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Give it to politicians, the military, and
other professional hijackers of the state in Africa! They are able to squeeze
the juice of comedy out of the stone of unspeakable tragedies they routinely
visit on their people and the continent. The most unfortunate victim of the
inexhaustible creativity of the African political class, their cynical mastery
of the resources of the proscenium, is African fiction. The political class in
Africa constitutes the most potent threat to the health of African literature.
Simply put, our politicians are driving our writers out of business. Why do I
need to spend my hard-earned money on Wizard of the Crow and Petals
of Blood when Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki have manufactured realities in
Kenya that Ngugi wa Thiongo’o’s brilliant imagination simply cannot match? All
I need is regular internet access to Kenyan newspapers to avail myself of a
direct taste of Kenya according to her politicians. Why do I need Chinua Achebe’s
A Man of the People and T.M. Aluko’s One Man, One Matchet in my
seminar room when the blood and flesh versions of Chief Nanga and Benjamin
Benjamin in Abuja have turned Achebe and Aluko into dwarves in the business of
fiction? The Nigerian ruling class is so prodigious in the production of
political farce that all I need do is read Nigerian newspapers for quotidian
realities that no Nigerian writer has the imagination to match.
That African politicians are constantly and
permanently ahead of hapless African writers was brought home by two recent
events. My good friend, Ogaga Ifowodo, one of Nigeria’s best poets, wrote an
essay in which he imagined a meeting between Mwai Kibaki and Umaru Yar’Adua.
What did Yar’Adua tell Kibaki, Ifowodo asked? To create his hypothetical
situation, Ifowodo deployed the full arsenal of his trade: sarcasm, hyperbole,
allusions, and the like. At the end of the essay, Ifowodo was sure he had
delivered his message effectively and unambiguously: the Nigerian presidency is
so diseased, so morally compromised, that the possibility of the Nigerian
government having a say in the Kenyan debacle can only exist in the realms of
fiction and the most outrageous imagination. Given the rotten political
pedigree of the people in charge in Abuja, Nigeria’s involvement was so
improbable that Ifowodo treated it as fiction, something better left as
material for the exclusive use of the African writer.
As is sadly often the case in Africa,
Odinga, the politician, was miles ahead of Ifowodo, the writer. Odinga did not
wait for Ifowodo’s ink to dry before hopping on a flight to Nigeria last week.
His mission? Wait for it: to consult with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria’s
immediate past president) and persuade him to convince Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, current
president and Obasanjo’s puppet, that it was time Nigeria got involved in
fashioning an African solution to Kenya’s political impasse! It has taken Ogaga
Ifowodo more than twenty years of sustained production of brilliant poetry to
establish his reputation as one of Africa’s leading users of the imagination.
Raila Odinga and his Nigerian hosts have eclipsed this record in a couple of
hours.
When I read about Odinga’s trip to Nigeria,
I had a tough choice between laughing and crying. I settled for the former. To
grasp the tragedy in all its unpleasant ramifications, one has to unpack
Odinga’s company in Nigeria: Obasanjo and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
machinery. Of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the least said the better. Writing about
Obasanjo here would turn this piece into an exposé on unbridled corruption and
the defoliation of Nigeria’s destiny in two tragic installments: 1976 – 1979,
and 1999 – 2007. Whenever tails are mentioned in a discussion, the toad
hurriedly suggests changing the topic and moving on to other issues! So, let’s
leave Obasanjo and move on to Yar’Adua and the PDP.
History’s final verdict on African
political parties would be hard pressed not to record the PDP as the most
vicious, most corrupt, and most visionless political organization ever to
bestride the Nigerian – and African political landscape. It would be sheer
travesty of justice if the National Party of Henrik Verwoerd and Pieter Botha
fared worse than Nigeria’s PDP in the reckoning of history. Ever since its
unfortunate formation, the PDP has been home to the worst elements of Nigerian
humanity. Although it loves to delude itself as Africa’s largest political
party, the truth is that the PDP is Africa’s largest assembly of funny
characters with zero moral capital. Excellence in political thuggery, treasury
looting, and election rigging are key attributes of membership and upward
mobility in party ranks. It is significant that in a supposedly democratic
dispensation, the PDP has surpassed Sani Abacha’s record of unresolved
political assassinations. The rate of intra-party assassinations became so
breathtaking at a point that the inimitable Wole Soyinka baptized the PDP as a
“nest of killers”. Soyinka forgot to add that the PDP is also a lair of
Africa’s most gifted thieves. To go through the list of party leaders – Party
Chieftains in Nigerian parlance – is to be in stark contemplation of the
tragedy of modern Nigeria: Olusegun Obasanjo (self-appointed Father of modern
Nigeria), Olabode George, Ahmadu Ali, Lamidi Adedibu (stark illiterate,
recently designated Father of the PDP!), Andy Uba, Chris Uba, and thousands of
other birds of similar feather, looting the state dry in rigged political
positions.
