Governor of Edo State, his insistence of foisting Godwin Obaseki on the people and the reasons for the alleged cold war currently raging between him and his former protégé whom he fought tooth and nail to install in office. Even his strivings to edge out his kinsman, John Odigie-Oyegun, from the office he now occupies cannot be for entirely selfless reasons otherwise he would not go about with the garrulity and arrogance with which he has carried on.
As Oshiomhole and the APC currently insist that Saraki must be removed from office, there are so many important duties of state that are left suffering yet, the concern of the all these people is nothing other than the offices that they or their parties hold.
This is why Nigerians must begin to see beyond the cheap propaganda of politicians. The war that these political actors have started right after the swearing in of the current administration in 2015 is not about the country. Had the citizenry been a little bit more observant, they would see that political leaders across board have abandoned the responsibility of delivering on the promises that they made to the electorate to boost their chances in 2019.
There is no weapon that they have not employed in seeing this through. They have blackmailed, cheated on one another and lied to the people just to gain the advantage. And while they bicker over who gets what in 2019, far ahead of the day, thousands of citizens have succumbed to hunger, disease, poverty and avoidable death and joblessness none of which affects them and their families. When ill, these leaders, without exception, transport themselves, their spouses and children to choice hospitals anywhere in the world just to treat their stomach aches, knee injuries and imaginary wounds, those of you who now fight their wars are left at the mercy of non-functional hospital manned by ill-motivated and frustrated medical personnel.
Hundreds of millions of Nigerian youths are without jobs, millions of children who should be in school are instead on the streets without hope and subjected to conditions bound to force them to soon take vengeance on the country. Yet, our leaders find time to bicker over the allocation of national resources and even dare to play on our intelligence.
As late American sociologist and writer of the book, Power Elite, said, the Nigerian citizen has become “a mere spectator or forced actor” such that his “personal experience is politically useless and political will a minor illusion.”
Yet, in spite of that frustrating feeling of powerlessness, Nigeria’s only chance at a change is in the citizens’ commitment to periodically testing the sincerity of those who lead and showing them their capacity to make the right choices without their insistence. The citizens’ effort at perforating the condescending hypocrisy of the politicians is the surest way to the rebirth this nation needs. The people must wake up to that reality.
–Twitter @niranadedokun
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