Connoisseurs of Mediocrity

By Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh

The crosspollination of mediocrities leads to a fusion of the worst anti-progressive elements in a society. At this convocation, the social system is left no option, than to commence a gradual but certain regress into decadence. The structural processes and the apparatus of state then conscript themselves into the service of social malevolence.  This fusion generates an environment of toxic irresponsibility, where ethics, social responsibility, and politics coagulate to become mutually exclusive. In this jungle, socio-economic development suffers. The society starts to digest itself, and feed on its citizens. And the life of man becomes solitary, nasty, brutish and short.

Mediocrity constructs the failure of societies. It brews allergy to progress. To this end, a society that applauds mediocrity has booked an appointment with poverty. That society has a rendezvous with collapse. It has a date with failure. Mediocrity kills development. It smothers aspirations to excellence. It eviscerates every passion to innovate. It percolates and corrodes the fibres of the society. Core values erode at its toxic acidity. This leads to a breakdown of social support system which ensures social cohesion. In the light of this, a society which places premium on corruption, and fraud is heading to hell. Because dalliance with the mean has never launched any society into the orbit of development

Over and above these, any society that is addicted to the reign of mediocrity sanctifies its decadence. It witnesses little progress, and abundant retrogress. This explains why celebrating mediocrity is an atrocity. It is the favourite pastime of myopia, which sees no future further than its nostrils. Mediocrity has no reputation. It is never a gateway to excellence. Installing mediocrity as the norm of social interaction is the equivalent to a society arriving at a decision to destroy itself. A society that desires a future for itself dispenses with this product of deconstructive inertia, and creates interconnected nurseries for the cultivation of excellence and progress.

On the tribunes of power, mediocrity invites an avalanche of social anomie, which mortgages the future of a society.   It is an enterprise in tunnel vision, which spends itself content with its short-sightedness. And it breeds its kind; entangling the society in a mesh of interconnected mediocrities, which like a spider’s-web, paralyzes innovative thinking and visionary, future-oriented dynamic which has always been a condition-sine qua non for progress. This is why doom visits the land where mediocrity is allowed to hijack power. This accounts greatly for Plato’s preference of the wisest elements of a State, holding and exercising power on behalf of the rest. Plato’s Philosopher-King is a summary of the best elements that a society is capable, rising to lead the society to felicity.

Nigeria today is a great example and perfect validation of this thesis. Mediocrity has imprisoned this nation, and laid waste her aspirations to greatness. This sorry situation calls for the greatest rebuke and righteous anger of progressive thinkers, who are acquaintances of this potentially great nation.

Any consideration of Nigeria today renders further use of couched language, courtesies, or any other such pretence unnecessary. Their use in the past has tended to consolidate the rapists of our commonweal in their ways. Our silence and soft-treatment of their indiscretions tend to have emboldened their audacity. Good sense is affronted by their private appropriation of our commonweal, so much so that identifying them for who they are is not an option, but an imperative. It is inconceivable how these guys could, in good conscience sit atop a process, which churns out laws that punishes people for less crime than the ones they themselves advertise, and ostentatiously commit. This is a primitive violation of the unwritten laws of right, which forever affronts natural justice, equity and good conscience. Patriotic responsibility can no longer abide this sanctimony. To that end, stating the facts the way it is in Nigeria today is an ethical imperative. This is to strike a blow no matter how feeble, on the constructs of stagnancy created by the greed of our political class and elites.

Greedy enterprises have never won prizes for benevolence. It gobbles everything on its path, if no challenge is proffered to it inordinate appetite. This explains why Nigerian greedy and corrupt politicians are content with the status quo.  They will it to continue in perpetuity; to fund their privilege and gratification, all at our collective expense and discomfiture. Our silent discontent has not essayed to alarm them into changing their ugly ways of flamboyant criminality and desecration of all that we hold dear, and had cause to cherish. Responsibility time and again has proven to be an alien concept to their vaulting avarice; as they nurse a solemn allergy towards selfless service.

