If Nigerians are so distressed about the misrule in their country today, unfortunately, they are in a Catch-24 situation. We are locked up in a paradoxical situation from which, except for an intervention of providence, we may never escape. This is due to contradictory rules or limitations put in the people’s way by the current runners of government.
As Sule Lamido warned recently, if the Leviathan in Aso Rock didn’t control the Senate, the Nigerian Army, Nigerian police, DSS, etc, and yet won the 2023 election, it is wishful thinking that anyone can stop the reproduction of this misrule in 2027. The ones at the top today have worn upon them the classical head of the Medusa. In real terms, like the sobriquet of one of the friends of Ayinla Omowura, an Abeokuta musical warlord of the 1970s, they are reincarnated of Ab’esuj’obi – one who shares kola nut with the devil.
“Nigerians are writhing under excruciating poverty occasioned by wickedness in high places.”
According to the playbook of democracy, opposition deepens democracy. In Nigeria, the Leviathan has effectively castrated opposition. And this is why we should all be bothered. It is a Lagos model given federal promotion. As the Yoruba will say, rìkísí pa wón pò – which, in lawyers’ lingo, is consensus ad idem, this time to do evil – the Leviathan then dipped his hands into his wiles pouch. From there, he brought out a colony of termites, led by a choleric dictator who is seeking political vengeance in his home state.
His main assignment was to gradually corrode virtually all the internal strength of the PDP. I will not be shocked if the Leviathan is also the sponsor of the crisis in the Labour Party as well. Like a colony of pests called termites, Aso Rock and Nyesom Wike have visited our country, using Rivers State as a model, one of the most debilitating democratic devastations ever in history. Their comparison with termites here is instructive. Termites, over the centuries, have been one of the greatest enemies of man.
Wherever they strike, their presence is concealed and undetected, until they have visited the most rapacious and severest damage on timbers and woods necessary for man’s use. As the devastation goes on, while man sees a normal thin exterior layer of wood, at discovery, it is almost always too late to reverse the colossal ruins. This means that whatever tyranny and limited vision leadership that Nigerians complain of today has a longer expiry period than they may think. We should all buckle up for a marathon. It is a distressing reality.
“Termites, over the centuries, have been one of the greatest enemies of man, their presence concealed and undetected until it’s too late.”
What happened in Edo State last month, coupled with the lawlessness that has eaten up Rivers State today, are clear signals that the electoral, judicial, and police institutions have been ambushed. In broad daylight, with the obvious abetment of the Villa, the electoral process was cavalierly thrown to the swine. The animals in turn mauled it with maniacal relish. It was obvious that Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC didn’t have any qualms about licking the pus-dripping wound of the Leviathan and his accomplices.
With wanton abuse of electoral rules by INEC, advocacy for the abrogation of state electoral commissions for being lapels of state governors will not make any sense. From what is going on in Rivers today, with INEC openly in bed with a federal minister whose Hippopotamus ego will not stop from his Samson complex, any INEC-conducted state election will automatically be a from-frying-pan-to-fire situation. We will be substituting local state despots for Abuja despots. In all, INEC’s Edo sham election hasn’t shown that the commission is the solution to governors’ brazen perversion of democracy. Kayode Egbetokun stands smilingly on the fringe to offer autocracy and totalitarian rule a pillow for comfort and the judiciary a final seal.
The second prong from which to look at this pig-food relationship is ethnic relations in Nigeria. As it stands, in the last nine years or thereabout, ethnic tensions here have ratcheted up so frighteningly, just like among black and white people of South Africa. When you read posts on social media, especially from both Yoruba and Igbo, a tingling feeling of foreboding will creep up your nerves. Yes, there is a subsisting history of almost a quarter-century-old hatred ramped up between the two ethnicities. However, between 2015 and now, a heavy salvo has been unleashed on the relations between the two ethnicities, so much so that if there is any slight prick, the bubble will burst finally.
“The electoral process was cavalierly thrown to the swine; the animals mauled it with maniacal relish.”
The most incalculable salvo, more devastating than the machine guns of the civil war, was smashed on ethnic relations in Nigeria by Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year rule. In my piece of May 26, 2019, with the title, Who will be Nigeria’s last president? I argued that by the time Buhari exited Aso Rock, there might be no Nigeria as handed over to him. I said: “I have this hunch that by the time President Muhammadu Buhari leaves office after his second term, there may either be no Nigeria as properly so-called, or the nagging questions of our existence would have led to the ultimate violent resolution of our identity and leadership crises.” My hunch was based on Buhari’s ultra-ethnocentric rule.
That playbook is being revamped today. All the cement and glue that made a united Nigeria have practically been deliberately peeled off or worn out. Ethnic tensions are at a frighteningly high level, reminding one of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Buhari, on national TV, once referred to the Igbo as a “tiny dot in a circle.” It was not different from the pre-fixing of the word “cockroach” by Hutus against the Tutsi. Both depicted a negligible, expendable ethnicity. While in Rwanda, it inflamed passion and expedited genocide, in Nigeria, it bred resistance. Buhari then prosecuted this hate agenda with a clinical finish, so much so that, by the time he left office, ethnic relations between the East and other ethnicities landed on the borderline.
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