Despite the varied
perfidy that sullied the recent elections, they are not irredeemably impaired
after all. They have provided us with some vital lessons to navigate our
labyrinthine political space. Clearly, they have once again jarred us into the
consciousness of our seemingly indissoluble deficit in political enlightenment.
The above may be clear to all keen observers of the recent political developments. But for this column, there is a more important lesson. It is the fact that the elections have unveiled the two easiest but very lucrative jobs in the country. Yes, political thuggery could turn you into a billionaire. It could launch you into the inner sanctum of the political class where you would no longer feed off the crumbs from the table of the power hegemons in our nation.
Or have we not been seeing how politicians cosy up to political thugs during elections? But we are not interested in political thuggery here. After all, the job of a political thug requires a dose of imagination and risks. Nor are these two jobs on the familiar list of plenitude-siring employments such as those in an oil company.
For you to get either of these jobs we are
interested in here, you may not necessarily need a long curriculum vitae. You
may not need to be a rare-bred product of the IVY League. But even if you
secure these jobs because of your long CV, you don’t need it to work. Consider
this: Those who are hired as our national electoral umpires usually come with
long CVs. For this job, you may be required to possess a long CV to get it.
You
may require a public perception as a person of integrity. But once you get it,
these are not necessary. The operations in this job are so auto-piloted that
you would realise that even a barely literate school dropout could do your job.
The overarching demand of your job is to conduct transparent elections. But you
just stay in your office. You have no stake. It is circumstances that would
determine the outcome of the elections. You do not need to be bothered about
how the results of an election get to you. All you need do once you get the
results is to append your signature.
Those politicians who feel cheated are then free to prosecute their grievances
in a law court. You need five years to prepare for the nation’s periodic
elections. But you could hold the elections when it is convenient for you to do
so. You could give any excuse why the time you have earlier fixed for elections
is no longer feasible. Your employers are the people, the citizens whose tax
money you spend. But they are not the ones who would determine whether you
should remain in their employ for another five years. So, you do not care about
your performance on the job.
As the electoral umpire, you preside over the
disbursement of taxpayers’ billions. You do not care whether you have justified
the expenditure of these billions on elections. Even if you feel that the
billions that were voted for you are insufficient, you enjoy the latitude of
asking for more. Your request would be granted because the nation must hold its
elections.
The second job is easier than the first. Here
you preside over the disbursement of more funds than those of the electoral
umpire. In fact, the nation’s founding fathers knew that your job is a very
easy one. They did not pretend about it. That was why they said that for you to
hold this job, you do not need many certificates. You do not even need a
university degree. All you need is a school certificate. Or a letter from the
principal of your former school indicating that you were once his pupil. For
you to secure the job of the president you would regale the citizens with what
you would do for them. But once you are in office, you do not need to cudgel
your brain as regards how you can make good your promises.
You may not do anything in the first four
years you would be in office before your term is renewed. You do not need to
solve any problem. You might have been a military general. In your military
days, you knew the importance of ruthlessly dealing with obstacles to your
success in a battle. But you do not need such ruthlessness as the president.
You could watch as the obstacles to the citizens’ well-being fester. No, to you
a lack of an efficient electricity system, an anaemic educational system and a
shrunk employment space are not obstacles that require ruthless obliteration.
Even if the citizens remind you that these are debilitating obstacles you may
only ignore them. Let them tell you that killings by Fulani herdsmen are lethal
obstacles that urgently demand your ruthless response, you just ignore them.
As far as you are concerned, the citizens are free to delude themselves that as
a president you have before you a table full of files you bury your head in
everyday on their behalf in order to understand their problems. Yes, the table
can be full of such files. Let the issues require urgent attention. You would
take your time to get to them. After all, you do not see anything wrong with
being referred to as Baba go slow. And then, when you feel that your health
requires you to go overseas, you can go and spend months outside the country.
Even while you are in the country, your jobs do not require you to plan for
today let alone planning for tomorrow, the next years, decades and centuries as
it is the tradition in other parts of the world. Why should you bother about
the opportunities on the moon when you do not even see the need to be worried
about a post-oil era of your county? The things you need to do to make the
citizens happy require little or no imagination – just send your deputy to dole
out N10, 000 in the market. And because your job is so easy, the citizens would
not be bothered about your performance before they give you another four years.
In these climes, the ease of doing the job of
the president is not a secret. It is now public knowledge. This is why the wise
citizens among us now keep on wondering why they should bother themselves to
think of how to get a job or create a business. In fact, because the job of the
president is so easy, the citizens, would not hire you if you are brimming with
ideas. They would not hire you if you have demonstrated your fecund imagination
by creating big businesses.
The citizens would wonder why they should hire you
when no imagination is needed to do the job of a president. This simply was why
over 70 people showed interest in becoming the president in the last election.
Now, the ease of doing the job of the nation’s president has democratised a
quest for the office. Thus, next time when the nation wants to hire a president
one should not rule out the possibility of the list of applicants rising to a
thousand and more.
In the same vein, when the nation is about
hiring another electoral umpire, we should expect a madding lobby. After all,
however the elections turn, the electoral umpire loses nothing. And since it
has become clear that those who hold these two top and very prestigious positions
do not need so much exertion to do their jobs why should the citizens apply
themselves in any endeavour in which they are engaged? Why should students
study hard when one can fail as the president or electoral umpire and there
would not be baleful consequences?
Or why should the youths be creative in
getting employed when it does not take any imagination to hold the highest
office in the land? And since a sterling academic pedigree of the electoral
umpire is not brought to bear on the execution of his job, we do not need a
professor, doctor or justice next time to conduct our elections. Let these
citizens face their jobs and contribute to the society in their different
professional ways. Let the office of an electoral umpire go to a school
certificate holder. Or is it not contradictory to be hiring a professor with
goggles, which are sometimes considered as a mark of erudition, to conduct an
election for an office a school certificate holder would occupy?
*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is on the Editorial Board of The Guardian
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