Today, they have completed the canonization of thievery, pilfering, and embezzlement of public funds, as a virtue to be pursued.  
It is no more news that Nigeria is governed by an alliance of rogues. We have syndicated gangsters as trustees of our ruling political parties, and sacred political trusts. We entertain a coalition of thieves in our political system, whose propensity to avarice inspires disbelief. Our governors are bandits and gangsters, who are always in heat to embezzle public funds, eviscerate public trust, and establish themselves as rogues. Our City mayors are mayoral scoundrels usurping baronial privileges bordering on medieval feudalism. In fact, a glance through the News portals and Nigerian Dailies throw up an appalling mountain of evidence, pointing to the fact our political officer holders are textured and indentured bandits. No other appellation could do justice to their meanness and greed. Over time, they have built a constituency for doing the wrong things

The Nigerian elite have erected an amphictyony of greed, unparalleled in the history of indiscretions. To that end, our polity have become a beehive of corruption and scandals. Our people are now immune to the scandalous greed and visionlessness of politicians, because they have repeatedly proven themselves as terrible students of history. Confessedly, they have learnt nothing. The story has remained the same since independence, and is getting worse and more dangerous in its negative sophistication. We inoculated ourselves into imagining that they would contradict expectations, in this dispensation after the years eaten by the military locust. But since the shrew emits a malodorous stench, pursuant to its genetic blueprint, they remain recalcitrantly malformed as to be enamoured by filthy lucre creamed off the commonweal. These pigs did not disappoint. They went back to their vomit.

Every political office-holder in Nigeria today, anoints himself an imaginary emperor, in his midget esteem. Pursuant to this, his ambition craves to carve out an empire to his myopia, and god-complex. He creates out of the mass of humanity impoverished by his greed, a retinue of cheerleaders, sycophants and hangers-on to praise his inferiority complex, and massage his neurosis. This explains the catholicity of corruption in our firmament. It explains the ubiquity of fraudsters in our politics. It accounts for the reign of kleptocracy in our milieu. It explains the infrastructures of mediocrity environing our aspirations. It explains why Nigeria remains an archive of wasted opportunities; governed by connoisseurs of mediocrity.

Any challenge to the above assertion must first battle to surmount the phenomenon of Alamesiegha, Joshua Dariye, Fayose, Goodluck Jonathan‘s wife, Tafa Balogun, Chris Ubah, Chinwoke Mbadinuju, Osuji and Nwabara, Obasanjo and Atiku. And the other 15 or so governors fingered by EFCC in its report. What about IBB and his cronies? What about Abacha’s cronies? What about Obasanjo’s cronies fingered by the Vincent Azie’s report of yore? If these slaves of selfish appetites are not thieves, then thievery needs a radical redefinition.

These guys are simply cold-blooded. To window-dress their hypocrisy, they always appropriate religious themes, to lull our superstitious minded population into civic apathy and postural unconcern. They advertise their greed while claiming to have struck some bargain with the almighty, as if it was the Almighty, and not the people that voted on the Election Day. They disrespect the social contract they struck with the people while invoking the Almighty as their strength. When they are as guilty as sin, they invoke the almighty as the only witness to their innocence. Fayose is still invoking the Almighty to save him from impeachment. Obasanjo’s decision to ride roughshod to third term was a bargain he discussed with the almighty, as Abacha’s was.

What we witness in Nigerian politics today bears the primal revulsions of an elemental wrong, which does not even obtain in the animal kingdom. Dogs for example, are by nature, forbidden from convoking a feast off the bones hung round their necks for safe keeping. The rat is prohibited by cosmic justice from making a meal off the fish kept in its custody. The obverse to these canons is a social wrong which affronts all we know about decency, and norms of social conduct. But Nigerian politicians are all eternal affronts to these simple conventions that border on ethics. They breach the social contract; retail justice as one would wares; to the highest bidder. They patronise the laws they swore to uphold with a dereliction bordering on delinquency. They collect and manipulate cheap political capital, which they convert to advantageous positions of premium kleptocracy. And like Nero, they fiddle attending only to the benefits of their avarice, while the nation implodes.

