Ah, jackals, hyenas and rats

Tunji Braithwaite’s political party, Nigerian Advanced Party, with the rather unfortunate acronym of NAP, as in nodding off in a short sleep, was registered in 1983. It was the only party the civilians had the courage to add to the five decreed for the country by the departing generals in 1978/79. 

Their reason was not entirely altruistic or based on the need for more political parties in the new, heady climate of democracy. It was a party born entirely out of NPN calculation to throw sand in the bowl of gari of the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, of the venerable politician, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in the former Western Region, now South-West geo-political zone, in the 1983 general elections. 

 NAP, being owned and headed by a Yoruba man, would offer an alternative to those of the tribe that did not want to belong to NPN or the UPN. The NPN moguls duly calculated that it was reasonable to expect NAP, if its leaders were not caught napping, to make an inroad into the strong hold of the chief, dilute his power and loosen his hold on the former region the NPN wanted to break into.

I think Braithwaite had a wholly different reason for the role he intended his party to play in our polity. It turned out that his primary purpose in forming the party was, listen to this, to rid the country of rats and mosquitoes in its body politic. I thus learnt for the first time that our political problems were more complex and more complicated than I thought. It had not occurred to me until then that in addition to dealing with the rather difficult human beings in the corridors of power, we also had to deal with rodents and insects. No cricket, that.

Now that I think back on it, I am persuaded that no political system infested with rodents and insects can respond to, let alone, solve the myriad political, social and economic problems of a given country. Now you know why we rise and wobble and generally behave like the graph: up on the hills today, down in the valleys tomorrow. 

It was Braithwaite’s informed opinion that these vermin hobbled our political, social and economic progress. He believed that we would continue to labour in vain, trying to move our country from point A to point B, unless we got rid of them. He set out to do just that through NAP.It was a noble objective and nobly had the party articulated it.

Was Braithwaite using rats and mosquitoes as a metaphor for his fellow politicians who were sucking the blood of the Nigerian state and infecting it with the political equivalent of malaria? I choose to believe he was speaking truth to his fellow politicians.

Braithwaite never had the chance to put his plans into effect. NAP won no governorship election or a single national or state legislative seat in 1983. No, they were not napping. Perhaps a more plausible explanation is that not many Nigerians were willing to hitch their political wagon to a political party trying to do what companies that survive on fumigation could do more cheaply. And it led to this.

Two weeks ago, the irrepressible Senator Shehu Sani from Kaduna State viewed the country from the perspective of animal kingdom. He was disgusted by the behaviour of his fellow politicians who, instead of pleading with God to restore President Muhammadu Buhari to good health, were busy trying to carve up the kingdom should the president find himself permanently absent from the political scene. He likened them to two vicious predatory carnivores in the animal kingdom: jackals and hyenas. 

Last week, the First Lady, Mrs Aisha Buhari, on a visit to her husband in London and happy that the man was fast regaining his health, echoed senator Sani. She served notice that when the lion king returns and restores order and sanity in the kingdom, the jackals and the hyenas would be left holding the short end of the stick of treachery. 

And she drew the flack from both the social media and some columnists in the mainstream media who felt disappointed that she reduced this country to an animal kingdom. When Sani said it, it seemed no one was offended. But the First Lady saying the same thing was taken as a calculated insult. 

I think her critics missed the point. It is not really about animals but about the unregenerate Nigerian politicians who wear the tattered garments of soiled humanity. If a man has no sympathy for the distress or the suffering of his fellow man, he is no better than a jackal. If he preoccupies himself with reaping from the misfortunes of others, he is a hyena.

Given what we see of the predatory nature of our politicians and our politics, my take is that our political kingdom should be happy to be likened to an animal kingdom. This country is where it is today because it is a fractured kingdom no animal would be foolish enough to envy.

 The animal kingdom is perhaps the best organised kingdom in the world. The rule of the lion king is fair. It never denies other weaker animals the right to be recognised as bona fide inhabitants of the kingdom with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto. It never seeks to induce or coerce other animals to minister to the lions and the lionesses. 

The kingdom is ruled on principle, not on greed and corruption. Every animal knows its place in the kingdom. The animals respect one another’s place. There is no need for the animals to demand the carving up of the kingdom because the lion is king. They recognise the value of unity. They know it pays them to stay together, although some are food for others. That is not their fault but that of the creator who put carnivores and herbivores together in the same kingdom.

It is said that in the animal kingdom the rule is the survival of the strong or the fittest. But in our own political kingdom, the rule is the survival of the treacherous and the fickle. Ever heard of animals stabbing one another in the back? Perhaps not. Animals do not carry knives. But when you think of Nigerian politicians, thinks of jackals, hyenas, rats and mosquitoes. I think they have a few things in common.