That these low-quality characters and their
scions have hijacked the Nigerian state is a precise indication of the
abysmally low depths to which Nigeria has fallen. Among the many sins of this
dishonorable cabal and their dishonorable party, the 2007 election pretty much
takes the cake. Nigerians are in agreement with the international community
that the PDP’s 2007 electoral heist ranks among the worst in human history. It
is unnecessary to rehash the details here. Suffice it to assert that Umaru
Yar’Adua, Nigeria’s current president, is the morally compromised custodian of
a purloined mandate who has been unable to rise above the debased values of his
cabal and do the right thing. Rather, he has ignored the festering leprosy his
diseased party has foisted on Nigeria while hypocritically making a show of his
determination to cure negligible ringworm infections.
This is a snapshot of the kind of company
Raila Odinga went to keep in Nigeria. The story of Nigeria’s sorry pass in the
gangrened grip of the PDP cartel is globally ubiquitous: not even a blind and
deaf kindergarten pupil in Siberia can claim ignorance of the Nigerian
situation. What part of this narrative did Raila Odinga not understand? The
ways of the African politician are truly perplexing! How did Raila Odinga
arrive at the conclusion that Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and his PDP
government, morally compromised perpetrators of the worst electoral heist in
human history, are in any position to advise him on the way forward in Kenya?
How did he determine that Nigeria’s forty thieves deserve a place at the table
of serious African conversations on credible elections, good governance, and
democracy? Who are Odinga’s handlers in Kenya? How could all of them have
missed the fact that the people he was going to consult in Nigeria practice a
version of democracy that consists in assassinating your opponent or rigging
your way to political office? Do we need to translate “nest of killers” to
Swahili before Mwalimu Odinga can understand that simple expression? By going to consult the worst Nigeria has to
offer, Odinga has spat on the graves of the Kenyans who have lost their lives
so far and added to our frustration and helplessness as ordinary Nigerians.
Nigerians are in a particularly sensitive
phase of their national life. We are a beautiful country of beautiful people who
have had the extraordinary misfortune of being held hostage by the worst among
us. Although we once contributed exemplary characters to Africa’s leadership
pool during the nationalist and immediate post-nationalist eras, we have never
known democracy in any real sense. The closest we came to it was on June 12,
1993 when ‘we, the people’ voted in the only free and fair election we have
ever known. Our hopes and aspirations were quashed by the same vicious
enemy-cabal that aborted our dreams of post-independence nationhood and have
held us hostage ever since. Sometimes, this cabal comes in army fatigues;
sometimes it wears flowing civilian robes but it is the same rotten organism
that perpetually recycles itself. When people who should know better invite the
worst we have to offer to the table, the wound cuts deep in the Nigerian
psyche. It reminds us painfully of Frostian roads not taken. And in this case,
we are much more certain than Frost of what could have been had the right
people taken the roads not taken.
It bears repeating: the Nigerian state,
currently held hostage by a dishonorable cabal and a bloodthirsty, kleptocratic
political party, does not qualify to be consulted or invited to the table when
good governance and credible elections in Africa are in the agenda. If Raila
Odinga was so desperate for Nigerian advice, all he needed do was ask and we
would have supplied him names of Nigerians who qualify to be at the table.
Nigeria has more that a hundred million names that could have given Odinga advice
from an eminently moral high ground since members of the dishonorable
enemy-cabal are, thankfully, in the minority and in no way represent what we
have to offer as a people. If Odinga had consulted serious people before
embarking on his worthless trip to Nigeria, one would have given him such
meritorious names as Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Gani
Fawehinmi, Patrick Utomi, Edwin Madunagu, Odia Ofeimun, Okey Ndibe, Omoyele
Sowore, just to mention a few. These are among our very best, the kinds of
people who still make it possible for Nigerians to defy the rape of their
humanity by the jokers in the PDP and identify proudly with their nation.
Having now become Prime Minister in a
precarious deal worked out by Kofi Annan, if Mwalimu Odinga insists on sourcing
his advice on how to move Kenya forward from discredited African political
figures, we can also help him. Let him return to Nigeria and consult with
Ibrahim Babangida all the corrupt PDP governors currently facing embezzlement
charges. On his way back home, he may want to stop over in Libreville and
Yaounde for consultations on credible democracy with Omar Bongo and Paul Biya.
A stopover with Eugene Terreblanche in South Africa will spice up things
nicely. He may then return to Nairobi and tell Kofi Annan that he has received
superior advice from more credible sons of Africa!
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Authors 
Posted by Robot| 29.02.2008 11:25