The war of attrition in the Presidency has once more taken our national pretences to the cleaners. Our hypocrisies have been exposed for all its worthlessness. The world can now clearly see the sepulchral rottenness of our political system. Our extraordinary efforts to adopt the ostrich posture of burying our collective head in the sand, has equally shown itself for what it is; namely; a benediction that civic timidity pays to political roguery in high places. Obasanjo is a medieval-minded feudal lord, who craves to be in charge of people‘s perceptions. Atiku on the other hand, is a hereditary pretender to some imaginary power base. He is an addict to some imperial illusions. One is compelled most times to wonder how these guys won elections to these posts. The realization always heads home.They did not. It was fixed. They were rigged into power. The PDP out-rigged others to install these pretenders on those seats. That is the fairest conclusion that charity could come up with, if we strongly resist the temptation to label them as mindless fraudsters.

The faceless cabal manipulating Nigeria‘s future since Independence put these guys on the presidency because it felt Obasanjo was too compromised to have a will of his own. And he is making an extraordinary effort not to disprove their presumptions. This accounts for why the war on corruption is floundering and turning into a war against his critics and opponents.

This is equally explains the war in the presidency. It explains the jettisoning of the stellar transparency and rock solid reputation of an Okonjo Iweala, who gave that rotten administration some semblance of integrity. Her brilliance was too bright as to blind the mediocrities populating that administration. Iweala may have seen tomorrow, as to opt out before the corrupt pockets of vested interests in the administration commence their wars of greed, which would ultimately lead to annihilation of anyone caught in the cross fire.

Our ringside seat on the scandalous revelations of crass greed and primitive avarice masquerading as politics nourishes our insights and conclusions about the workings of the minds of our political leaders. It equally admits us into a view of the larger variables and struggles that inform their political calculus.

The verdict is not charitable.

The conclusion points to one thing: If these guys were not politicians, they would have only evolved into daylight burglars. They possess the audacity. They possess the meanness. And they possess the crookedness! It is no surprise that they have constructed a theology of corruption. The finesse and consciencelessness with they perpetrate their regime of criminal audacity on Nigeria, is provenance of this theology which canonizes the worship of avarice, at the expense of the country. Transcorp and its scandalous shares; PDTF and the brazen embezzlement and misappropriation of its funds by the President and his Vice; Fayose‘s monumental embezzlement and empanelling of a hit squad in Ekiti State; Goodluck Jonathan‘s wife out-performance of Alamesiegha in the race to win the top prize as the greediest person in Bayelsa State; Lamidi Adedibu‘s imperial grip on Oyo State and the PDP‘s connivance; Olabode George‘s embezzlements at Nigerian Ports Authority and the presidential protection he seems to enjoy; Chris Ubah‘s notoriety as an arsonist, financier of arson, and political criminality in Anambra State; Joshua Dariye’s unilateral “gift“ of his State‘s ecological Fund to the Presidency, and the smattering explanations thereto; are some of the noxious examples attesting to this theology and climate of corruption in Nigeria under Obasanjo.

All this equally reveals another side of it all. It is a gross indictment of the Nigerian followership. Nigerian politics is a toxic architecture of civic timidity, which allows elitist gangsterism a walkover. Checks and balances are alien concepts in African rogue democratic praxis, so much so that the germination of one-man tyranny is almost always the end result of every electoral process. This pervades every level of democratic governance in Africa. Every president or Prime minister sees himself as a king by divine rights, whose caprice is law. In this environment of political variousness, accountability and respect for the rule of law simply degenerate into alien anachronisms that enjoy relevance only in theory. Our political arena has become an umbrella for whole panoply of social predators and purveyors of avarice. This was the environment that conduced to the rise of abominations like Abacha and IBB. This same atmosphere gave succour to the puerilities of Balewa and Shagari; the neotonies and consolidated vindictiveness of Obasanjo and the structural monster that was the PDP. Had the people being educated unto vigilance which has eternally remained the price of liberty, these monstrous indiscretions would never have seen the light of day in our firmament.

