The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Fair weather

  • Fair weather politicians

    Nigerian politicians are typical schemers with enduring philosophy of self-preservation.  They are sustained and chaperoned by wily old foxes that have held the nation by fair and foul means; and when it serves them, including diabolical means.  The power cabal driving the Nigerian state is fetish and selfish; like the PDP like the APC.  This is the reason why they gravitate towards the levers of power for continuous relevance.  The mass defection and carpet-crossing in the National Assembly from APC to PDP was long in coming; hatched from birth.   It did not come like a bolt from the blues.  It was primed and calibrated from the inauguration of the government when the different tendencies that formed the coalition called APC schemed for the leadership of the National Assembly.

    The PDP and the APC have a common political ancestry from the old order of graft and patronage. Nigerian politicians operate like itinerant nomadic herdsmen, perpetually foraging for green grass to graze. The defection therefore is like the return of the proverbial Biblical prodigal son; it is home coming.  There is hardly anything to choose in terms of principle between those remaining and the ones that left the party; it is all about political equation of security of place in 2019.   Both ways, the masses are the losers because we are contending with buccaneers and political merchants.  We are dealing with a bunch of people who would not care a hoot to auction Nigeria and go shopping in Dubai with the proceeds. The Nigerian politician is extremely corrupt without any redeeming feature or morality.

    Recall the Halliburton’s scandal, it was perpetrated by government officials at the highest level; the president at the time was even fingered but he denied. Nobody was ever punished! Recall the mind boggling loots attributed to a former minister of petroleum who voted with her legs and now live on self exile, and many more. Some other alleged looters are lucky to be protected by virtue of being prominent members of the ruling party.

    While Jonathan’s PDP was perceived as clueless, Buhari’s APC is self-righteous, opinionated, cocksure and defensive.  The choice left for us come 2019 is very limited because of dearth of credible and reliable alternative; after all, the PDP is already threatening to boycott the General Election of 2019.  Knowing the politicians as we do, they would not bat an eyelid to have a trade-off with the APC while they pull wool over the eyes of the masses.

    The APC may want to deny the impact of the defections lightly, but it would be at their peril because they very well know the import from experience because they are by-product of the same protest which like the PDP, they have also grossly mismanaged. The loquacious national chairman of the APC may go to town with megaphone that those who defected have no electoral value but he should also ask himself what more is left of the president in the face of the existential realities that confront us today. The president has been so insular that he has alienated a huge chunk of his support base because of his clannish world-view and sectarian disposition of his kitchen cabinet.

    They have chosen the strong arms tactic of employing force and intimidation to deal with otherwise civil matters which could have been better served by simple diplomacy and inclusiveness.  Under the watch of APC government, the security forces and police have become partisan and compromised more than ever before.  If nothing is done to arrest this trend, sooner than later we may find ourselves succumbing to individuals who would become so powerful as to hijack state powers to form their own militia and become warlords to challenge our corporate entity and sovereignty.

    Whatever good the defections may serve, it is also clear by the day that the integrity of the president alone can longer meet the expectation of the people who are hungry for a real change.  President Buhari has thrown his heart into the contest and urged anyone with courage to challenge him.  We know from experience that we do not have men of conviction and courage to challenge the incumbency even when it is obvious that he has become difficult to market.  The politicians play the zombie always and do not have the gut to challenge and speak to power.

    The defectors have also thrown their heart in the ring for a real duel and the stage is set.  It is a test of popularity of who has the following of the people.  Unfortunately, there is not going to be a level play ground for the contestants.  As usual, everything would be brought in; the contestants would struggle to out-rig one another. The game changers would be the electoral empire, INEC and the security forces.  Would they be neutral?

    We have remained where we are politically because of our own attitude more than having rogue politicians presiding over the ritual of sharing our national budget and gallivanting all over the place. We cannot eat our cakes and have it.  We have commercialized our PVC and the merchants would have to recoup their investment and profit later.  So if we hope for any developmental project in our constituencies when we have traded with our voters cards, it may as well be a huge joke.  Look at the governor the people voted for that refused to pay workers salary but when elections approach, he started paying bribe into account of workers to secure vote and tenure.  They ignore basic issues of governance and dwell on sectarian distractions that are divisive. Now they hold the short end of the stick, crying; maybe you would say, serves them right!

