The most amusing thing about Nigerian analysts, the outspoken
observers of our political evolution into a pseudo-democratic nation, is
our shared hypocrisy in reacting to outcomes of predictable public
issues. This can be seen, most recently, in our responses to the outcome
of Ekiti governorship election. In this build-up to the next
presidential election, I have personally transformed from being an
uncompromising idealist into being
an unequivocal realist. You will
recall I even wrote, frustrated, in my Friday column at one point, to
congratulate Goodluck Jonathan as 2015 President-elect – a year in
advance!
What happened in Ekiti is a mere restatement of our tragedy as a
nation, where a politician is seen as Santa Claus and thus his primary
duty, when elected, comprises uninterrupted three-square meals on the
table of every voter and a constant flow of gifts in kind and cash.
Realistically, this is an expectation impossible to maintain. Worse yet,
not only is this the genesis of corruption in government presenting a
ready-made excuse for mediocrity and underdevelopment, it’s a nightmare
for even the most honest of populists because one’s faith in one’s
ideals (a belief that votes can be vehicles for change just by their
nature, by their use) is shaken and one is at the gates of a dangerous
but luring cynicism. Yet, that Santa Clausism is the form of politics
the people desire and a man, a politician, who comes to the arena with
better plans for solid development, will be punished for his foolishness
of NOT being Santa Claus.
Reading the commentaries of Ekiti people in the past week, I have
learnt that the outgoing Governor, Kayode Fayemi, despite holding Town
Hall meetings with the grassroots and setting up welfare system to cater
for the old, was still perceived as “elitist” in having his government
dominated by “technocrats”, some being “non-indigenes”. He has hired
these last instead of hiring the “actual politicians” to assist him in
entrenching the principles of prebendal politics. Outgoing Governor
Fayemi is also “unpopular” with the political philanthropy-awaiting
masses and threatened school teachers. He is also “insensitive”, perhaps
because his “modernist” approach to developing Ekiti was seen as
unbearable by parents who think the new tuition fees of the state
university are unreasonable and unaffordable, and by farmers who think
his agricultural policy is a scam, by maybe even job-seekers who think
his employment scheme is a gimmick. These are all detailed in a feature
on the Ekiti election by my good friend, Femi Owolabi, for The Scoop NG.
He reported a voter saying: “(PDP runs) a ‘chop make I chop
government’. Money didn’t flow well in (Fayemi’s) government… APC is now
pumping in money at the die (sic) minute to election.”
But I forgive the masses. Our politicians undermine the conditions of
their unschooled and hungry followers, schooled and unemployed
followers, poor and hopeless followers, the enterprising and
economically unfortunate followers and even the sick and the destitute,
as well as the financially handicapped illiterates and dropouts who in
turn are to rely on these same politicians’ policies. There’s something
not quite right, something incestuous and sad about this–this is what
Achille Mbembe called “the politics of death”.
The current politicians wouldn’t have been faulted if their
understanding of populism wasn’t limited to distributing food items
while the chunks of their budgets are invested in their private
businesses. We inherited a structurally flawed system with a particular
class unfairly subjugated and taken for granted by the political
establishment. Members of this class are the countrymen whose only
dividends of democracy are the “gifts” they receive from the politicians
in exchange for their votes every election year. They exchange this
great abstract value for a far less but real value, a sack of rice for
example, because they’re hungry and a hungry man is an irrational man.
And the politicians in turn, elected to redeem the welfare of the
masses, deliberately avoid doing so simply to keep them dependent and
asking for handouts. This is our present lockstep. Dear countrymen, dear
masses, the blunt truth is that these “gifts” you are being given were
paid for with your own public funds or are otherwise the proceeds of an
abandoned or inflated community contract. It is your loss when a
politician who tries to match the value of your vote with an equal value
in infrastructure is shown the way out. “Stomach infrastructure” lasts
only so long as the next trip to the toilet. And imagine how many trips
to the toilet you, poor benighted masses, will undergo in contrast to
the FOUR years of looting your vote gives the politician. Understand
this and see how benighted you are!