More than any other thing, the see-saw of mudsling between Obasanjo and Atiku is indicative of a deeper pathology afflicting the Nigerian political system. This is a system that is so permeable as to allow thieves gain an unrestrained admittance into the citadels of power; yet stubbornly impervious to the ascendancy of indisputable and uncompromised merit into power. Such a system cannot but construct a hybrid of monstrous gangsterism, ruthless quackery and political directionlessness, which are all ingredients of underdevelopment and poverty. Such a system is nothing but a brewery of social discomfiture and eternal impoverishment. And can never contrive the socio-political climate imperative for the germination and sustenance of progress. Such a system cannot support the intellectual scaffolds necessary for constructing and/or consolidating human development. It can only conduce to the manufacture of processes that arrives inevitably at social regress. This is because such systems create infrastructures of mediocrity that assaults every march to development.

Over and above the full-scale bullying and counter-bullying going on in presently between Obj and Atiku, a few lessons have been given. Nigerians have seen that profits from brigandage can never be divided in peace among the usurpers. The ontology of their enterprise was rooted in greed. And avarice is not only insatiable; it is deadly. An illicit partnership can never be accused of good faith. lt can also never dissolve without bloodshed. The reasons lie in its metaphysic. Illegitimacy bears in itself, a hideous impress, which renders it unattractive to all that is good, true and beautiful. This explains why illegitimate transactions are conducted under some cover. Whenever it is exposed to the lights of public awareness, the gangsters are compelled by the grime of their actions to feed on each other. Thievery is allergic to openness. lt forbids exposure. To this end, the profits of crime are shared in the dark. Once its sees the light of day, due to the overpowering, mutually-assured greed of the constituents of this gang; deadly quarrels erupt. Here thieves throw caution to the wind; scheming and manoeuvring to do each other in. That is the lessons of the Obasanjo and Atiku war.

It is funny and demeaning to read some Nigerians enjoining the thieving conglomerate ruling Nigeria, who has been bickering over telling issues to give peace a chance. One wonders to no end why such should be the stand of some well meaning individuals and patriots. Why should thieves give peace a chance? Is it in their nature to do so, since their natures are predicated on injustice? Can peace be built on the foundations of injustice? In whose interest should thieves give peace a chance? Is it not beneficial to the society for thieves to effect a mutual assured destruction of themselves, and save the society the pain and trauma of their inglorious vocations?

An appreciation of the concerns of these people yields at best a substratum of conceptual sloth and innovative inertia. This explains human dread of the uncertain. Many grow so accustomed to the known, to the point that they are so lazy to conceive or imagine that change is the law of nature. They are so afraid of change because of their conceptual laziness and timid desire for certainty. These Nigerians are in the thraldom of this disease. They desire a pseudo-peace, built on injustice, to a justice built on a radical rejection of oppressive structures, no matter how convenient those structures are to our acquaintance.  Some of them these emissaries of pseudo-peace are propelled by a cryptic desire to perpetuate the status quo, which assures them of their daily bread, no matter how unsatisfactory that loaf happens to be.

The above explanation, more or less could be the inspiration for these concerns. But sharing these concerns at this level is a betrayal of the sacred trust we owe our posterity. The fight in the presidency should be encouraged to go on, so that our people would sec the base elements the claim to have elected to rule them. At the exposition of these base individuals, the people would then learn their lessons that postural unconcern would always produce abominations like Atiku and Obasanjo. Probably, would they then heed the ancient warnings of Plato, to the effect that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to acquiesce in inaction.

