Nigeria: Federal Republic Of Thuggery

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

Shamelessness is the vilest disease of the Nigerian establishment. The shameless mode of the leaders of Nigeria was activated in full force on February 25 and March 18, in this year of Our Lord, when so-called national elections were staged. 

It all turned out to be a sham, a charade that even the most mentally retarded child would scoff at. Yet, billions were voted for the exercises that the organizers never believed in at all in the first instance.

There was the initial drive of asking millions of Nigerians to acquire the Personal Voter’s Card (PVC) as the surefire mode of voting into power the proper government of their choice. Multitudes of patriotic Nigerians heeded the call by registering to vote, but according to a quote attributed to late Russian dictator Stalin – voters don’t count; only counters of the votes matter.

Given the concocted and manufactured results of the elections, the PVC has been reduced to just another plastic card that has no value whatsoever. Another ace touted to make the elections free, fair, transparent and credible were the BVAS machines that were acquired so expensively, but they became reduced to abject toys that counted for nothing in the written and convoluted election results.

The thugs had a free reign in superintending over the elections while the country’s security agents served as their foot soldiers. Xenophobia worse than that of Apartheid South Africa was openly displayed as unwanted ethnic groups were barred from voting.

Any arrangement of numbers can be announced as the election results, and losers are instantly asked: “Go to court!” The compromised courts can only serve as programmed dolts of their paymasters who happen to be the godfather politicians.

The wonder is that the country keeps wasting humungous amounts of money in every four-year cycle yakking that national elections are being organized. The woeful squandering of riches extends to the dead-end of the so-called national census which late Pa Abraham Adesanya dismissed as “the census of cows and goats!”

Nigeria has been thus reduced to a despicable joke all over the world because of the strange doings unworthy of even barbarians. It needs stressing that the enthronement of state-sponsored thuggery as democracy spells ruination for Nigeria.

The announced winners are of course gloating not minding that the country is dangerously grinding towards coma. Nobody is being held to account for all the abnormalities and excesses that were in open display at all the polling booths and on TV and the social media.

The ethnic card has been given a boost with ill-assorted bigots in high and low places openly boasting of dealing with “invaders” deigning to interfere with elections in their adopted tribal homestead of Lagos that used to be the capital of all of Nigeria.

The clear and present danger is that Nigeria is only managing to exist for now on wobbly legs until anarchy or worse supervenes. The principal maker of the mayhem starkly staring Nigeria in the face happens to be the so-called Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) headed by the unfathomable Professor Mahmood Yakubu.

It is in character of the hideous nature of the stage-managed presidential election that the winner, to wit, president-elect was announced in the ungodly hour of 4am. Some wags are already spinning the proverb that it is akin to stealing the village drum which one cannot beat inside one’s private room or in public.

There is not much to crow about gallivanting around as the president of a totally divided Nigeria that has no crutches to stand on. Time was when people made noises that the worst civil rule is better than the best military dictatorship, but Nigeria’s situation now happens to be neither here nor there, as things are back to worse than square one.

It’s not as if Nigeria has not seen a good number of electoral capers in the past that are stranger than fiction, but the 2023 heist takes the eagle’s feather because even masquerades were allowed to vote where unwanted “other” Nigerians were denied the vote.

Back in 2007, the ill-fated President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had the good grace to announce to the world that the election that brought him to power was flawed. The electoral reforms that President Yar’Adua then initiated has since been put on one side by the brazen election riggers of modern day Nigeria.

Nobody can now question the thugs of Nigeria in their gloriously declared Federal Republic of Thuggery.

*Uzoatu is a poet, playwright and essayist