By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Now, let’s face it. Despite all
the empty (and, often, very exasperating) noise about being driven by
patriotism and “desire to serve my
people” that usually saturates the atmosphere at each election season, a
careful, conscientious search on the political terrain can only yield about
less than one percent (and one is being really generous here) of aspirants
motivated solely by genuine desire to improve the lives of the citizenry and
make society a better place.
Buhari, President Jonathan and the Chairman
of PDP and APC
of PDP and APC
For the majority, the sole
incentive is the golden opportunity politics offers to gain access to
government coffers and cart away as much free money as one could grab before
one’s tenure elapses. This is just the raw, plain truth. Indeed, it is a simple
case of organized banditry and every politician in Nigeria knows that we know this.
There is, however, a very
insignificant few who, although also inspired by the same primitive craving for
the very unfairly lucrative political jobs, are content to just go home every
month with only their usually jumbo salaries and allowances. Although, they do
not find the very outrageously inflated pay packets they have allocated to
themselves in the midst of widespread poverty very obscene, they are, however,
able to recoil from the mad, free and fair looting that has become the
distinguishing feature of political office in Nigeria . The brazenness with which
the looting is perpetrated and the most revolting manner its prodigious
proceeds are often flaunted before everyone underline the unmistakable
impression that shameless stealing has received an official endorsement as part
and parcel of governance, a kind of official culture.
What makes the matter even more
egregious is that these callous looters are always able to use some tiny crumbs
or the usually very reliable intoxicants, namely, ethnicity and religion, to
get the same shortchanged and impoverished citizenry to rise in their defense
each time there are attempts to pry into their hideous activities in office. It
is only in Nigeria
that this kind of thing makes sense – that someone among the populace would
want to fight and even die for an unrepentant enemy of the people who has so
wickedly exploited, dehumanized and grossly diminished him!
Nigerian Masses: Perennial target of deception
by politicians
And that is why we hear our
politicians always threatening blood and fire if they are “rigged” out. But the
tragic irony is that you would always find some poor, long-suffering human
beings with brain in their skulls eagerly electing to be the murderous agents
whose hands the out-rigged politicians would always use to shed the innocent
blood of mostly their fellow impoverished Nigerians (who have not done them any
wrong) and set fire on properties mostly obtained through honest labour by
hardworking citizens in a country where life has become a nightmare because of
the failure of character and leadership on the part of our largely wayward
rulers at all levels.
Now, look at it this way: a man is
looking for access to where our commonwealth is dumped in order to plunder and
cart away huge bags of unearned wealth, but he is outsmarted in the process by
a more desperate and smarter opponent. And then the pitiable victim of all the
devilish scheming will foolishly lay his life to fight for one of the
prospective plunderers. Is this not madness?
When will Nigerians wake up from
their self-induced slumber and learn? When will they cure themselves of
self-inflicted blindness? When will they come into the liberating awareness
that the real power lies in their hands, and that what happened was that they
only foolishly and willingly relinquished it to a few heartless men and women
who are now using it to horribly oppress and impoverish them? But when will it
settle in their hearts that just as they willingly gave away this power, they
can as well easily take it back?
The only election Nigerian
politicians will claim was rigged is the one in which they lost. They will
heartily declare on rooftops that the same election is “free and fair” if they
win. The
point of this discourse is that politics has been accepted as the easiest and
quickest, but ungodly, route to self-enrichment by many politicians, but
instead of going about it in a quiet, unobtrusive manner, they would always
seek to disrupt our lives by brutally dragging us into their conflict each time they lose out in a game they had ensured
we remained mere spectators – yes, we
have been shut out and denied the opportunity of helping to decide or even
merely observe how our God-given resources are utilised.
Let’s say it again with more
emphasis! For many of these politicians, politics is just another very
lucrative business enterprise from which they are hoping to reap jumbo profits.
We, the masses, do not feature in their calculations at all. If you see them
building any road or repainting a school building, it is either another
opportunity to accumulate immense dividends from an inflated contract or
something they felt they must hurriedly (and often very poorly) do to buy our
support for the next elections.
That is why such roads are often
so substandard that the next rains after the elections would wash them off.
Virtues like concern, compassion or altruism do not exist in the hearts of most
Nigerian politicians. It is all about them, their relatives and friends, nothing
more, nothing less. The whole ennobling idea about seeking to be treated fairly
by history and earning and sustaining a good name are just strange,
uninteresting notions that would never be able to win their admiration.
Now that it has become all too clear
to everyone that they are mostly in this for power and wealth acquisition, why
then should a politician outsmarted by his opponents begin to threaten to make
the country ungovernable which is a direct threat to our peace and existence? Imagine
such audacity? What exactly makes him think that he is too important that his
personal loss should become our collective problem? Ungovernable for whom, by
the way? The most annoying thing is that by the time he is making these
threats, his family has been sent far away to some very safe, well-run country
and himself has made solid travel and security arrangement to escape once the
country goes up in flames as the deluded people he is instigating to pour into
the streets to fight for him start mowing themselves down.
I seriously think that Nigerians
have been deceived enough and should now put a halt to all this nonsense. They
must realize that in the minds of these politicians, they are nothing but mere
cheaply procured and dispensable instruments for power and wealth accumulation.
Nigerians must, therefore, hasten
to clearly underline this point to the political gladiators, namely, that
Nigeria belongs to all Nigerians, and not to the few of them, and so, they have
no right whatsoever to go ahead to threaten or unleash any form of violence
because their more desperate and smarter colleagues displaced them in the clearly self-serving
race for Nigeria’s resources.
It is quite clear that what most
of these politicians are merely bemoaning each time they fail to win an
election is their failure to secure or re-secure looting rights, so I see no
reason why they should cause any trouble in the polity and drag us all into
their personal misfortune. This is what every Nigerian must know now, act
aright and send the clear, correct message to these fellows who have become our
country’s most malignant affliction.
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*Ejinkeonye, a columnist with Daily Independent (every Tuesday on the Back Page) is also a regular contributor to SCRUPLES (scruples2@hotmail.com)
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