Whatever truce Obasanjo and Atiku would ever reach in their shameful imbroglio is at best a pseudo-peace. In fact, may they know peace! They are revealing how they have been mismanaging and squandering our wealth. And some people are asking them to make peace; which means, they should shut up; stop the revelations; and quietly go back to their looting enterprise. In fact, I am appalled. How can they know peace when their irresponsibility exposed so many poor Nigerians to gastronomic jeopardy and other social emergencies predicated on bad governance? How can they know peace, when their mistresses get cars as gifts, while our Universities lack basic research facilities and environment conducive for learning? How can such people know peace, when their actions and inactions have transformed our hospitals into morgues? I wonder why the EFCC is planning on flying Alamesiegha abroad for treatment. They should fly him to the hospital he built and equipped in Yenogoa, while he was governor. If he built none, he should not be treated. He embezzled millions of dollars which such facilities require to thrive. So, he should receive the price of his embezzlements. He deserves it. That is retribution. Millions of other Nigerians die because they cannot afford to go to hospital. So Alamesiegha should not be above those whose money he stole. EFCC should be careful. For Obasanjo and Atiku: I have words for you! Never you listen to the Patriots. You guys must expose what you know of each other’s filthy pilfering perpetrated on our commonweal. None of you should give up. It is the most patriotic duty you have done, although inadvertently.

Obasanjo and Atiku have shamelessly reaffirmed the fact that Nigeria is governed by a coalition of bandits. And that Nigerians, who are the repository of ultimate sovereignty, are too politically timid to react constructively. When Obj asks Atiku to resign, I could not think there is anyone so audacious and so swollen with impious pretensions as Obasanjo. And when Atiku offered wooden apologies for his fate, I could not think of anyone as clueless and thick-headed as this man. The fact is: Our leaders are stealing and cornering the choice real estates of our commonweal. None of them is exempt. And we are too emasculated to do a thing about it.

The presidential war has equally shown us that when outlaws run a nation, the state is positioned for two mutually inclusive enterprises. It is either positioned to be embezzled out of existence, and or to be bludgeoned unto extinction. In that Circus of the impious, the state is divested of all good; and vested with decadence. It is in line with this that we make bold to say that Nigeria is heading towards social perdition. Rogues are leaders. Nigerians are timidly looking on as emasculated chattel, unable to offer any united response to the onslaught against their common weal; the frittering of their resources, and the embezzlement of their tomorrow.

The future is really bleak. The signs are portentous! 

Our expectations have been rich in discontent. Our hopes have been raped repeatedly as to leave us no option, than to become arch-pessimists. In obedience to our postures, no one in the know needs then be ambushed by surprise, or seduced by excitement at the current delinquency in the Nigerian presidency. The facts are ancient: Nigeria right from its conception has always been hijacked and enslaved by an alliance of thieves. We have forever been in the thraldom of a coalition of political bandits, whose major characteristic is their allergy to integrity; and whose only ambition is to sacrifice Nigeria at the altars of their avarice. Our national leadership since independence has alternated between a consortium of civilian thieves and some brigades of military brigands. So the indiscretions of Obasanjo and Atiku should not be news to anyone who possesses a fair knowledge of Nigeria.

In genesis were the fault lines obvious. These lines widen with every political dispensation. The Nigerian animal in all of us seems to be genetically configured towards a propensity to the negative. We have canonized cutting corners as the credo of our national existence. We prefer a crossbreeding of anti-progressive forces donning an insular agenda, to a free competent liberal with a desire to change the rotten status quo. We allow gangsters leeway to power in our equation, only to sit down to complain when they start obeying their genetic blueprints. That was why an Obasanjo whose obvious incompetence was glaring could become president over and above an Ekwueme, whose CV bespeaks of better qualifications. And this is why idealists like Pat Utomi will never smell the Nigerian presidency. Nigerians seems not to like the good in us. We prefer the best of the worst to the worst of the best. And no country has ever engineered an escape from poverty borne on the wings of mediocrity. This accounts for my fears. Nigeria may implode on the weight of the social poverty weighing down on her fragile frames.