    For today, we appear faced with the tyranny of abuse of power.  The Nigerian Police has virtually become a Gestapo used by the state to harass and intimidate opposition and critics to submission.  Even though they struggle to arrest common criminals, they are quick to crush legitimate peaceful protests and even invade the National Assembly to arrest elected representatives without good cause.  The government is yet to find voice against the rampaging herdsmen terrorizing communities across the country and leaving trails of blood and destruction on its path.  Insurgency in the Northeast is proving to be like the hydra-headed snake which has refused to die.  Kidnapping, banditry and general insecurity now define the entire landscape of our country.  If you sleep and wake up, your car battery, cooking gas cylinder, generators and other valuables are gone; that is if the bandits do not wake you up to submit your car key  and ATM cards to them.

    Many more people are losing their jobs by the day and for those who are lucky to be employed, salaries are half or owed perpetually in areas. Children are out of school and daily survival has become our greatest needs now. For now, it is the way they come, the way they go, fair weather politicians.

     

    • Kebonkwu Esq writes from Abuja.

  • President and fair-weather friends

    Sir: The exit of the former vice president, Atiku Abubakar from the ruling APC has brought into the open the crisis rocking the party which has been concealed for long. To say his exit would not have an effect on the ruling party is to call white black. Atiku Abubakar’s coming into the APC in 2013 or thereabout was significant as his exit. That APC will come to this sorry state with the effort put together by the founding fathers notwithstanding the opposition from the then ruling party could hardly be imagined. This means that like the French Bourbon in the 18th century France, APC has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. President Buhari suffered untold hardship and denial before assembling the coalition that eventually helped him to realize his ambition. I think that he should not be looking the other way when the edifice is crumbling.

    Analysts have deduced reasons for the exit of Atiku. One factor is that he is treated as an outcast by the party and the presidency. Two, his business interests is said to be a target for annihilation and so on. There is no doubt that a cabal is surrounding the president as the case with all political office holders. However, it is heart rendering that this set of people are often times fair weather friends who contributed nothing to the electoral victory of the president or whosoever. This people always fan the ember of discord between the political office holders and their benefactors through the advice and activities which are centred on self-aggrandizement.

    This happened during President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency when jobbers pitched him against his benefactor and godfather, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo. The former president is living to tell the story while some of the demagogues are worming around President Buhari for patronages or actually benefitting from the present order. It is doubtful if President Buhari is enjoying the support of all those who supported his aspiration in the past, in spite of his glaring accomplishments. This is because most of them have been abandoned.

    To make the matter worse is the failure of the federal government to constitute the boards of federal agencies and parastatals. Doing this could have empowered party members, some of who rejected financial inducement from the Jonathan presidency. It should not surprise us that many PDP members are still serving on some of the boards of federal agencies and parastatals. What is happening at the federal level is repeating itself in the states except few like Lagos and others.

    It is amazing that as people are exiting the ruling party, others are coming in; that is politics. However, the most important thing to note is the calibre of those exiting and that of the new comers. In the case of the new comers in APC, it is glaring that majority are former public office holders running away from the long arm of law. They will do all to please the president. Some others are political jobbers who are out to corner political appointments from the president. Most of them have no base politically and would not mind returning to their former parties if they could not achieve their aims in the ruling party. These are fair weather friends milling around the president. Buhari should beware of them.

     

    • Adewuyi Adegbite,

    ayekooto05@gmail.com 

  • Ekwunife, a fair-weather politician

    SIR: “Most importantly, our deep concern is her record which showed that she dumps political parties at will, leaving the parties in its wake factionalized – from the Peoples Democratic Party to All Progressives Grand Alliance, to Progressive Peoples Alliance, back to PDP or vice versa and now to APC.  She is more or less a fair-weather-hen.”

    That was the verdict delivered by the All Progressives Congress (APC) Senatorial Screening Committee a couple of weeks ago as it rejected the candidacy of Uche Ekwunife on it party’s platform for the Anambra Central Senatorial District.

