By Amor
Amor
Like an inscrutable nightmare, the ponderous
mystery of the Nigerian national question, which is ultimately the nation’s
enduring essence, is still at issue. Jolted by the scandalous and shocking display
of the obvious limitations of the human evolution, the unacceptable index of
human misery in their country, and willed by the current spate of pain being
inflicted on them by a stone-hearted old soldier and his quislings, Nigerians
have been singing discordant tunes about the state of their forced union. This
has further been exacerbated by disarming pockets of inter and intra-communal
clashes, ethnic cleansing by Fulani herdsmen, student unrest, rampaging madness
of ethic militias and sectarian fanaticism in some parts of the country. Therefore,
the matter for regret and agitation is that a supposedly giant of Africa has suddenly become the world’s most viable
junkyard due to the evil machinations of a fraudulent ruling class and the
feudal forces still bent on keeping the country in a perpetual state of
medieval servitude.
(pix:123rf) |
Yet, the most disturbing irony of the Nigerian
condition is that a multi-party democratic system made up of over fifty
registered political parties enthroned by the civil society and the media with
the support of a few progressive politicians such as the late legal luminary,
Chief Gani Fawehinmi, the great Yoruba leader, Chief Abraham Adesanya, Chief
Ndubisi Kanu, Alhaji Balarabe Musa and a host of others, is gradually being
turned to a one-party state by a gang of confused politicians and discredited
soldiers who call themselves “progressives”. After a keenly contested
presidential election in which emotions rose to fever-pitch, a lot of
unprintable and damaging words thrown into the bargain from all sides of the
divides, rather than sue for a genuine reconciliation of all the contending
forces, president Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the All Progressives
Congress (APC) started by criminalizing the opposition led by the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) which was hitherto the ruling party. Rather than show
magnanimity in victory as genuine progressives would do, extend the olive
branch to the defeated, resuscitate and rejig the Inter-party Advisory Office
and promote peaceful co-existence amongst the various political parties, ethnic
nationalities, religious and other interest groups, the APC-led federal
government did the opposite.
Soon after its inauguration, the APC
government, like a bull in a China ’s
shop, started embarking on the aggressive promotion of belligerence, acrimony
and rancour; criminalization, demonization, dehumanization, and demolition of
the major opposition party, the PDP. While decimating their prime enemy, the
APC was trying to lionize and canonize its members in messianic emblems at the
detriment of other politicians. The APC, in its smugness, self assurance and
we-know-it-all bravura, is blissfully unaware of the fact it won the election
not only for themselves but for all Nigerians. The ruling party is sadly
engrossed in the envenomisation, intimidation and balkanisation of the PDP,
organized Labour, the intelligentsia and the critical elite that it has
forgotten how to govern this complex nation. By trying to rubbish the sustained
achievements of the PDP which succeeded in rebuilding almost all the broken
segments of the national economy for sixteen unbroken years after sixteen
consecutive years (1983-1999) of military gangsterism, rapacity and greed, the
APC has, unknown to itself, committed political harakiri before all discerning
Nigerians and the international community which rated the country under former
president Goodluck Jonathan as easily the biggest economy in Africa and one of
the fasted growing economies in the world.