I am still afraid.

A very disturbing dimension to the Nigerian personality is the ease with which we patronize cheating. The Nigerian personality seems more eager to cheat when confronted with challenging situations than confronting the situation with brawn and dexterity. This personality prefers to cut corners than to wait for his turn, or follow due process. This is not because there is something genetically or ontologically wrong with the Nigerian personality. Not in the least.

The Nigerian personality like all others is the creature nay the victim of his experience and environment. The Nigerian social environment merged with his experience to teach him that he may have to wait forever to get the basics that are due to him. It taught him the bitter lesson that he may end up empty handed if he is to follow due process in an environment where his competitors are engaged in unfair competition without qualms of conscience. He has severally learnt that patronage works always in a situation where most of those in charge of distributing the commonweal end up embezzling the whole chunk, while the right people end up not getting anything. To forestall this inconvenience, he is ready to patronize non-entities who are in charge of the cake. He patronizes them through bribery or influence peddling. And since corruption has a demand and supply curve, the Nigerian personality then rises to epitomize corruption.

All these account for the pervasive consultation of fraudulence in our social life. A Nigerian cheats in examinations. He bribes the Police to evade the consequences of his brush with the law. He cooks the accounts books, forges certificates he never earned, dons doctoral or chieftaincy titles he never merited, swims in wealth he stole and swaggers in false postures. His conscience is equally not moved when others involve themselves in the same ills that characterize his existence; after all, all dogs eat shit, but the 11^th commandment recommends not being caught as the greatest virtue. The point is that, although these negatives are catholic. Successful societies manage them with legal controls and sanctions to prevent them metastasizing into pervasive social cancers. But Nigeria has not only failed woefully in its management of these social negatives, she seems to grant them conducive environment to fructify.

In this miasma of ethical randomness in society, we forget one thing. We forget that we can cheat everything except nature. We forget that cheating downgrades the social structures that guarantee us our lives and rights. We forget that social bonds and boundaries break down, and respect for them break irreparably down, when we patronize them with fraudulence. We forget that when realities downgrade, they decay. And our society decays when our structures downgrade. Human life then depreciates in worth. Its value erodes dangerously. Human life becomes an expendable embarrassment to anyone who feels he has the powers to decide who should go at what time. Then, our living together becomes a burden, as everyone is empowered to prey on the other. We become burdens and no more beauties to each other. And the war of all against all, so much feared by Thomas Hobbess, assumes a dangerous reality in our land. That is the point that Nigeria finds itself in, at the moment. All simply because the leadership has so much failed Nigerians. The trouble with Nigeria as Achebe wrote, still remains the same today, as it was when Achebe considered it; namely, simply and squarely the failure of leadership, to rise to the responsibility of personal example. The Obasanjo-Atiku imbroglio has once more lent provenance to these assertion.

To properly situate the whole critique, we must never lose sight of the fact that Obasanjo and Atiku are not the problems with Nigeria; though they are a veritable part of it. The problem with Nigeria is the consolidation and the reign of the Nigerian personality on our leadership corridors, and power equation at all levels of governance. We are all casualties here, although this negative Nigerian personality seemed to agglomerate dangerously under one umbrella, in this dispensation in the PDP.