    Last month, the Court of Appeal had annulled Ekwunife’ election as senator.  The court ordered that a fresh election be conducted within 90 days.  She has been scrambling since then to return to the Senate.  Ekwunife had won a seat in the Senate as a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, but something funny happened and the lady refused to return to the party – or vice versa.

    Well, let’s hear it from madam herself: “My good people of Anambra Central, the outcome of what we witnessed was a conspiracy between some elements in PDP and the state government who were panicking over what they referred to as my rising profile.”

    Strictly speaking, this is not exactly true.  Ekwunife bolted the PDP because that party advertised in four national newspapers that it would not participate in further political elections or congresses including the Anambra Central Senatorial election re-run until its national spokesman, Olisa Metuh, who was back then still grooming his now luxurious beard within the confines of a lonely cell in Kuje prison, is released.  Nigerian politicians don’t play that kind of game.  Party primaries are time-bound; so the lady quickly moved on.

    Before she moved on to another party however, Ekwunife had to tidy up some loose ends.  She claimed, “…some leaders from South East called me on phone and said that since they have nullified the election and requested for fresh election, why don’t we use this opportunity to play national politics?”  So Ekwunife had to reach out to the APC.  You see, whilst previously campaigning for the Senate as a PDP candidate, Ekwunife happily referred to the APC as a ‘terrorist party.’  She had since apologised to the APC.  She said she was only joking when she made that comment.

    In just seven years, Mrs Ekwunife changed political parties four times.  By 2007, Ekwunife was in the House of Representatives courtesy of the PDP.  Four years later, her nose to the ground, she followed the political wind of change in Anambra, dumped the PDP and sailed into the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).  Before her election into the Senate last March, she had twice contested the governorship of Anambra state under PPA and APGA and lost both times.

    Now she’s tried to follow another wind of change back to the Senate, but the APC screening committee has only gone and said no!

    Where Ngige could not sweep well with an APC broom because the people are not too sold on APC’s seemingly segregationist policies, Ekwunife was desperate enough to want to try.  Alas, even the APC says Iyom is not good enough for them.

    Mrs Ekwunife now finds herself effectively stranded.  What’s a gal to do…?

    • Michael Egbejumi-David

    demdem@hotmail.co.uk        

  • Fair weather patriots

    Suddenly everybody is proudly Nigerian. And the maniacal hooting of the Nigerian citizenry and State attains the eerie melodiousness of owls. It is tragic to see everyone celebrate the Super Eagles’ victory at the recently concluded

    African Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2013 tournament. It is even more frightening to see what record lows Nigerians would descend in pursuit of unearned sentimentality and delight.

    Nobody gave the Super Eagles a chance. Nobody wished that they did well and emerge Champions of African soccer. Every soccer enthusiast, sports writer, analyst and even the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) predicted and wished upon the Super Eagles, doom, and a disgraceful outing at AFCON 2013.

    NFF chieftains reportedly sought to force a foreign technical adviser on Coach Stephen Keshi even while the tournament was on, in a desperate plot to embezzle state funds. They never cared or wished that the national team do well at the tourney. And like the NFF, everyone else wished that the Super Eagles crash out in the early stages of the tournament.

    They claimed they were only being objective. They claimed they were simply making informed analysis and extrapolation based on the team’s lackluster and disgraceful approach to the game. Many of my colleagues in the media even went as far as forecasting that the national team will not win a single match at the tournament; they also hinged their analyses on towering objectivity and dispassionate love for the beautiful game of soccer.

    And so do I, by similar standards of unimpeachable objectivity, dispassionately analyze and infer that many Nigerian soccer enthusiasts; sports writers, analysts, et al are intellectually challenged and handicapped by their base inclinations to be failures. Little wonder they denounce anything and everything Nigerian.

    Today, we see a perversion of brotherhood and faith. Today we see the sickly manifestations of blundering fanaticism and the Nigerian spirit, for the love of football. It’s ridiculous to see everybody show love to the Super Eagles. Suddenly, the ones on whom many invoked doomsday prophesies and disgrace have become compatriots with whom they are well pleased.

