“How do we restore morality and truth to our elections?” This quotation is from Kole Omotoso’s “On the waging of elections” which appeared in his column last Sunday, March 17, 2019. The line berthed the first line of the final paragraph of the online version of his stimulatingly profound and profoundly stimulating essay on our country’s 2019 elections of trouble and real trouble that will birth further trouble – going by the fatal electoral nonsense we have seen so far everywhere in the land, and further troubling electoral prankishness and treacheries in Adamawa, Benue, Bauchi, Plateau, Rivers and Sokoto States of desperate silly dogs of bad wars – or of bad troubles, as Kole Omotoso might want us to put it. But my main concern here is not really about “Morality [that] does not count” in our country’s elections.
You see, I have been bothered ceaselessly about the general condition in our country where all kinds of things happen. And many, many times I have asked myself why these things happen. In fact, I keep asking myself – even as I am writing this column – why these things happen. And what are these things?
Every now and then we read in our newspapers reports about iniquities, horrible things, more than several male parents, guardians, teachers and relatives respectively did to their daughters, wards, nieces, female pupils (even in primary schools), and female relatives. Some sons similarly did horrible things to their mothers just as some husbands as well did to their wives’ mothers and female in-laws. What are these horrible things? To halt the suspense, these horrible things relate to grave sexual misdemeanours, aberrations and perversions. Many fathers, mad or un-mad, have had incestuous relationships with their daughters, for instance. In some cases, they impregnated their daughters whom they forcefully had intercourses with, and threatened them not to disclose their heinous perversions. When they were eventually found out, what did they do or say? They usually blamed their actions on demons who they claimed inhabited their mad imaginations for their perturbing perversions. Some terrible fathers even went to the extent of killing in cold blood their daughters after doing to them their abnormal and abominable deeds. Perhaps the height of these aberrations relates to infantile sexuality engaged in by teachers in our primary schools and biological fathers respectively with their innocent infant pupils and daughters.
In some cases, it was reported that some fathers had carnal knowledge of their daughters and other female relatives in order to satisfy, not their licentious libidos, but their demonic ritual obligations and inclinations. Laughably, but tragically so, sicknesses such as common pertussis, as reported, of long-lasting duration and of tenacious quality, or elementary malaria that came and went but did not really go away, could only be remedied by perversely persistent sexual intercourses with their daughters (or female relatives). I even read or heard of a case of certainly a crazy-in-the-head-and-mind father who claimed that coitus interruptus was part of the malevolent and diabolical prescription given to him to cure his ailment, that he never named, any time he engaged in coitus with his daughter of thirteen years!
There are other numerous cases and examples, but it is needless to cite all of them here. Significantly, there are homosexual perversions which, we hear, border on their efficacies as electoral or political power balms. So we should not really be surprised when we are told that “Morality does not count in our elections.” Many of our politicians can do – and have, in truth, done – many things pertinaciously to get electoral power or to cling to all kinds of power – political power or money-power or the power of influence or position-based power or all these, and more. Their morality is the power they possess, and anything and everything can satisfy this urge – which they usually liken to the urge of engaging in coitus with one’s daughter or son’s daughter or with fellow males desirous of all forms of persecutory power. Perhaps we should see the present-day election-violence everywhere in the land from this perspective. Maybe I am wrong. But why this ceaseless urge to unleash violence on the land, on our land of lands, the way diabolically libidinous fathers lust after their daughters they end up raping, or the way sodomites despicably lust after one another for despicable power of all types, which are akin to those some of our political leaders employ to rape our commonwealth every now and then?
And many there are who invade and infiltrate the sanctums of their friends’, colleagues’, superiors’ and subordinates’ wives to test the potency of their power-balms. And lo! there are several stories told of some governors who must know the bosoms and triangles of their female aides and female commissioners, married or un-married, to prove the power of authority they possess spiritually, physically and otherwise over them and the states they govern as lords of lords. Phew! Do we believe all the stories we hear concerning them?
I think the time is more than ripe for social philosophers to do a master-study on our country’s special brand of praxiology. Perhaps our political philosophers should join our social philosophers as co-researchers or co-authors of the envisaged master-study on our country’s peculiar praxiology. By the way, has it ever occurred to us that there has been no loud official statement (or framework) of condemnation of the different kinds of sexual perversions in our land? I have not read of this in our newspapers – or anywhere. Of course, we will be told that our laws and constitution are there to take care of sexual perverts and their offensive, abominably immoral acts. But the seemingly official silence of the political powers that be is troubling, and tends to condone them – shall we say for obvious reasons?
To drive my submission home, kindly submit your attention to the following Asian short story: ‘Chuang Tzu tells the story of Liu Hui, a government official who was forced to flee his political enemies. Hui throws away the precious jade that symbolizes his rank, but carries his infant child away with him. Chuang Tzu asks him why he would leave the jade he could sell for a small fortune, and keep the child who could only be sold for a paltry sum. Hui responds, “My bond with the jade symbol and with my office was the bond of self-interest. My bond with the child was the bond of Tao. Where self-interest is the bond, the friendship is dissolved when calamity comes. Where Tao is the bond, friendship is made perfect by calamity.”‘
If our politicians and political leaders (and those they use to do their dirty jobs and to deceive us) cannot interpret the above quotation which is not a puzzle or a riddle then they are not fit to be our leaders. They have no place in your heart. Clearly, they have no room in my heart because they will never appreciate the import of the immediately preceding quoted words, and apply the lesson there-in to our dire circumstances – even if they interpret the passage correctly. The rest is silence.
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