PDP has repeatedly shown itself to be a convocation of outlaws. It is the largest conglomeration of political rogues, gangsters and scoundrels in the history of Nigeria. The majority of its members jointly and severally, carry around some malodorous opprobrium as reputations. This party that boasts itself as the largest party in Africa happens to be the largest collection of irresponsible men of ill-repute in Africa. This is a party that has been rightly characterised as a nest of killers. This is a party whose sole ambition is the enthronement of a political jungle and one party monarchy across Nigeria, in the name of democracy. This is a party that characterizes every criminal infringement of the constitution as a family affair. This is a party where crooks and arsonists are trustees. This is a party harbouring all the thugs with attitude in Nigeria; Chris Ubah and Lamidi Adedibu are some of the eminent thugs here. PDP is politically, an ontological aberration. To this end, it can never contrive any socio-political felicity for Nigeria. Take this to the bank.

PDP arose as a reaction. When the stimulus which stimulates a reaction falls into irrelevance, the reaction ceases to be worthwhile. PDP was stimulated by the vision of wresting power from the military. And once that dream was achieved, it lacked further impetus to midwife a socio-economic renaissance for Nigeria.

Let any member of this inglorious party, who is without a broken reputation stand up and be counted! Believe me, only a few can, if any! Some stinking instances of the rottenness allowed in, and by this party would drive home our assertion here. Chris Ubah and Lamidi Adedibu; are semi-illiterate thugs, who were allowed by a pathologically diseased polity to intimidate whole States, and hold its political leadership to a ransom. The nonsense going on in Anambra and Oyo States respectively is so arrant that people are either afraid to speak out or cowed into silence. Their diseased conception of power is so primitive that might is right in their calculus. They seem to have succeeded in purchasing the whole PDP party edifice both at the federal and local level that Obasanjo is afraid to warn, sanction them, or cause the laws of the land to take its course in those cases of arrant breach. In fact, the historical reputation of this party is tarnished for good measure. It stinks. It is opprobrious.

We entertain no fears in making these submissions. We are aware that this avaricious establishment would go on the offensive to define patriotism in the image and likeness of their greed, to discredit any pedestal of outrage, which challenge their impunity.

But failure has greeted their enterprise!

It is a patriot who makes bold to realise that there exists nomenclatural and geometric differences between a spade and a spoon, even when dishonesty insists on blurring the lines. A patriot makes bold to call a spade by its name, not minding whose ox is gored in the process. Truth is naked although many people prefer it with clothes on. Nigeria is in danger. We may pretend that all is well. We are used to living a lie as lives in Nigeria. But we record this for posterity’s sake. We spoke out when tyrannical roguery ran amok, and was bent on slaughtering our hopes of escape from poverty, and underdevelopment. We are going to speak, with all the anger and audacity that the situation commands; now that our politicians have mutated into undertakers and pall bearers of our future.

Many commentators would want us to believe that our “fledging“ democracy is in danger, and that Nigerians run the risks of losing the dividends of democracy, if Obasanjo and Atiku are allowed to keep on spilling the beans of their mutual corruption. Many others, speaking ex cathedra in the canonization of their incomprehension of the situation, regale us that these presidential claims and counterclaims of corruption “is heating up the polity”. But I wish to respond and strip down these pretences as follows.

First and foremost, we have no democracy in Nigeria, let alone a fledgling one. We have the pretences of democracy. We are adept in aping the real thing, while hiding the monstrosities of the Kabiyesi-democracy we practice. We conduct elections that are festivals of rigging and fraudulence. We keep silent as men who lost elections are superimposed on us by those who think that Nigeria belongs to them. What we have in Nigeria is a monarchy, probably by divine rights, where Obasanjo and his governors are so very willing and ready to disobey court orders and compromise the oversight functions of the legislature. All because the judiciary and legislature consists of compromised men and women whose antecedents characterize them as being in this alliance of banditry, which has floored Nigeria‘s aspirations to greatness.

This may be logically wrong. But it is factually right. Why not? In Nigeria every canon of reason is valid only in the breach. Chronicling our harvest of negatives is tantamount to some sterile litany. For instance in a democracy, the People are repositories of ultimate power. Power belongs to them. But in the Nigerian version of democracy, power belongs to a few outlaws armed with the power of stolen money. Aptly identified in the notorious Nigerian parlance as “moneybags“, this committee of gangsters and social maggots have inaugurated another epoch of impunity in Nigeria, under Obasanjo.

