Saving the ‘grassroots’ from itself

I had given INEC a pass mark after the Presidential Elections. But by the second elections for State Governors and Houses of Assembly, I drastically reviewed my position. However the entire charade of an election is not an issue for INEC alone. The elections were watered by the blood of the innocent as usual. Some people said Nigeria lost more innocent souls in 2015 and 2011 than we lost in 2019 but this claim is hard to verify. What seems more likely is that Nigerians now feel less shocked than before at the idea of people dying during elections, and indeed most people paid no mind to the general carnage around them. The gubernatorial and state assembly elections showed that we have lost a lot more of our humanity since the last election and that Nigerians have devalued and that more of our humanity is eroding. I just read a statement from the INEC Chairman wherein he said the violence in 2019 elections was somewhat alarming and unprecedented. This is who, and what we’ve become.

I predicted quite rightly that the guber and assembly elections will be a lot dirtier for several reasons viz that unlike the presidential elections where attention was focused on two major players, this time, there were many desperate governors, aspiring governors, assembly members and the ‘honorables’ who were trying to displace them, that the whole country may collapse into a free-for-all. Also, with the presidential elections, the big guys had sorted themselves out, nobody worked for anyone else but Buhari, who promptly also threw other players under the bus and watched them roast. So it became a brutally selfish game; a blood sport. Guys are willing to kill, maim and destroy to get their hands on some of the action. That is exactly what happened. The news and events around the second set of elections were shocking and sad, and cast a pall on the entire elections. Still it will be simplistic and patently wrong to blame it all on INEC.

This is where the ‘grassroots’ come in.

We who are new entrants in politics and who stepped out this season, have been told by the entire country to ‘go and engage with the grassroots’. That is the cheapest statement to make actually. It’s not as if we did not try. I actually recall being duped by many so-called ‘grassroots’ people across the length and breadth of Nigeria. I am one of the pragmatic few who never got carried away or thought I could win the presidency. ‘When did I start that I would just win like that?’, I constantly told myself. For me, it was never about winning but about making impact on policy and using the pedestal and elevated platform and visibility offered by my candidacy to project some ideas, some of which are now being taken seriously or echoed in high places today (such as the oil palm vs crude oil comparison, the small growth rate of our GDP, our dismal budget size and so on). In fact, I finally received a singular reply to the many letters I wrote in that season, from the office of the Vice President, which was the only reply out of about 30 letters written to different exalted offices in the land in that period, emphasizing these issues.

We engaged with the grassroots. We courted them in some instances. Sometimes we believed in them. But many people at the grassroots set out to dupe and to defraud. Some of them have taken that stance perhaps in furtherance of the agenda of the status quo i.e. to ensure they ruin those little guys that are just coming up so that no one will ever think of standing up to the status quo ever again. For others, they were just on the lookout to maximise their take from the elections by collecting from every and anyone, and then supporting the status quo or status quo ante (APC and PDP), which are parties that give enough space for expression to all sorts of tendencies some of which may not find accommodation in the more idealistic small parties.  The big parties for example have elevated motor park touts and local cults, but many small parties are afraid of those types of people.

The final result of our 2019 elections showed that indeed, only a few of the new parties hold the hope for a sane future for this country.  Without our involvement, there would have been zero debates and certainly no focus on any of the issues that matter. The grassroots in Nigeria does not care about debates and thinks nothing of ideas. The grassroots is perfectly okay with electing and reelecting those who have put them where they are, and complaining all year long till the next election cycle.  The grassroots does not mind being the grass upon which Nigeria’s elephants trample, sometimes for a small fee.  As a matter of fact, the grassroots needs saving from itself and the fate that they have led this entire country into. The grassroots does not need cajoling, spending on, wooing, except if you have stolen money which you are willing to launder through the political process; invest now, collect later at an undetermined stratospheric rate of return.  That will also mean you are in politics for the wrong reasons; to create a political career in Nigeria and generally join the rest of the crew in kicking the can down the road while things get worse. Already we have started to hear lamentations of Sodom. And these lamentations are likely to continue as far as the eyes can see.

Many who talk about the grassroots do not know how bad the problem is. I even made a note to ask my friends who were in confraternities in university how and why those school cults they created have now become what primary school pupils belong to. The grassroots of Nigeria is run by cults and warlords. This is what happens in a troubled society. For Nigeria to survive, the grassroots cannot dictate the pace or direction. You can only offer what you have, and lead people to where you know. See the way one lady holding a camera exposed the skin-crawling travesty that is Okotie-Eboh Primary School in Sapele, Delta State? That lady is probably social media savvy. Their types don’t vote. But those who vote don’t see anything wrong in living worse than animals, being trampled upon, degraded and devalued. We respect them. But we cannot leave the reins of our future to the so-called grassroots. We need a new conversation and a different approach.