Then the high priest tore his clothes and said: “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy.”
This was a scene at the temple in Jerusalem, during an encounter between Jesus Christ and the Sanhedrin, shortly after his arrest at the Garden of Gethsemane, after his betrayal by Judas Iscariot.
For exposing their falsehood and evil and practically being a thorn in their flesh, the Jewish leaders, were intent on punishing Him. But because they had no evidence strong enough to earn Him death, their ultimate goal, they tried to manufacture one, no matter how.
However, none of their several false witness was able to stick before Jesus Himself, supplied them what they needed. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
That was it! The weapon had been handed over to them. So much was its potency that even at the forecourt of the palace of Pontus Pilate, they had to rely on it to push their agenda.
More than 2,000 years after, humanity, has remained the same, in the main – captive to sentiments over reality – unable to grapple and deal with truth.
So, the fact that the demand for the hides of Ike Ekweremadu, Deputy Senate President, which a section of the Nigerian polity, has taken on as a project since the beginning of the Eighth Senate, was recently intensified, would hardly surprise anyone conversant with the constant struggle between truth and falsehood.
Humanity has always reflected that struggle. Whether with Jesus, a Supreme Being or Ekweremadu, a mere mortal, the principle remains the same. There is always an attempt to beat down, asphyxiate and benumb the voice of reason by those who believe they have the advantage, because there will always be the Caiaphas crowd to be manipulated and used to move the hands of Pilate.
Except in some climes, which have succeeded in building institutions strong enough to checkmate his excesses, man’s proclivity and propensity to stifle the truth, remain as destructive to humankind as the triumph of evil over good.
If not, what did Ekweremadu say on the floor of the Senate on March 7 that was so difficult to understand? Concomitantly, if his comments were not that complex or complicated, why then the deliberate twist and subsequent hullaballoo?
To be sure, Ekweremadu never spoke in isolation. In fact, his comments were strung in such a logical alignment like the fine product of a weaverbird, that it ought to have evoked the same emotions of expressed at the tomb of Julius Caesar, after the speech of Mark Antonio.
He had gone memory lane using his own personal experience in his home, Enugu State, to underscore the continued spikes of danger, which continuously perforate the nation’s delicate democratic architecture.
He was actually contributing to a motion sponsored by his Kogi Central, counterpart, Ahmed Ogebe, on how Governor Yahaya Bello, allegedly sent thugs to disrupt his constituency activities aimed at uplifting the lots of his constituents.
“The problem in Nigeria today is that our democracy is receding, and the international community needs to know this,” he had stressed. Then the killer words: “Who says that the army cannot take over in Nigeria?
Thereafter, nothing else mattered. Not even his subsequent clarification and admonition: “Let us not joke with our democracy. The way they are going. So, that is the issue. Last week, were talking about the house of a senator that was destroyed in Kaduna State.
“We are talking about security people laying siege to (Senator) Dino (Melaye). We are talking about (former Governor Rabiu Musa) Kwankwaso who was stopped from going to his state, a state he ruled for eight years. He couldn’t go to that state. We saw people carrying clubs, waiting for him at the airport.
“In Kaduna, (Senator) Shehu Sani cannot organise a committee meeting. And we say we are talking about a democracy. And somebody said that this democracy will continue like this. It’s not gonna continue (this way) if they are holding meetings every day on how to deal with each and every one of us here. So it is important that the international community know this, because they helped us to restore democracy to Nigeria. Some gangs of people are trying to truncate the entire democracy.”
So, in what way or manner did these very clear statements, represent a call for military takeover? What does Ekweremadu stand to gain from such a dangerous phenomenon, which effect has remained a major reason for Nigeria’s stunted growth?
No doubt, a substantial dose of the entire saga may not be unconnected to politics. For one, many of his traducers have not been able to come to terms with his emerging the Deputy Senate President, as a senator from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party.
Instructively, that Nigeria’s democracy is floundering is not for the scarcity of concerned citizens who have continued to ring the alarm bells and raise the red flags.
Recall how Senator Joseph Waku got his fingers burnt in his infamous interview in 2000, when he said: “But in our case, as a democratic government, we must respect the constitution. We must not reduce the government to a dictatorial regime. Instead of allowing that, it is better for (the) professional coupists to take over while we wait for a better time.”
The reaction of Nigerians may have been understandable, because the harrowing experience in the vice grip of the military was still fresh, making them touchy. But has anything really changed even with the successful exiting of the military. How far has the country gone in detaching the polity from the evil and dangerous tendencies of impunity, dictatorship, arbitrariness and other vices, which are the imprimaturs of the military?
Was it not in this democracy that a government house, built with public funds was razed by irate youths with the police and other security agents providing cover for the hoodlums and a governor literally abducted from office like a common criminal? Did Odi and Zaki Biam not happen? What about the massacre of Shi’ites in Kaduna?
Do these bear less consequence because they are perpetrated by those in agbada rather than the people in khaki? At what time in the history of Nigeria, have compatriots been slaughtered on their beds, in their farms, in the markets, at worship centres and sundry places, as is happening today that would make anybody recoil at the mention of the military, over the current eerie situation?
Fact is, the voices of a thousand Ekweremadus are not enough; thousands more must impress the message that not only is Nigeria’s democracy oscillating dangerously, but if the current drift towards the edge of the precipice is not halted, the shattering crash against the jagged rocks below may leave both democracy and the country in pieces, a far worse consequence than any military action.
- Igboanugo, a journalist writes from Abuja.