But more than anything, I’m happy that our wisdom has been restored
by the outcome of Ekiti governorship election, with more people finally
becoming realist analysts of our politics. I have been interacting,
debating and arguing, screaming myself hoarse, just to highlight that
Nigeria is bigger than our blogs. Perhaps the urban middle-class is
coming around to my long stated position? The politician as a Santa
Claus is the only image the masses have of a “good politician”. Speeches
and promises and the urban middle classes pseudo-intellectual “surutu”
are a waste of their time. And as much as I respect the decision of the
people of Ekiti State who, under the sun, with branded bags of rice
waiting for them at home, voted for their choice candidate, I have a
question for some of us activists: would the voters have taken Ayo
Fayose serious if he had not spoken the language of the masses, which is
the provision of items for “stomach infrastructure?”
So, what next for APC? APC, to some, is “old wine in new bottle”, but
being the first time the opposition emerges with the strength to put
the incumbent government on its toes, I am, as a citizen unimpressed
with the status quo, willing to settle for another shape of bottle over
the old one now no longer convenient to carry! This is the peak of my
realism as a citizen in search of the “fresh air”. I think this is the
time for the opposition, for whom I have sympathy, to play politics
beyond impracticable idealism. APC needs, for the coming election, a
presidential candidate with street credibility, identifiable by the
masses: a Buhari or an Atiku or any member with their clout. These are
brands that don’t need re-introduction to the masses, being one-time
Head of State and Vice President respectively. As for the personality of
these two, I’ve my opinions, favourable and damaging in respects. But I
am firm in my belief that with a well-built party structure, especially
at the grassroots, they can be rebranded and managed for the greater
Nigerian good. Our politically immaturity is so pronounced that if a
visionary Fashola emerges as APC presidential candidate today, with his
thoroughly modern ideology, and stands against a rugged James Ibori,
whose pocket is big and intention destructive, Fashola will lose in a
free – and (un)fairly induced – election. It’s that simple, that brutal.
There is another problem though: a huge number of our political
analysts see alignment with, and sympathy for, a political cause as
compromising, because they confuse neutrality with objectivity. It’s
absolute self-deception to say that you’re neutral in choosing the side
to promote between the oppressed and the oppressor, especially when the
oppressive incumbent has failed the people, is unresponsive to
apolitical activism and deaf to the clamouring for a progressive
society. So, to say that I’m neutral in my political choices means I
have no sense of perception at all, knowing that this crucial decision
determines my well-being as a citizen. Objectivity, to me, is one’s
ability and wisdom to criticise his own when they err and others when
they oppress him and his.
Also, in their analyses of third-world democracy, our writers have
shown an absolute ignorance of practicable political idealism. Which is
why, as they condemn Bola Tinubu as a “thief and nothing but a thief,”
they cannot name an alternative capable of ousting the GEJ-led
opposition forces. While they promote an impracticable idealism in their
pursuit of stainless political saints, they should be prepared to be
“ruled” by GEJ again from 2015. It’s that simple.
We, the urban middle-class activist potential pressure group, have no
option than a stratagem to get the existing members of the
establishment competing to serve us–to compete to offer us the better,
the best deal, for our votes. We must ally to remind them that unless
rural community developments and the welfare of the urban masses too are
given the same attention as building bridges and installing
streetlights in our cities, only money and of course “rice”, not
promises, can get you votes from this manipulated class, largely based
in villages remembered only in election years.
This is why we need to get off our bums. And the price for victory,
whether by the PDP or APC establishment, will not, must not, be mere
bags of rice. We must demand bridges and free trade zones, specialist
hospitals and quality education. I am a political realist, I will be
bribed but I will be bribed only with something concrete, like roads and
hospitals and electricity, not bags of rice and maggi. And this is a
message to the political elite, the Establishment–Gimba Kakanda will be
at the forefront of a new block with new demands. If you want my vote
and my block’s vote, come and negotiate–we speak the language of civil
engineering works and economic infrastructure. That is the return on my
political education over the last months. And political education isn’t
acquired in classrooms, it’s acquired in our ability to strip ourselves
of polarising sentiments in making political choices.
We must quit thinking that “third-world” politics is all about
writing “deep” articles, composing tweets and writing profound Facebook
posts and screaming ourselves hoarse about how things ought to be run
from our AC-ed rooms and offices. For so long as we are content with
screaming and writing about failed governments without struggling to
infiltrate the ranks of the “laboratory politicians” whose incompetence
cause these troubles, for so long we are complicit in the fall of this
nation. I’m checking out. I’m taking a stand. May God save us from us!
No comments:
Post a Comment