Welcome to silly season

Seasons come and go. It is winter in the US. It is harmattan in Nigeria, and in the political arena of my beloved country, silly season has just begun.

The moment the year turned and calendars flipped, a certain species of political animals that have been hibernating (some for as long as four years) stirred, wriggled their spindly legs and fat bellies and crawled out of the rafters.

One of them was recently caught on camera swaying before the figure of the former Governor of Abia State, Senator, Orji Uzor Kalu, who stood ponderously, fist clenched in a sort of solidarity salute. The creature, which introduced itself as “grassroots politician” reeled as it delivered a message. 

“We are here to appeal to you to run for president of Nigeria,” he said.

It doesn’t matter how many times one sees a theatrical performance like this, it remains a bizarre thing to behold. But that, dear reader, is not even the strangest silly season incident involving Mr Kalu.

As 2021 rolled towards an end, in faraway Bauchi, far in fact from Kalu’s political base, he was dragged to court by another variant of this creature. They wanted Justice Mohammed A. Sambo of High Court 3 to compel Senator Kalu to declare his intention to run for president in 2023.

The plaintiffs, a certain Comrade Aliyu Ladan and Lawan Abdullahi, in the suit numbered BA/331/2021 claimed that they had entered an agreement with Mr Kalu to run for president in February of that year and since then, he had been reluctant to declare his intention to do so. The judge ordered that Mr Kalu be served.

A story published in Vanguard quoted the plaintiffs as saying they took that drastic action because ‘only Kalu can rescue Nigeria from the deep suffering that Nigerians are going through.’

The shocker!

Of course, these persons making these claims and singing Mr Kalu’s superlatives were completely silent on his conviction in a N17.1 billion-appropriation scandal and the fact that he spent some six months out of the assigned 12 years at the ‘Kuje Hilton’, and was only released on a Supreme Court judgment that quashed his conviction—not based on his or his partners’ innocence – but on the grounds of some legal technicalities.

Well, whatever the case, suit or swaying henchman, Kalu has now formally declared his intention to run for president. He is not keen to see the face of another judge after all. I suppose in the next few weeks, more of such individuals will come out to declare support on behalf of their ancestors and children yet unborn for the aspirant.

They are everywhere, these creatures: in virtual spaces, in the corridors of power, in the pockets of ambitious politicians. Everywhere you look. 

An interesting engagement occurred on the recently unbanned Twitter where former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, tweeted his support for the Super Eagles prosecuting AFCON 2022 in Cameroon. A respondent, who had a made-up name, more or less attacked him for, more or less, wasting his time cheering the team when he should be declaring for president. This entity threatened to sue Mr Obi if he didn’t.

Mr Obi’s response was light-hearted. He would like to know the person’s real name and asked the man for patience because he did not have the time to spend in court. All good and funny.

In Kano, a group—and I’m afraid you will discover in the next few weeks and months groups with grand names like the Businessmen for Osinbajo, Amalgamated Atiku Support Group, South-South 2023 Presidency Group etc—staged what they called “The Kano Declaration” to demand that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo declares for president. Some of these groups, sometimes comprised only five or so individuals, would make grand claims such as saying they are speaking for an entire people or region. The menace is all over the place and it is going to continue to spread.

You see, the silly season comes like mass hysteria, a period in which a group is inexplicably afflicted by some ailment.

For instance, in Germany in the 15th century, a group of nuns inexplicably started behaving like dogs by biting each other. No one could understand why. News of the strange occurrence travelled across Germany and soon other nunneries started experiencing the same problem. Within days, the epidemic had travelled and was being experienced in nunneries in Holland and Italy, all the way to the pope’s feet in Rome. The menace only stopped after the nuns had bitten themselves to exhaustion.

Silly season in Nigeria is only beginning. The drama and intensity of these appeals and the staging would be grander and grander. Courts will get busy with suits demanding that this or that person be compelled to run for president. Political jobbers will hound politicians to declare. And politicians who have no one asking them to run for president will hire people to threaten them to run for president. Groups not hired to threaten anyone will take it upon themselves to threaten someone to run for president. They can settle the payments later. In 2015, a group of Niger Delta militants threatened the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, saying he dared not set foot in the Niger Delta if he did not run for president.

It is how politics is done in Nigeria. It did not start today. 

While there is nothing wrong with individuals or groups demanding that individuals they see as having the qualities to change the country’s trajectory run for president, unfortunately, often, the motives behind these calls, threats and phoney lawsuits only to waste the court’s time, are personal.

It cheapens the democratic process and waters down important national conversations that should be had. People who aspire to govern trick themselves and the electorate out of meaningful conversations by using these performers to distract from real issues. It is cheapening the democratic process. Recently, a female politician was photographed handing out a sachet of noodles—I mean just one regular sized-noodle—as her empowerment programme to the people she expected would vote for her. The insult would have been tolerable if it would stop there.

But while silly season affects “grassroots politicians” one way, it affects the politicians in quite another. They hand out noodles, sugar packs and soap bars to the electorate. And every four years, the same formula works. Poor electorate, ravaged by hunger, banditry and chronic mismanagement of the country will collect these petty handouts and vote for these same people who have robbed us of our commonwealth.

Nobody cares. Not even the president who, a few years ago, (before he became president) pretended to care so much that he wept profusely into a white handkerchief.

For someone who fought a civil war to keep Nigeria united, ran five gruelling campaigns to become president to declare that “2023 is not my problem. I don’t care who succeeds me. Let the person come, whoever the person is” suggests a radical transformation or grand deceit. 

I wouldn’t expect the president to impose a candidate but I would expect him to care, at least, that the right person takes over the country he claimed to love so much.

Someone really ought to care. Nigeria may not be an ideal country but we can make it one. That sounds idealist, I know, but other countries we admire today were built. They were not teleported from another dimension. So, while the silly season lasts, while the drama, the Twitter unbanning, the fake campaign promises and the old cheap soap and expired food handouts are unfurled, someone should care. Because really how long are we going to continue selling our country for a pack of noodles?