Some say Muhammadu Buhari is a sentiment; who isn’t? Perhaps Goodluck Jonathan, they would say. Let’s not be trivial and given to hogwash, President Goodluck Jonathan is an unjustifiable sentiment gone wrong.
Shall we write-off Buhari, just because…stuck in the intricate webs of our internalised and yet collectivised perversions, we are desperate to make a Hobson’s choice? Shall we continue to compromise and seek the consolation of wonderfully wrought intellectualisations just because it is socio-politically correct to do so?
If not Buhari, who? Goodluck Jonathan? Show me the candidate without a splodge to his name. Of all the charlatans we launder, show us the self-acclaimed Messiah without some murder, pillage or unsubstantiated and yet uncontested allegation of fraud or corruption to his name, save Buhari.
And so may I in response to those who consider President Jonathan as Nigeria’s only hope, aver in Rand-speak that there can be no compromise between a property owner and an intruder; offering the intruder a single teaspoon of one’s silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender – the recognition of his right to one’s property.
Simply put, there can be no compromise, however exquisitely couched, between us and the looters we tolerate; offering them a jolly ride to our corridors of power in the spirit of socio-political expediency would not be a compromise but a total and cowardly surrender – the recognition of their right of ownership and monopoly over what is essentially ours.
Whether we like it or not, there can be no concession or wanton sophistry acceptable on basic principles and fundamental issues. There can be no compromise between truth and falsehood, reason and irrationality. Imagine a compromise between food and poison, isn’t it death that would win?
Nothing corrupts, nothing disintegrates a culture or a man’s character as the principle of moral agnosticism; that is, the idea that one must be morally tolerant of anything and everything and that ingenuity consists in never distinguishing good from evil and taking sides. It is obvious who profits and loses by such a precept, isn’t it?
Even as so many of us indulge in the propagation of political claptrap in the interests of Goodluck Jonathan, it wouldn’t hurt to heed the subtle warnings of our individualised and wholly subjective realities. It couldn’t hurt to heed the caveat of objective reality.
Given that we put ourselves on trial every time we think a thought and speak it, it is only fair that we seek to institute, however difficult it seems, a measure of checkmating every propaganda and irrationality we so desperately project. It is only in our peculiar culture of amoral cynicism, subjectivism and hooliganism that we arrogate to ourselves the freedom to utter any sort of irrational judgement and expect to suffer no consequences like pitiful presidential court jesters, Femi Fani-Kayode, Doyin Okupe and company persistently do to our chagrin.
In as much as we seek to impeach every other candidate but our preferred candidate on the basis of their antecedents in governance and outside it; in as much as we have chosen to play the biased judge and jury with such impunity that teaches the just to recant, so should we expect to be judged and impeached by every judgement we pronounce.
You see, the things we condemn or extol actually exists in the objective reality that is open to the independent appraisal of others. The values we project become the essence of our socio-politics and being. Every utterance we make, as our mildest insinuations, presents the clarity or absurdity of our individual perceptions as well as the rationality and otherwise of every politic we choose to celebrate or repudiate.
If we did not indulge in such abject perversions and pitiable evasions as the argument that some contemptible liar “means well” – that a mooching bum “can’t help it” – that an unrepentant murderer “needs understanding” or that a desperate, power-thirsty politician is driven by concern “for the public good,” the history of our past few decades would have been different. And even today would offer ceaseless practicalities to compose the best odes by.
In the light of ceaseless hardships and evils foisted upon us by President Goodluck Jonathan and company,every man who struggles not to acknowledge that his administration is pernicious to Nigeria’s wellbeing will find it very much dangerous to identify goodness in whatever form. To such character, a person of virtue presents a threat capable of exposing and toppling all his perversions and evasions.
Can we now identify and root for the candidate capable of resolving the conflicting characteristics of our tribal mentality? Can we identify the candidate who can validate and attain a worthy equilibrium between, say, the expediency of wiping off our slums vis-à-vis the desirability and affordability of beautifully planned cities and suburbs?
Can we identify the candidate who can evaluate and project our given concretes by an abstract principle while exacting the most probable if not practicable outcomes in the throes of ruthlessly objective and rational processes of thought vis-à-vis his enfant terrible gut-feelings or hunches?
Do we know the candidate capable of instituting such blueprint that would guarantee the provision and sustenance of good roads and electricity, standard and affordable health care, security, stable economy and quality education among others?
I guess we know the candidate undeserving of our mandate right now; that candidate is Goodluck Jonathan. Let Fani-Kayode and his fellow harpies know that the cult of sophistry they project would never succeed by their sneaky and open rebellion against reason. Let them know that their negation of reason would never amount to some sort of superior reasoning nor would their most brutal rebellion stifle morality or metamorphose into a superior kind of virtue.
The cult of sophistry they perpetuate approximates nothing but the ugliness of muted confessions and a plea for blanket forgiveness for Goodluck Jonathan – despite Boko Haram, the missing Chibok girls, declining economies, devalued naira, dying industries, unemployment, and thousands of innocent deaths by Boko Haram’s bomb blasts to mention a few.
The depth or shallowness of each candidate and his political form is further accentuated in the following joke currently trending in Nigeria’s social media:
1. APC: We will ensure power stability.
1. PDP: Where is Mrs Buhari?
2. APC: We are going to fight corruption
2. PDP: APC tried to hack INEC computers
3. APC: We are going to fight terrorism
3. PDP: Some APC elder statesmen are garage touts
4. APC: We will invest in agriculture
4. PDP: S/South will collapse the economy if Jonathan loses
5. APC: We are going to upgrade standard of education
5. PDP: I will expose failures of our ex heads of state
6. APC: We will curb degradation of environmental pollution
6. PDP: Buhari doesn’t know his phone number.
7. APC: Nigeria’s wealth must be enjoyed by all of us
7. PDP: Buhari put Umaru Dikko inside a crate
8. APC: We will encourage rural development
8. PDP: Buhari cannot use a computer.
Camp Jonathan no doubt epitomises philosophical default, the intellectual bankruptcy that teaches promising hearts to exist in a vacuum of sort, like a paradise of weaklings and the perverted in thought. Pity this truth will be ignored by some, come February 14.