    Shame. Shame that it took the victory of the Super Eagles at AFCON 2013 to reveal the average Nigerian for what he truly is; a bumbling coward and a fraud. It is even more shameful that the media which should serve as the last bastion of hope for the incurably disillusioned and cynical cheerfully championed the forecasts of doom and irreparable disgrace of the country’s national team at the soccer fiesta.

    More worrisome was the attitude of columnists who ought to desensitize the citizenry of arrant cynicism but derived a perverse pleasure from riling the national team and predicting its failure. Many a columnist and TV soccer analyst likened the team to every other failed project in Nigeria. They predicted the team’s failure and inexorably relished the prospect of saying to every believer in the chances of the team, “I told you so!”

    Now that the joke is on them and every other disparager of the Nigerian team, they have suddenly learnt to cheer in support of the Nigerian team. But a paltry few of this disgraceful band of Nigerians have remained resolute in their antagonism of the Nigerian team. They say: “Let’s see how they will fare against the Spaniards at the Confederation Cup in Brazil.”

    As if they are doomed to stereotype the dying moans of human guinea pigs; their continued disparagement of the national team resonates like the whining of relics of mortality who discountenance hope to howl like an owl at the break of a new dawn. Their cynicism is reflective of a mind which has reached the gooey stage in the mortification of all hopeful and courageous thought.

    Although Thoreau would claim that they remind him of ghouls and idiots and insane wailings, I would say that they are merely symptomatic of a vast and undeveloped nature best suited for the base and cretinous amongst mankind.

    Yes, this is very personal. But lest I am attacked for being too acerbic, let me reiterate that I am only being ‘very objective and dispassionate’ as every Super Eagles’ critic was and still is perhaps.

    The Nigerian youth had no business wishing that much ill on their peers in the national team. By their shameful attitude, they managed to affirm that the biggest challenge facing the Nigerian youth is the Nigerian youth.

    The quality of support given the national team by the Nigerian citizenry and State is reflective of our persistent struggle against the ruling class’ tyranny. It is always quite sufficient to keep us busy and enthusiastic even as our fervor for the struggle is always half-hearted and uncoordinated.

    Having experienced more hardship than necessary in the formation of our character, we imagine a dark pall after every dark cloud and thus react with unforgivable cynicism to anything and everything.

    There is no special reason for this circumstance; the ones that were, have been rendered unjustifiable by our immoderate lust to circumvent the universe’s carefully ordered path to the good life. Not only is the Nigerian youth unable to believe the benefits in honest labour and patriotism, we are unable to believe in anything else. This reveals a worrisome state of affairs that emphasizes the loss and irredeemable corruption of old loyalties. Today, every lofty ideal of nationhood, honesty, justice and truth are ultimately far-fetched in our eyes.

    That is why we are reduced to a cesspool of nonstop tragedies. That is why we have Nigerian terrorists playing with bombs and snuffing our lives like unstable candlelight in a storm. That is why we have very lazy and jobless youth threatening war if anything should happen to “their son,” Mr. President.

    That is why we suffer incessant cases of armed robbery, advance fee fraud and hooliganism. That is why we have more youths picking up charms, bullets and machine guns than a stethoscope, complete works of Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo and chalk.

    It is the Nigerian youth that is blowing up Churches, Mosques and killing people in the north. It is the Nigerian youth that is passionately serving as assassins and political thugs. It is the Nigerian youth that is tirelessly totting guns and machete to rob and decapitate poor, helpless citizenry on our highways. It is the Nigerian youth blaming his lot on the ruling class even as he unquestioningly agrees to serve as canon-fodder in the ruling class’ inhuman designs.

    It is also Nigerian youth like the Super Eagles, that passionately attempts to propagate the Nigerian dream against all odds but the efforts of such human elements are wholly inconsequential amidst the psychosis of the unbelieving and rampaging hordes. Goaded by such abject reality, the Nigerian youth, submits to the decadent and tirelessly projects it, arguing as he does that since he can neither beat nor correct the system, it is better he serves it. He conveniently forgets that it is by the honest fervor and citizenship of human elements like him that the foundations of the most powerful nations are built.

    Thus is the tragedy of the Nigerian youth; he excitedly perfects the parable of a man who looks around for a coffin, every time he smells flowers.