The trap against new political expression (1)

Corruption has mixed with impunity in Nigeria. People who should be ashamed of themselves are now strutting about, calling the shots. Someone once remarked that given cursory look at the Senate or House of Reps looks like a line-up of criminals; 419ers, embezzlers, cultists, kidnappers, prostitutes, killers, bank robbers and serial bad-debtors, fraudsters of all types. Most of our governors are like that too. Ditto those who run for the presidency. Somehow, what Paul Krugman called ‘adverse selection’ not only plays out in our economics but also in our politics.  Krugman had said about countries like Nigeria a while ago, that given two economic policies, we have always chosen the worse.  Given two political candidates, we also veer to enthrone the brigand.  And our people say that if an impostor is not accosted in good time, even the landlord becomes the accused. We may have got to that point in Nigeria where a career in crime is becoming a sine qua non for another career in public service. Corrupt people get elevated to high offices all over the country as well. Sad.

The debate around the ‘proliferation’ of political parties in Nigeria is raging and will take on a life of its own now that the elections are fully over. I have argued extensively before that the rush by sundry groups to register their parties is a cry for help. It is the logical reaction when even the activists realize that activism will not change the country. It is the right step forward, when guys in the corporate sector realize that it is not enough to stay in some comfortable cocoon and deceive themselves about their middle-classness, defined by occasional business-class foreign travels or membership of country or golf clubs. It is what happens when a generation sees the light and realizes it has been too docile for too long. No one can force all tendencies together all at once, or commandeer that we all think in some certain restricted ways. No one can pinch a child constantly and command her not to whimper. Your irritation with the rash of political parties that swarm all over the country will not do. Only a proper treatment of the underlying disease will make that rash disappear. This is a classic case that can be likened to many people struggling for the steering wheel of a bus careening out of control and taking all inhabitants to Hades. The passengers, having lost faith in the driver and his conductors, have a right to intervene in the piloting of the vehicle.

No one should be forced to queue after any two terribly warped and corrupt parties – which are actually one and the same in spirit. A country must constantly reinvent itself.  We must remember that PDP and APC are popular today simply because of illegal access to taxpayers’ money. Even at that, APC and PDP are not written into the Nigerian constitution. Before them we had SDP and NRC. And even farther off, we had NPN, UPN, GNPP, NPP, AG, NCNC, NPC and so on. Therefore, before any party should be abrogated or delicensed, fair opportunity must be given and even fair amount of funding afforded. Otherwise we devolve straight into some sort of neo-autocracy. We have seen how the Army and other security agencies have been deployed for electoral purposes and that tells about the kind of possibilities we may face in a near future where political expressions are stifled, and people are no longer free to express themselves. The backlash of a bottled-up society is another thing to consider. The more you bottle people up, the more you risk a major upheaval and civil strife eventually.

BREAKING NEWS – There is currently a surreptitious plan to strangulate and squelch the resurgent political expressions in the land already. The problem here is whether those who want to effect this plan are worthy of doing so. The Chairman of IPAC, Peter Ameh has been drawing our attention to this clear and present danger, but I only did extensive research into what is exactly going on recently. Before now, I had been watching the actions of guys like Senator Nazif. The other day we were at the Senate for a hearing and on the agenda, they had ‘Major Political Parties’ to speak first and then others. We protested and this illegal protocol had to be dropped. A party is a party.

To be continued