A basic concern of any government worth the name, is the maintenance of peace, law and order in society. Every good government believes, and so it is, that a harmonious, socially cohesive way of life in the polity enhances its ability to tackle social problems like hunger, poverty, unemployment, drug addiction, banditry, Fulani-herdsmen menace and kidnapping and to deal with exigencies like outbreaks of diseases ((epidemics or pandemics) and natural disasters (like earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, thunderstorms, wild fires, flooding and, evil politicians, in the case of Nigeria). It can then be argued that any government which is not so concerned is either existing in Utopia or is a natural arrangement in the kingdom of the lower animals. Although all types of government want a stable environment and try to inculcate acceptable social values, the most responsible is a democracy.
Unfortunately, today, in Nigeria, we have in leadership an amoral, amorphous and propagandistic cabal which litters our political landscape with the debris of animosity, acrimony and disharmony, which are not just lowering the altitude of good governance by placing thorns and thistles on the path of political maturation but are actively demolishing democratic institutions.
With the evil machination of dare-devil politicians, our executive is turning itself into an executioner, our legislature is lethal and our judiciary jaundiced. What’s more, Nigerians are being led by some forces of darkness on a quick mad march to autocracy, nay, totalitarianism. And as sub-humans, we must gulp down this bitter pill with an attitude of gratitude to the real humans, to avoid the wrath of the gods of Nigeria’s present system of things. Alas, because sentence against evil is not executed speedily by the Almighty One, our immortal leaders, especially the widely recognized vicious triumvirate in Nigeria, now play God.
Now, Rivers people must walk with militarily measured steps. We must breathe at militarily calibrated rates. Angels of democracy, peace and security like Sir Siminalayi Fubara must be rubbished while belligerent demons of insecurity must be worshipped. Pushed violently by the triplets of greed, indiscipline and corruption, the heads of Nigeria’s three arms of government, to wit, Tinubu (the Executive), Akpabio (the Legislature) and the FCT Minister (the Judiciary) are in the state by proxy to plunder and divide the booty that will be ploughed into the enterprise of prosecuting forth-coming elections. For good measure, the security agencies, especially the Nigeria Police, sponsored and strengthened by the nation’s ruling trio, are on insecurity rampage to assault democracy-prone protesters, for autocracy must replace democracy in Nigeria. My heart bleeds!
As if all Rivers people have been ravaged by a bug of daftness, the principalities that hold sway in our territory want us to swallow the seed of deceit lock, stock and barrel. The Sole Administrator’s threats against insecurity in our state are simply hocus-pocus while his pronouncements on the safety of life and property are merely cosmetic.
Surely, Mr. President is working assiduously to enlist himself in the world’s directory of the most autocratic leaders that ever lived. With a wave of the hand, he is happily competing with Mobutu Sese Sekou of Zaire, Pol Pot of Cambodia, Stalin of the defunct USSR, Emperor Bokassa of Central African Republic, Papa Doc of Haiti and (welcome from far-away lands) Abacha of Nigeria. While many of these early tyrants sold the poor for a shekel of silver, others, in extreme cases, swam in the blood of their subjects just to remain in power.
Why would our own Emilokan not compete with great political leaders in history, men of vision, determination and compassion. Think of Gandhi of India and his sermon of non-violent resistance; Kemal Attaturk and his reformation in Turkey; Franklin Roosevelt and his recovery of the United States economy; and Nelson Mandela and his principled stance against the forces of apartheid in South Africa, amongst others. If our own President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is mentioned among this second class of persons, will his power dissipate? Nawaoh!
With their distorted sense of political engineering, legislative naivety, executive recklessness and judicial iniquities, political adversaries of Rivers State on account of its bountiful natural endowments so ably managed by SIR SIM FUBARA, the man of destiny, are poised to impoverish the state under the cover of State of Emergency. Experience has shown that most Nigerian leaders have not been able to tame their greed – the urge to acquire more and more even when they have had enough to take care of themselves several lifetimes over. The looting syndrome in Nigeria has reached the stage of “show business”. It is a case of grab all that could be grabbed and leave the country poorer than you met it.
Fast-track to electoral matters. While civilized countries have developed a technology that produces water-resistant mobile phones which could be used to make calls from the depth of the sea, Nigeria is developing an improved soft technology of rigging elections and enhanced skills for looting public funds. Thumbs Up for Nigerian politicians! Dumping their sense of decency on the dustbin of history, these politicians who act out scripts written, produced and directed by untoward masters will engage decadent youths other than their own children in all forms of electoral fraud that will be validated by topmost academics whose belly is their god. These academics, as usual, will be used to declare willy nilly elections in favour of politicians in the ruling party and Nigeria will descend into a deeper political pit of despair, despondency and retrogression.
Pitifully, youngsters who are capable of understanding political issues and taking independent decisions on them, often allow themselves to be misinformed or even kept in the dark on crucial issues which affect their lives and basic rights. A great many youths, therefore, participate in electoral campaigns not because they choose to do so for any genuine interest but because they are goaded to do so by power-seekers who care less about their (the youths’) welfare and well-being. Many vulnerable youths are drawn into various acrimonious disputes and electoral malpractices in the course of which many of them lose their lives while their principals engage with gusto in the flagrant looting of the national treasury.
Although we are aware that the much sought-after peace, stability, democratic growth, development, general economic and political prosperity, are the rewards of free and fair elections, we have, as a nation, allowed our electoral system and process to be plagued by greed, fraud and violence, with violence rating highest on the scale of the vices.
While the world is changing as democracy is globalizing, the helmspersons of our national government, have refused to lay their hands on the plough of democratic governance but instead are leading Nigeria on a quick march to the pit of autocracy. Nigerian leaders have forgotten so soon that an Abacha was here:
In a while he was; in a short while he ebbed out
_Could control the elements that faded before the essence
Gunning, dark and curtly, yes, without courtesy
Could control the guns, yes, but not the gods.
_He drank the wine of power, he drew the woe of evil.
Brief he was but not bright but a brute
_Tucked away somewhere in the recesses of some rock
A God was here, a goon walked here.
A goof got us and wasted our men, our gold
A gopher that cooked and leaked our land, our glory
Behold, a Sani was here, an insane saint he was
Behold, an Abacha was here, a bashful bane we had
Behold some vanity was here, now sinking Below the sinking sand, the way of all the earth.
