“The banana is rotting, people say it is ripening”- Proverb
A lot of realignment is going on, so much happening in the political landscape. Power is the name of the game, forget all the promises, and exchanges, our politicians are sadly same-difference. I would avoid the debate of who is the better of the current gladiators for now. However I will start my admonition on this fable.
Two men met, one was telling the other about some family problems with one of his many kids. After a while the other guy said, “You think you have family problems? Get a load of my situation. A few years ago I met a young widow with a grown up daughter and we got married. Later, my father married my stepdaughter. That made my stepdaughter my stepmother and my father became my stepson. Also, my wife became my mother-in-law of her father-in-law. Then the daughter of my wife, my stepmother, had a son. This boy was my half brother because he was my father’s son, but he was also the son of my wife’s daughter, which made him my wife’s grandson. That made me the grandfather of my half-brother.
“This was nothing until my wife and I had a son. Now the sister of my son, my mother-in-law, is also the grandmother. This makes my father the brother-in-law of my child, whose stepsister is my father’s wife. I am my stepmother’s brother-in-law, my wife is her own child’s aunt, my son is my father’s nephew and I am my own grandfather.”
The opposition is trying to put up a front, yet swim in the same mistakes of those they want to change. There is something about the Nigerian politician. The ruling party is terrible; the opposition is an abridged version of terrible. I use the term Nigerian politician from the perspective of not just an individual but also a bunch that includes the leaders, and the led. There is just something about us that is just not right. Indeed, we all acknowledge that there is a problem but we simply cannot stick to an all purpose solution, so in circles we go.
Some days back the Senate President was in town, he had a convoy of about ten cars, plus a detachment of mobile policemen and soldiers and I could only wonder who wants to kill this man and why all this power play. I asked my companion in the car, if he thinks that this man would want to leave this luxury. No was the emphatic answer. Today that scene is replicated everywhere, our selected or rigged in officials go about feeling like demi-gods that they have become. I know of a politician that drives in a convoy of 20 cars, not to another state but to Sunday service and you guess where the church is, at the government house, a 4-minute walking distance from his official residence.
Our politicians would and indeed do anything to retain power that is why a distinguished senator wants to become an extinguished governor, irrespective of the seeming demotion, and the National Assembly is becoming a retirement home for ex-governors; all that matters is the power, the money, and the madness that comes with the office. However one looks at it, it is simply the lack of principles, a lack of will, lack of morals and purpose and it remains the bane of Nigerian politics, it is the story of underdevelopment of our 100 years of existence as an entity.
Awolowo was a Western champion, and Zik had his own ulterior motives and the Sardauna who rather than deploy his enormous political goodwill and leadership skill to the whole Nigeria chose to sit put up North. These men were men indeed, today late Mallam Aminu Kano is respected and remembered even though he had no oil, kerosene or gas well, and had no shares in either blue or red chip companies.
That the Nigerian politician is a crook is obvious, but then when a people chose the path of silence they pay the price. Without prejudice will Buhari be better than Goodluck, and then will Buhari be able to face the ‘realities’ of time, how will he managed ‘some’ of the crooks that make up the APC.
Ironically politics in Nigeria and by Nigerians is illusionary and subject to political geometry and arithmetic beyond the ordinary man. So we may want it, but do they want it, it is all about what they want. The Nigeria politician is always looking for avenues to exploit the masses, not that they have to look far because we give them quite a number of them and so they openly exhibit gross greed, use our collective sweat to secure the good life and not blink an eyelid. After all what can we do?
The nature of the Nigerian politician makes it pertinent that we lack an opposition because we all play the politics of the stomach…so it’s a compromise, concession and still we do not get a consensus. Rancor reigns supreme, the voice of the nays are loud yet we say the yahs have it. Everybody is related one way or the other and hardly has anything different to offer. We cannot spot the difference because the difference is the same.
