The Canonization Of Duplicity In Nigerian Politics (1)

Nigeria is an amazing country in many beautiful respects most especially in our cultural and scenic heritage but even more intriguing than the captivating allure of our geographical landscape, both pristine and cosmopolitan, are the shenanigans of a marauding political class assisted by a docile if not colluding citizenry.

Our nation appears to be passing through a season of anomie where most of our leadership class suffer from selective amnesia and believe that by some stroke of wishful abracadabra, the rest of us are afflicted by a collective memory loss which vitiates our essential knowledge of our recent political past. Key actors in our extant sociopolitical melodrama have severally and jointly embarked on a revisionist agenda to situate a new political imagery that will subsume that which we know of them and alter their heinous antecedents.

All actions are tendencious and none is off limits in this new no- holds-barred contest for political relevance and capacity retooling. We have experienced all sorts from the comical to the outright ridiculous. Today we have an Asiwaju Bola Tinubu accusing Senator Bukola Saraki of betrayal for going against the APC's stipulations on sharing of National Assembly offices and I scoff. The APC and it's percusor, the legacy parties practically invented the word. Their political history is littered with the carcasses of many a political giant fallen victim to profound acts of treachery and yet they now talk about betrayal?

The unending theatre of the absurd continues with Senator Chris Ngige alleging that Senator Ike Ekweremmadu in being elected Deputy Senate President is a "receiver of stolen goods", really? This coming from a man that was a usurper of the throne of Anambra governor, an individual who for all intents and purposes subverted the collective will of the Anambra electorate. This vitriol was simply the result of a man fearful that his much coveted expected appointment from our new President may have been dealt a decisive blow or at best hang in the balance due to the untold emergence of Senator Ekweremmadu who himself claims to hold the new office in trust for Ndigbo.

It is a measure of the disparate tendencies of the APC that a man as pivotal to it's formation as Chris Ngige would need to engage in such a macabre dance to reassert himself as available for prime office. When men who should be cooling their heels in jail for their brazen assault on the electoral process still find the gumption to pontificate on national issues bothering on political mandate, you know our nation is deeply troubled.

Trust Nigerians, one person 'trekked' from Lagos to Abuja ostensibly to honour newly elected President Buhari and predictably so many more joined the bandwagon hoping to hop on the presidential gravy train. President Buhari's cultural identity as a nomad is synonymous with itinerant living and the concomitant coverage of large swaths of land frontiers on foot, and they sought to impress him by trekking? That is analogous to seeking to impress Aliko Dangote with a one million naira account balance. Like pedestrians, like governors. One governor slashed his salary and others followed suit. Now reducing salaries by half is the new fad with our governors struggling to outdo one another. What are the material gains for the populace? Nothing, absolutely nothing!!

What is half of a governor's monthly salary? He forfeits about five hundred thousand naira monthly while he creams off hundreds of millions monthly as security vote. No, thank you Mr Governor, please earn your full salary but reduce the security vote by more than eighty percent. Nigerians love tokenism, and to think some people are actually applauding such 'noble' gestures. Many are talking but only few are thinking. The political warlords have perfected the art of gifting crumbs to our people which mesmerize and bamboozle the populace leaving us thoroughly browbeaten and reeling in praise chants and messianic applause while they fritter our collective patrimony to fund their lascivious lifestyles.

I have always believed that every human being must have pride, those who don't must possess an appropriate sense of shame. To have neither is of tragic dimensions, sadly that is the bane of most of our political elite. They often and readily unabashedly sacrifice truth on the altar of political expediency and we so graciously indulge them, unwittingly or otherwise. Their capacity for mendacity and doublespeak is of legendary proportions and we lie prostrate in submission. It is about time for us as a people to remind our fumbling politicians who they are and what roles they have played in navigating our nation-state to moral and economic ruination.

The near absence of contrition on the part of our transgressors rankles, their insistence on further dominance of our political space is an affront, however, their refusal to do so without assaulting our sensibilities is too much to stomach and tilts the scale of our forbearance dangerously. We will have them know that whilst we are under religious admonition to forgive their transgressions, one of the cardinal prerequisites of forgiveness is restitution. Even If and when we forgive, we shall never forget. 

Okey Joe Emenike