It will appear that the two major political parties irresolution or confusion respecting the consensus option for nominating their respective presidential candidate will be their Achilles heels. It looks like a schoolboy lazy ploy of working to the answer for which his teacher will penalise him because he has glibly avoided the rigour of scholarship – the object of the assignment
The unabashed parade of ignominy representing the ugly turn-out of persons who altogether constitute the gridlock menace to the easy resolution of the Nigerian question is yet another example of the arrogant self-satisfaction in which the ruling elite is comfortably ensconced. It is also a reflection of the unrepentant indifference with which the people are treated.
They have off-handedly dismissed the people’s objection to the whopping cost of a nomination form for contesting the presidential primaries of their party. No matter how estimable our politicians consider their character if their population is allowed to enlarge among us there will be no more conscience for objection to banality or humdrum.
We would end up with a population that may not be shocked or alarmed even at the most horrendous development. In a pitiful situation of an unconscionable lowering of the human condition among ordinary Nigerians, a group of people is primitively displaying presumably ill-gotten wealth. Many known names identified with the steadily-growing impoverishment of the people are falling over one another to purchase a 2-page nomination form for N100 million. It is strange that there has been no consideration whatsoever to apply the necessity for conscience in the shallow explanation or defense of the raison d’etre for the huge cost of the stationery. The people are expected to applaud the barbaric plundering of their patrimony. And this “anti-corruption” administration has looked on unconcerned. The aspirants too have elected to injure their consciences by not talking about it or denying it savagery.
The foregoing is not to be taken as an endorsement of what the other side of the same coin, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has done on its own turf. On its part and presumably because it is not in government, the PDP has “lowered the stake” by inviting aspirants under its banner to purchase nomination forms for a princely sum of N40 million naira per copy. It is noteworthy that these outrageous purchase prices have not deterred aspirants who have not the slimmest chance of clinching their party’s ticket. President Muhammadu Buhari’s characteristic aloofness has not helped matters either. It is driving the people to cold fury. One cannot recall any president that has injured himself very much by not talking.
It is not difficult to conclude that it is gauche or lacking in social graces the events of the last three weeks respecting the abuse of the people’s bon homie. A great body of liberal, progressive and independent thought which has been massing and which believes that progress is motion and detests un-earned privilege in whatever form and does not want society to further retreat into irretrievable baloney has been horrified by the primitive display of inanity of Nigeria’s major contending political parties.
There can be no compromise with reaction, liberal society has mused to itself and is expectantly waiting for the right psychological moment to show the stuff of which it is made respecting the irresponsibility of the ruling elite. Professional groups too have taken their cue. They are poised to use their progressive influence wisely and vigorously. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), in spite of what it knows about the rot in the nation’s financial system, is itself scandalised by this mandarin or pedantic display of un-arguably ill-gotten or stolen wealth.
The attitude of the parties at one level is self-destructive and at the other undermines what otherwise could have been their greatest asset – their membership – which they claim to be the critical mass of the population. The bearing has terrified ordinary people, mocked the parties’ grandstanding manifestoes and antagonised un-numbered would-be voters. This outlandish nomination fee is an obviously foolish attempt to exclude the participation of persons who, though qualified to contest, are not sufficiently endowed to make cash calls on a presidential ambition. Surely, the people have been treated with contempt or supercilious indifference. The people’s traducers have coldly rejected the suggestion that they bear or protect their mandate of the people that voted for them in 2015.
It is curious that despite the general brooding concern for the fate of the nation, Nigeria’s leading political parties have largely remained private concerns feathering private nests. They have missed the point that the chief value of governance is the peace, security, welfare and hope for a better tomorrow of the ordinary people. The last hope for the search for peace and for sincere, un-adulterated or untainted participant in the race for the 2023 presidency was shattered when the APC’s columns and PDP legions rudely stepped out to purchase nomination forms for sums that belie the state of the nation’s economy.
Many people have been working and striving for a regime to re-set the malfunctioning clock of the nation. Their efforts may have received a setback as the whole atmosphere appears dominated by power politics. No longer could men of good will but of moderate means participate in the search for the enthronement of good governance practice and procedure. Economic orthodoxy of the most cruel cut and unspeakable political rascality which have been the bane of the nation now seem to have received the seal of correctness or propriety in the way crudity is bandied around in the name of some putative constitutional guarantees respecting freedom of political parties to legislate their processes.
It is a sad commentary on such weak-kneed processes that a party that has obviously failed on every item of its mandate could attract such a long line of persons jostling for the position of president on its ticket and brandishing the self-same failed programmes, tactics, philosophy etc. and an arrogant sense of self-importance or a smug attitude to public affairs.
And to know that all of them in their number do not amount to much regarding the vaunted resolution of Nigeria’s myriad of problems or particularly of the seemingly intractable Nigerian question. These ones range from the infinitely tired to the self-abused, the noxiously inebriated, despicable characters, charlatans or conmen, nihilists and the out-rightly ignoble or dishonourable.
These are among the persons angling to be the leader of Africa’s infinitely endowed country. Truly, the Nigerian dinner has been soured by a hotchpotch parade of ill-fitting or awry cooks.
Rotimi-John, a lawyer and public affairs commentator, wrote vide lawgravitas@gmail.com
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