When political actors roar and thunder; and everyone cowers and blunders, recourse to literature — the wisdom down the ages — is rare asset.
Somewhat, that puts some calm on the bedlam.
That about captures the great hoopla of July 24: the hyper-excitement before; the chest-thumping after; and the dejection, laced with bluff and bluster (ironically, in both giving and receiving camps), as the whole thing morphs into a flux — and a farce — with no predictable end.
It was the high-octane drama of APC-to-PDP defection, with Senate President Bukola Saraki, as consummate strummer-in-chief.
Even as the press hailed or wailed, Saraki and perfidy remained yoked.
Perfidy heralded Saraki’s emergence as Senate president. For personal gain, he sold off his ruling party to the opposition PDP.
On July 24, with even more solemn perfidy, Saraki reeled out defections in plenary, which he probably hoped would smash his party’s ruling Senate majority, after which, his traducers allege, he planned to jump.
But as the republic, with bated breath, awaits the virtuoso stunts of the latest Prince of political “jump-ology”, it’s back to literature as teacher, in times of great upheaval.
The bedlam of July 24 should stir, in poetic minds, the storm-in-paradise by Lucifer and his imperious angels, as poetically reported by John Milton, in his epic, Paradise Lost.
“Better reign in hell than serve in heaven,” was the whoop, as Lucifer and rebellious hosts flapped their wings in fury; bristled, hovered and zoomed with rage.
But when the hysteria cleared, Lucifer, the incandescent beautiful son of the morning, had sunk to Satan, the eternal Prince of darkness!
It’s morning yet on the road to political paradise or hell. But in due course, even that would be manifest, with the result and aftermath of Election 2019.
“E don beg me,” was a cheeky quip from Himself the Abami Eda, Fela. He claimed Justice Okoro Idogu, who gaoled Fela for questionable currency offences, had apologized, in the course of the embattled jurist’s hospital round, where Prisoner Fela was admitted.
The media, always baying for the underdogs, went ballistic!
Not a few also went rabidly excitable, when news came that President Muhammadu Buhari, and the hard-punching, tough-talking Adams Oshiomhole, new APC party boss, were “begging” Saraki to stay.
But that alleged begging only echoed William Shakespeare’s tragedy of Coriolanus. Panicky Rome begged estranged Corionalus, leading foreign enemies, not to sack his city.
Either way though, Coriolanus was doomed. He rippled with power, leading the invading Volscians. Nevertheless, the plea met him at his weakest point.
Now, the Coriolanus tragedy is vintage linkage, both to Saraki and the Nigerian media, in this unfolding and ever-gripping drama.
Caius Marcius Coriolanus was a brave general of old Rome. For his valour, he earned intense patrician love. But for his alleged vanity and pride, from the plebs came no less passionate loathing.
Much of the plebeian hate came from deliberate mind-poisoning from the Tribunes — state-installed ombudsmen, to gauge the masses’ grievances, soon after the overthrow of the harsh Tarquin kings.
By private bile, however, the Tribunes profaned a sacred public duty; and pumped the excitable plebs full of anti-Coriolanus hate.
Pray, how are these Tribunes of old Rome different from a section of Nigeria’s current media, unleashing visceral hate and base emotions, along faith and ethnic lines, by manipulating the people’s angst, in a most difficult period of Nigerian history?
But back to Rome. Coriolanus, pushed by doting mom, Volumnia, declared for Consul. During electioneering, the Tribunes poisoned the plebs to reject him. A short-fused Coriolanus blew his tops; and earned banishment from Rome.
Rome’s loss was the Volscians’ gain — and the Volscians, Rome’s nemesis, put at bay only by the war volcano named Coriolanus, promptly pressed their new advantage.
But then, vanished were the toxic Tribunes, that baited the catastrophe. Vamoosed too, were the excitable plebs, in mortal fear of slaughter, capture and conquest!
Rome was only ransomed by the plaintive plea of Coriolanus’s mother, using as bait his infant son and distraught wife. But saving Rome equated Coriolanus’s doom in the Volscians’ camp!
Again, might the current media-goading and hate-gaming be inviting an inevitable crunch, where the media gamers would bale, leaving in the lurch these neo-plebs, now baying and all excitable?
Still on begging, trust and allied matters, you can’t but tap into another tragic play, Christopher Marlowe’s Jew of Malta.
Barabas the Jew, its tragic hero, was a zestful and unconscionable serial betrayer, driven by nothing but endless chicanery, just to preserve his hoarded trove.
Eventually, Barabas would burn, cursing and bitter, in a secret cauldron he had fashioned for his enemies, even as his would-be victims jeered at his painful end.
Might the Barabas tale weigh on Saraki’s mind, as he floats mid-air, torn between the taunt of his former(?) APC colleagues and the hail from his new(?) PDP landing pad?
Despite deafening, if contrasting partisan bellows, it is not the best of times for Omo Baba Oloye. He seems to have burnt his candle of trust from both ends!
Pray, how do you build an enduring political career, on eternal intrigue and everlasting distrust, from both friend and foe? Talk of chilling lonesomeness in pulsating company!
But beyond the giddy theatrics of defection and counter-defection, something good may well be happening, both to the ruling party and to Nigeria’s troubled politics.
A quarter to the election high hour, a rather perplexing realignment is playing out. The ruling party’s most virulent and most lethal moles are exiting. nPDP, now renamed rAPC, heads back home to PDP.
You can’t but pity President Muhammadu Buhari for the havoc this vicious band had unleashed on his development agenda, under the parliamentary prefects of Saraki and Yakubu Dogara.
It’s a dire lesson the ruling party has learned the hard way. It rode to power in a mishmash alliance. But in power, it found itself stuck by that same mishmash. If it regains power in 2019, it must burn off this treacherous flab.
Still, might some spiritual dynamics be draining off its life-threatening fat, to where they came from? Even then, it must rigorously screen National Assembly candidates jostling for its ticket.
Also, by some strange chemistry, most of Nigeria’s troublers of Israel appear herding selves into a neat pen. Even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, still mouthing holy but empty platitudes, drifts towards his not-so-immaculate habitat.
If things peak along these lines, then the choice between Nigeria’s good and evil couldn’t have been starker.
Noxious forces, ever plaguing this country, could be clinically guillotined. All it takes is wise voter choice — and Nigeria could then have its life back.