Nigerian political leadership at all levels is at the beck and call of a cabal of corrupt kleptocrats, and superlative scoundrels, who possess no vision for Nigeria. These guys are heartless thieves, who entertain no scruple as they plunder Nigeria. They are so allergic to integrity, that any linen is game to be washed in public, even if heaven and earth are insulted by its malodorous stink. Nothing is sacred to them anymore. For them, honour is an exhortation for the weak. These men that cut across all ethnicities and tribal configurations, have constructed an empire of greed, that have stamped poverty, corruption, underdevelopment on the face of Nigeria, while offering them caches of unmerited privilege, and stolen wealth. These men are adept in contriving a vice out of every virtue. For them, only issues that conduce to the extension and sustenance of their privileged greed, is factored into their vision of Nigeria. Genuine development and emancipation of the people from poverty, ignorance and disease is patronized with dereliction. And these are the men who hold and exercise power in Nigeria.

In civilized climes, the men who hold power in Nigerian political equations are candidates for maximum security prison facilities. They are crooks of no mean standing. The superlative indiscretions of Chris Ubah in Anambra State, and Lamidi Adedibu in Oyo State, were dress rehearsals for the latest Obj versus Atiku war of political Armageddon. They are microcosmic dimensions of the Nigerian democratic pretence.

Secondly, on the enjoyment of democratic dividends: This has been the signature tune of one of the most wasteful and visionless government in Nigerian history. I challenge anyone to cite one democratic dividend that the poor Nigerian masses could lay claims to having enjoyed. Obasanjo would readily cite the introduction of the GSM in Nigeria as a dividend of his democracy, and the MacDonald‘s or Mr. Biggs in the streets of Lagos and other major cities as the gains of the foreign investment drive of his government. Well, be that as it may, by the last count, Nigerians pay one of the highest telephone tariffs in the world.

True that many Nigerians who cannot afford three square meals a day can boast of a telephone handset, how many are able to pay the huge prices charged by the network operators? Another dimension of the problem, which Obasanjo may not have realised, is that having a cell-phone in Nigeria today has now become a fatal problem. Prior to the introduction of the GSM, the first question armed robbers ask on breaking into your house is: Where is the money? Today, their first command is: Give me that phone or I blow your head off! And this mirrors the security situation, which the government has woefully and scandalously failed to tackle, through Job creation and effective policing.

That Obasanjo is fighting Atiku in this presidential gutter war points only to one thing. Nigeria is being pushed into a truncated political and social evolutionary trajectory by her rogue leadership at all levels. This war returns a verdict brimming with unparalleled pessimism. If Nigeria continues on this orbital path, she would surely implode on its weight. The CIA projection of a 15 year grace period before implosion would ultimately take a frightening reality.

The prophesy of the espionage prophets of Arlington, would be realized, if we continue doing all the wrong things we are doing today. So how are we to do it right? Many are wont to urge patience till 2007 before we kick out OBJ and Atiku. The question is:  
why wait till 2007? How sure are we that they would not craft an exit that would ensure that they get away scot-free with the crimes they committed against the trust we vested on them; after all, IBB is still walking the streets a free man.

Kicking out Obasanjo and Atiku right now is a tempting and wonderful option. It would send some signals to other political scoundrels that Nigerians are tired of being taken for an endless ride. But the most practical option and first step towards getting our politics right is for Nigerians to decide and repudiate the immunity clause enshrined in our constitution so that any politician who stole from us hiding under the immunity clause would have no choice but to face the music the moment the crime is committed. This idea of EFCC waiting till 2007 to arrest governors and political office holders who have made a vocation out of fleecing our treasuries smacks of collective puerility. Justice delayed will always remain Justice denied.