While inaugurating the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial campaign committee of his state, self-styled Chief Servant of Niger State, Governor Babangida Aliyu was reported to have remarked to his new ‘disciples’ that their first task was to win the state for the party at all costs in the coming elections. Aliyu, in his own words said; “If you cannot lie, get out of politics. Anything you are involved in has its own rule. You are in politics to win, win first and let other things follow. Don’t be the one crying louder lest you will be the one they will take to court. If you are talking of honesty or morals, go and become an Imam or Pastor. Politics cannot be the way it used to be. The challenges are more now, the variables have changed….Our society is not as grateful as it used to be, the values and morals have gone down. If you want to win, use the modern morality.”
While the statement was indeed loaded with everything that a public figure such as a governor must never say in public, it should not be entirely surprising that it came out of the PDP camp. After all, we had been warned on several occasions that the party would rule for at least 60 years as far back as when the party was barely four years into coming to power at the federal level. You may call these pronouncements their moments of delirium or naïve optimism, but they probably must have perfected something towards the realization of this objective, no matter how sinister, appalling, ridiculous, despicable, and nauseating – going against all the tenets and norms of democracy. But for the statement to have emanated from none other than Babangida Aliyu who was, not too long ago, among the PDP stalwarts that formed the ‘New PDP’ because they told the world, himself in particular, that they jumped the ‘old PDP’ ship because it had lost the moral anchor upon which it was founded requires further interrogation.
From the surface, Aliyu’s statement should no doubt draw the ire of those nostalgic Nigerians who may still retain the ‘old and medieval morality’ in their DNA, which is no longer suitable for the current Nigerian reality. These custodians of the ‘old morality’ are now being made to realize, by Aliyu, that the societal mores as the glue that binds and sustains the human community, which prevents their lives from being nasty, brutish and short, where the people ‘eat’ their own kind are of no value. But if one is to dissect Aliyu’s every word, phrase, and sentence in the statement, one cannot but feel sorry for the man. He may actually be crying out for help not only that he may be saved from himself, but also that the country may be saved from his likes before it is too late.
Nigeria is no doubt in a big mess. It is believed that the rot in which the system is mired is fundamentally structural, which can consequently be fixed with the leadership that is endowed with vision and noble ideals. But the moral depravity into which the people have sunk, as exemplified by some of their behavioral pattern, and as encapsulated by Aliyu, is completely a different matter. It’s hard to see how the society can really thrive if this moral decay is not quickly arrested. Otherwise, why should an occupier of a seat that embodies order, justice, and equity in a society make such a patently egregious public statement and still be called the chief of state? In developed societies, Governor Aliyu would have been history in the government house by now, having been forced out by the sheer weight of his own moral burden to continue in office. Or he would have been forced to resign by the people for desecrating their unwritten but psychically ingrained moral codes. These societies are called “developed” not only because of the physical infrastructures of the road networks, bridges, monuments, skyscrapers that adorns their landscapes, or their institutions that works unceasingly almost with precision but more so because of those intangible but noble, societal ideals they all subscribe to and fervently aspiring towards. A violation of any of the ideals by those entrusted with public office is therefore met with swift retribution. No ifs and buts about it. This is the real reason why they’re more evolved. Our own president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan has admitted – probably without realizing it – that even our close ‘cousins’, the South Africans, are more evolved than us when he referred to them in his presidential flag-off speech in Lagos as the “superior power.” This was in reference to the system that kept Henry Okah behind bars in that country. By implication, our president believes that the government he heads is inferior to the South African government. Our condition cannot get any more depressingly pathetic than that.
Yet, we must interrogate Aliyu’s statement for whatever it’s worth. Telling members of his committee to get out of politics if they cannot lie should not set us on the edge of our seats. It is already a given that a significant part of the stock-in-trade of politicians (even the world over) is to lie. Thus if a politician promises to build bridges, give generous tax breaks, build schools, and provide boreholes to a multitude with diverse interests but eventually built just the bridges and gave the tax breaks, he has done well by those who needed the bridges to commute as well as those who would reap financial windfalls from the tax breaks. But to those looking forward to the schools for their wards, and others already thirsty for potable water but got neither, the politician had lied. Contestants enter a game because they wanted to win but how far each contestant would go to achieve his ultimate goal, including contemptuously violating the rules of the game becomes a question him alone must come to terms with. If the integrity of the game, his own values and morals matter to him, he would contest within the confine of the rules and still see himself a ‘winner’ even if he had lost. But if these virtues are insignificant to him and sees morality as belonging to the dogs, he would go to any length to extract a win, by hook or crook. Babangida Aliyu is in the league of these latter contestants.
His advice that the committee should “go and become an Imam or Pastor” if they want to talk “honesty or morals” was indicative of a very desperate man. He probably shouldn’t have used Nigeria’s Imam or Pastor as the embodiment of “honesty or morals” because they too, as collectives, are hopelessly compromised members of society. A monk would have been apt. Again, where in any developed societies would they have a man still presiding over a national religious body whose aircraft was involved in illegal cash haulage and arms procurement? Aliyu’s sermon that “Politics cannot be the way it used to be” because “the challenges are more now” and “the variables have changed” was indeed very instructive. We should ask, what makes him think that “politics cannot be the way it used to be”?
Why are the challenges more and who is to blame? Has the Chief Servant reflected on why “our society is not as grateful as it used to be” because “the values and morals have gone down”? Whose fault? Aliyu’s injunction to his ‘disciples’ that they should “use the modern morality” if they “want to win” may well be the mother lode of this statement. The problem is that the Chief Servant fell short of informing us what this “modern morality” entails. What are its attributes? We need to know all this so that those of us who are still ‘trapped’ in the old and medieval morality may convert to this new and improved “modern morality”. But by deductive reasoning, Aliyu’s brand of “modern morality” cannot be a social ‘good’ because it is inherently full of vices. It therefore ceases to be called morality. It can either be immorality or amorality. Or it can be a cross between the two. This is what the Chief Servant of Niger State wants the indigenes of his state in particular, and Nigerians in general to have as their new and modern moral compass. A leader cannot get any more depraved than this.
- Odere is a media practitioner. He can be reached at femiodere@gmail.com
