Perhaps, some odd alien in space can taste or smell the sad auguries, the sour portents of our next general elections. How much of what we see and hear today puts citizens in an upbeat mood for the heraldry of a new dawn? How endless are the known and suspected machinations to corner power for the sake of looting the treasury blind? How many can count the thread of fake news rolling out from nebulous mills? Are we seeing the future we want for ourselves and our children as the elections draw near?
In the not-so distant past, the privileged few close to the political heavyweights would, by now, be having a mental calculation of the millions of crisp notes they stand to harvest from the events leading to the general elections. It was in such period that humongous funds, in different denominations, which would be used to oil the machinery called electioneering campaigns normally flow into the system. No one cares where the money comes from as long as the crumbs fall in the hands of those in the lower rungs of a societal ladder that is eternally capitalistic in form and content. While those that hovered around the corridors of power cart away theirs in millions, of foreign currencies, those on the fringes who simply refused to deploy the power of the thumb sensibly were always delighted to bargain off their future for a pittance, sometimes as low as a N500 note stuffed in a loaf of bread. It was that bad. It could even get worse because there were those who would kill and hug suicidal missions with sheer gusto, just for their candidates to emerge winners through whatever means, including electoral heist. In those days, it was not uncommon to hear people express optimism that money would soon be pumped into the system as the general elections draw closer. The collateral damage was that governance would always take a backseat in that year while crude politicking, the meanest of its kind, would flourish with its attendant dire consequences. That was in the recent past, anyway.
Fast forward to the present and you wonder if Nigeria is in an election year. Less than 40 days to a critical election in which the opposition Peoples Democratic Party imagines a forceful return of President Muhammadu Buhari back to his Daura farm after an electoral implosion, nothing seems to suggest that the taps have been opened for the funds to pour freely as it was in the past. Okay, we all know that Buhari has never been one to freely dish out money to soften the ground for electoral victory. This week, he even sent out unambiguous warning signals to government bureaucrats who may feel inclined to dip hands into the treasury vaults on the wrong assumption that old election year practices should continue. No more cash and carry politicking, Buhari warns. Ha! That’s a tough one in this clime unless we want to deceive ourselves. Be that as it may, how does one explain the loud silence in the PDP camp being a party that was adept at deploying government funds to achieve its set targets in the past?
But for its unexpected fall from power, we wouldn’t have known that, for the PDP, raiding the national vault to fund political interests had become an official policy of some sort. And so, nobody saw anything wrong with a political appointee pulling off millions of dollars from the nation’s oil agency to cream the hands of corrupt electoral officers to ensure victory for her principal. I guess it was also normal, as many of the culprits have argued, for these persons to walk briskly into the Office of the National Security Adviser and cart away millions of dollars ostensibly to be used in fixing one electoral problem or the other. While some said the dollars came in as payment for consultancy work, others said they used the money to fund the activities of prayer warriors who travelled far and wide to beseech the gods for the emergence of a particular candidate as winner. And if you think this is preposterous, how would you react to the tendentious reason given by those who simply said they didn’t know the money was fleeced from the returned loot of the late despotic ruler, General Sani Abacha or taken from what was set aside to buy weapons to prosecute the war against the Boko Haram insurgents in the North East?
We live in strange times, don’t we? Now, the elections are days away and we are yet to read stories about how the hands of some privileged traditional rulers scattered across the six geo-political zones of the country are being greased with sweet-smelling, freshly-minted dollars to influence and cajole their subjects to vote for particular candidates. We are still awaiting news concerning how Aso Rock packaged dollars for different groups of religious bodies on courtesy visits to the President to pledge their unalloyed support for his bid for a second tenure. Where are all the General Overseers, prophets, their Eminence, Imams, Alfas, marabouts and babalawos that were once laying siege on The Presidency in those days? How come, in less than two months to the elections, no religious body has accused another of sneaking into Aso Rock to collect billions of naira on behalf of others, to curry electoral favours? And why has Buhari not embarked on a rash of visitations to the countless denominations of churches and mosques to personally worship with the faithful, donate money and make some political statements as it was in those days? Why?
Well, if money has refused to circulate the way it should no thanks to glue-fingered Buhari, something else is—propaganda. From the look of things, this is one election in which both sides of the divide would spin past wounds to gain political mileage. Fake news would be adorned with a toga of reality. Peace deal or not, we are already witnessing signs that the combatants would employ every gimmick outside the books to rubbish reputations and impugn characters. The way the game is played here, facts are not sacred. Even opinions are not free anymore. They can be twisted and adjusted to fit set narratives. It is called politics. It is murky, deadly and it holds no prisoners. It spares no punches. When you decide to swim in its waters, be prepared to swallow whatever odious particle that may find its way into your mouth as you gasp for breath. It is neither a game for gentlemen nor a sport for ladies of class. That is why the Jibrin el Sudan tale is gaining momentum despite the denial by The Presidency. That is why the candidate of the PDP in the presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, continues to battle with the perception that he is corrosively corrupt even when he has never been convicted in any court of competent jurisdiction.
That is why the PDP is huffing and puffing about Buhari family buying off the shares of a mobile telecommunication outfit and a bank without one jot of evidence to substantiate the allegations. That is why the ruling party says an Atiku presidency portends grave danger for the nation’s treasury and its foreign reserves. That is why some persons are dancing shamelessly on the graves of the courageous officers that were felled in the battlefield in the North East. And that is why the All Progressives Congress would willfully accuse the candidates of the PDP of sourcing funds from South Africa-based drug lords for the election. Everywhere you turn, what you get is bitter bile. Politics and slime seem to have a symbiotic relationship. In short, there seems to be no red line in this sickening game in which every national misfortune is used for political propaganda.
Unfortunately, talks about issue-based campaigns are receding by the day. And it is not as if the issues begging for attention are not embarrassingly choking as the lethargy in governance persists. As we inch towards 20 years of democratic governance in Nigeria, basic needs like water, housing, health, clothing and education remain in comatose. Our hospitals, if one can call them so, have deteriorated from being mere consulting clinics to death traps. We don’t even know the real number of out-of-school children as that too has been politicized. People throw up mind-boggling figures to confound and confuse us. Despite the efforts the Buhari administration says it was making to reduce youth unemployment, the statistics being reeled out from the office of the Statistician General of the Federation speak more of gloom than boom. Billions have been spent on power generation but we still transmit darkness to millions of Nigerians. If in doubt, ask those who depend on power generators in running their businesses to tell you how much they spend monthly on diesel, fuel and sundry items. We don’t even want to talk about affordable housing, food, clothing and potable water. It is bad that we are still grappling with these issues in 21st century Nigeria. Worse still is the fact that the outcome of elections is hardly based on the solutions offered by the candidates but rather more on primordial sentiments, religion and ethnic affiliations with money playing a major role. Add that to the growing reign of politically sponsored violence which has already started in some states and you would understand why, in spite of the efforts to modernize the way and how we vote, we are still hemmed in this crucible of wanting to serve motherland by fire, by force. That is why everything is deployed in the name of political correctness and nothing is considered sacred even the misfortunes of political opponents.
When, I ask, will politicians begin to run issue-based campaigns without leaving the electorates with the impression that what was on offer was the thankless job of picking likely malleable candidates from a gang of privileged thieves? Must politics we always follow this despicable track?
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