Participatory democracy in Nigeria produces universally acknowledged outcomes. It gets people into elective public offices such as the presidency, governorship, senate, House of Representatives, houses of assembly, chairmanship and counselorship. The methodology for achieving those outcomes, however, has a distinctive Nigerian flavour.
For instance, while in advanced democracies the pursuit of political power is anchored on a contestant’s antecedents and his plans for the future, including how he presents himself to the voting public (his manifesto), in Nigeria factors far removed from those traditional criteria determine a person’s success in his quest for political power.
These factors include, where he comes from (zoning), how deep his pockets are (financial muscle), how much mischief he is able to rake up (political scheming), his connections in high places (god-fatherism) and so on. Public acceptability hardly ever counts.
Surprisingly, when a credible candidate for political office is able to squeeze through the numerous Nigerian factors and emerge victorious, strictly on the strength of his positive qualities, the establishment is rather hard-put to accept his emergence as the logical and genuine outcome of such political contest. We do not need to go very far to verify the above.
It is on the basis of the foregoing that current happenings in Benue state, especially as they concern the All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial primary elections, can be explained.
In terms of the peculiar yardsticks for selecting gubernatorial candidates by Nigerian political parties, Rt. Rvd. Fr. Hyacinth Iormem Alia was the least qualified. The only thing in his favour was a shaky zoning arrangement which gave the slot to Jechira political bloc.
It is on record that Kwande political bloc also laid a strong and impressive claim to the zoning arrangement. In other areas, Fr. Alia did not command the financial strength that other aspirants possessed. Such aspirants were very extravagant in the display of their financial war-chest while the Reverend Father rolled out an impressive curriculum vitae, this was far removed from the political landscape.
He also had no political god-father, neither could he point to previous electoral experience. Traditional politicians gave him no chance based on what they knew of Nigerian politics.
In their haste to dismiss him, they completely ignored other possibilities.
The possibility that the public was getting thoroughly fed up with the existing status-quo and was determined to change the narrative. The fact that the Benue political establishment had taken the Benue public for granted for too long and resistance to their antics had set in.
It’s a fact that a politically clean and fresh candidate like Fr. Alia was being sought by Benue people to clean the Augean stable which Benue politics had become. Fr. Alia had already established himself as a lover of the downtrodden through his chosen priestly trajectory (healings and miracles) in his vocation as a Roman Catholic priest.
It’s a fact that the more enlightened stratum of Benue society saw Fr. Alia as possessing the required discipline, dedication and selflessness to redeem Benue from the rot created by Benue politicians, (after all, people don’t acquire the ability to heal and perform divine miracles through adultery, fornication, stealing and general sinful living: such powers are acquired through persistent prayer and righteous living).
Benue people reasoned that a man like that is what Benue needs in the saddle at this critical moment in the political history of the state.
Consequently and expectedly, Father Alia’s emergence as the gubernatorial candidate of the APC in Benue state has created massive shockwaves within the political establishment that the party is currently battling to stem. While the Benue public celebrates his victory at the primaries the political establishment lampoons it and is hell-bent on overturning it.
In their zeal to overturn Father Alia’s victory, it doesn’t matter to them if the APC, the party that provided a platform for them to attempt to actualise their ambition to lead the state, is destroyed in the process. There is only one word in the English language to describe this: selfishness (of course it has several synonyms).
Several questions arise from this scenario:
- Is this unabashed desperation to govern Benue the product of an honest desire and wish to lead Benue to the promised land? This is highly questionable.
- Is the Benue public not expected to have a say in who governs them? If it is expected to choose its leadership why is the choice creating such untrammeled consternation within a particularly privileged section of Benue society.
- What do those causing problems in the party hope to achieve by destroying the platform they happily used in their bid for Benue state governorship?
- Is Benue expected to perpetually remain under the stranglehold of a few privileged individuals to be exploited and used as they like?
- Does the Benue public not have a right to rise against such exploitation and slavery?
- Finally and most importantly, where does this cabal hope to take Benue with their current machinations in the political arena?
Every lover of Benue should think about the above.
Kula Tersoo,
Makurdi, Benue state
[email protected]
