Sweet moments have always been but a chanced rarity in the land. Laughter is a scarce asset that dwells mostly in the mien of its seeming monopolist owners. These are but few gurus of cash and power. Power they deploy as their majesties deem fit to command and suppress the thoughts and destiny of a sprawling but less privileged majority.
Not even the periodic sequence of post-1999 charades either masqueraded as political parties’ primary elections or general polls craftily staged to outwardly legitimize the intrinsically illegitimate – candidate anointment, imposition and selection in flagrant disregard to the extant regulations on internal democracy or national electoral laws – were least able to restore the hope of a better tomorrow to a beleaguered people until the miraculous event of December 10, 2014.
The inaugural edition of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Primary Election, as imperfect as it might have seemed, was indeed a fortune-changer for the Nigerian citizenry. On this day, all things answereth not to the commands of dollars amongst Nigerians politicians who, for the first time ever, voted for their conscience by offering the party’ ticket to an aspirant widely reputed for his financial incapacitation. To find Nigerian politicians being bought over by the widely-acknowledged Muhamadu Buhari’s virtues of discipline, integrity and patriotism, instead of flying filthy lucre, was indeed awesome to the average citizen in whom the long-lost hope for socio-economic and political recovery of a bed-ridden nation was instantly reincarnated.
To the naive, it was the ‘Change’ mantra of the APC that eventually endeared the party and its candidate to the electorate on March 28. Truth be told, Nigerians have long been so wizened by innumerable past broken promises of change which predated October 1, 1960 that the most conceivably beautiful rhetoric of mankind can hardly inspire them to such a gargantuan risk. The risk of defying the globally respected and efficacious wit of the Yoruba elders which admonishes thus – a Satan that enjoys long-term acquaintance is more preferable than an unknown angel. If anything, the English, being another globally respected race of witty sayings acquiesces with this West African ethnic nation in a bird in hand is worth more than a thousand in the air.
On that epochal day at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, the open dramatization of the ‘Change’ being promised through the transparency of an open-field contest conferred irresistible admiration, affection and, ultimately, acceptance on the eventual candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, even amongst the rank and file of the then ruling party, the PDP. Yet, that APC-like risk cultivated within the PDP fold by elements disgruntled, generally, by the intra-PDP pre-election realities that were unlike the APC’s.
Rainfall is indeed a respecter of none. Days leading to the hitherto destined February 14, therefore, turned a season of summer torrents that tormented every Nigerian soul outside the sailing Ark of Change. For the first time ever, the PDP had a cause to shiver and shudder in trepidation. Realising that every tick of the clock was an additional suppression of its own suppressive machinery by which it had always and still intended to repress the people’s wish, it stylishly caved in, forcibly snatching a sick leave to surreptitiously reinforce its tricks.
Little did this retreating power cult know that the six-week postponement, contrived on a warped logic, would, ironically, expose it as a fallible weakling before the very crowd that, for 16 years, had dreaded it as an invincible behemoth. Regained, thus, was the long-lost sweet of the citizens which they hoped to savour from the May 29 ascension of a new order till eternity.
Certainly, the sweetness of March 28 that begot the sugariness of May 29 was not merely the victory and ascension unto power of an opposition party but the transparency and all-inclusiveness that characterized the Presidential Election, traits that were not only reminiscent of the APC’s shadow poll, they were indeed the obvious necessities of the post-poll concession offered by the then incumbent President to the delight of all and sundry.
But, alas! Just some few days after, specifically on June 9, some symptoms of the supposedly exiled politricks reappeared on the floor of our ‘hallowed’ chambers to once again, sour my people’s sweet, probably indelibly.
Let no one engage in self-delusion that the Nigerian masses perceive the new Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki, and House of Representatives, Hon, Yakubu Dogara, as products of the much-beloved democracy. Rather, to many a Nigerian, the twosome is but offspring of loathed democrazy, who crafted treachery to score off-side goals.
Truly, what aches the masses is far from what pains the politicians. That Saraki and Dogara defied their party ranks low in the people’s scale of concern. After all, it’s no new reality under the Nigerian sun, going by the anti-party emergence of Tambuwal which actually delighted and, ultimately, benefitted the masses.
Salient, here, is the line between the Tambuwal episode and the Saraki-Dogara drama. Critically viewed from the perspectives of the masses on whose behalf political actions or inactions are supposed to be contrived and implemented, the former is never a justifying antecedent for the latter.
Tambuwal’s emergence was never divisive or conspiratorial, as it was engineered by an unprecedented breaking of barrier of partisanship by lawmakers, across party lines, who spoke with one voice to elect their leader. Since Tambuwal never spited his party, the PDP, with negotiated reliance on the then relatively huge strength of the opposition APC, he has entered the Guinness Book of Records as the first Nigerian Fourth Republic Speaker with an uninterrupted tenure.
Worse-still, Saraki and Dogara with their staunch promoters within and outside the APC have, so far, failed to realise that growing popular resentment and venom against prolonged misrule by the former ruling party was the secret beneath the masses’ delight that greeted every misadventure or misfortune of the PDP, as illustrated in the Tambuwal 2011 rebellion. They also missed it, as they failed to recognize the invaluably facilitative role played by such popular anti-PDP sentiments in the eventual defeat of the erstwhile indefatigable.
And, what is, perhaps, most unpleasant and, probably, unforgivable to the masses is that Saraki and Dogara’s victories have come with a back-door restoration of power to the cult which the long oppressed and suppressed people had not only perceived as the source of their woes but which they had prayed, fasted and deployed their constitutional sovereignty to crush in the last polls.
As it stands, Nigerians are not unaware that, with the present configuration in our bicameral parliament, the legislative capacity of the PDP to launch a vengeful and anti-people war to reclaim their lost asset, rather than voting to aid the change that Nigerians expect from the new administration, has just been boosted. Boosted not by the twosome’s victories but by their messy manner, since posterity was already waiting close-by to exalt, particularly, Saraki, if, at that crucial moment he had opted for heroism by pushing for a considerable delay of proceedings or rejecting the nomination in honour of his absent APC colleagues. At least, we were all living witnesses to frequent delays in general elections, which were nevertheless held sacrosanct by our Temple of Justice.
Soiling the mood of the citizenry at a rare moment of great and sweet expectations; reversing the positive background setting of those who would make laws for Nigerians in the next four years, who have been thus polarised into warring camps by the resultant discord; and, returning Nigeria’s global perception to the low and infamous level which it was just about exiting. In these and listless other sour points lies the disservice that Saraki and Dogara’s selfish victories have done to themselves and the nation, at large.
- Olokode, a media consultant, writes from Ikeja, Lagos
