It is easy to take democracy for granted, as indeed we have in times past. It happens when there is a lack of vigilance. We are at that moment in this republic. “The only people who deserve freedom must be ready to fight for it every day,” wrote Russian thinker Maxim Gorky.
Recently, we witnessed lack of vigilance at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport when the former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, arrived from Egypt to a collapse of security.
It was a metaphor of what can happen in a footloose democracy. Persons who were not passengers breached the immigration services, passport controls, security, and the former governor waltzed in a wave of rowdy men without regard to the sanctity of protocol.
Up till now, no one has accounted for how a crowd of persons moved onto the tarmac. There was no query from the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). The former inspector general of Police did not question the indifference of the police force at the place. No official indignation from the top of the immigration services. No hoopla even in the media for this breach.
The crowd was incorrigibly partisan as some of the people chanted “we are welcoming our leader.” That is a thing a good security architecture will detect and punish.
But the episode is a symptom of what we are witnessing, though in quiet and surreptitious way, across the country as well as in the ruling APC and government.
What we are witnessing are actually saboteurs and provocateurs. Both overlap in a reptilian strategy not just to undermine the government but also our democracy. There are three sorts of persons who are working in this direction. One, those who are outside of government, especially in the opposition, who want to derail whatever the Tinubu government does. The second are those who are agents of the outside forces working as spies to facilitate information inflows in and out of the entrails of government. The third, and the most dangerous, are those who are patently indifferent and have no apparent interest wherever the chips may fall.
We may be focused on the 2027 elections. But we have to secure a nation first before we can run a poll. The airport incident with Nasir El-Rafai, could easily play itself out in a grander and more devastating scale.
One instance of the indifference is in the recent local government polls in the FCT. It was FCT minister Nyesom Wike, who choreographed the victory for the APC. I sense that there are quite a few partisans of the APC who are begrudging that high moment. They are not sad that APC won. They are in pains because of who made it happen. The same thing happened when he had an encounter with low-slung military officer over a piece of land. Members of the cabinet were in league against their cabinet colleague. Some of them are top brass of the military who thought the man did not have to follow the law, and so they pitched their tents with the low-slung officer who has been known since to run foul of the law a few times.
El-Rufai is in legal trouble over his leaky mouth on television about tapping the phone of the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu. He hinted at something insidious. That is, there is a channel of communication between those outside the administration and cohorts within. We cannot forget that the Tinubu government has a lot of enemies. Many who could not bear a loss in 2023 have had subversion in their souls. Some of them have called for the streets to erupt. Some have had dalliance with the military as an alternative force. In fact, In Touch can report that two major opposition figures funded the call for military and Russia in the north. The boys who could not pay for the clothes they wore or even for the food they last had suddenly could afford flags sewn at whose expense? Not many in the commentariat questioned this. Al majiris live at the mercy of others. Suddenly, they had the power to put the whole country at their own mercy by hoisting flags and calling for soldiers. They are small boys. They never witnessed the butchery of soldiers or the temerity of their guns in the military era. They gave a comic scene when they pretended to be underfed. Can we forget that? Small boys are not innocent.
We witnessed the chieftains of the ADC raise ominous cries over the electoral act, and they have sworn to derail it. They restrained themselves by saying they would do everything within the constitution. I wonder what constitutional means can overturn a law passed by the requisite numbers in the legislature. Maybe they want to go the Supreme Court. But they never hinted at any recourse to the court. That calls for us to watch.
They had two major objections. One, real-time transmission. They still insist on real-time transmission when they have no evidence that it has ever happened anywhere. They do not understand, it seems, what it means. If it is electronic transmission, the law already appended its imprimatur on that idea. So, why the hoopla? If it is real time, can they answer the question as to how can you have real-time electronic transmission when we do not have real-time voting? They are being contrarian. We expect logic, not uproar.
They also kicked against the idea of direct primaries. They want the delegate system. The other word for that is bribery. Some politicians who have risen in their party graces to earn a place in the delegate list often look forward to the primaries. It is gangster democracy. A few well-heeled men shepherd a few men in a room, hand them each a bag of dollars, and ask them to vote in a certain way. In the direct primary, it is the whole members who line up. Try and bribe the crowd.
We have the forces working from outside and within, and threatening the system. The ADC and NNPP are lamenting the insurgence of political heavyweights to the ruling APC. They are crying out that it is a one-party state bleeding on our neck. They are actually confessing their failures as opposition. Some of them have never been in opposition. They are used to being opposed. They often have their hand on their opponent’s neck. They are in a strange place. They do not know how to fight for power. So, they have turned into crybabies at the doorpost.
Sokugo politician Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi counted their chickens before they hatched them at the FCT poll. They went to the hatchery afterwards, and they neither saw nor heard the chirps of day-old chicks. I am not about to impugn that these people do not love their country, especially those three categories. Their patriotism is a theoretical proposition. But we must watch out for those within the administration more than those outside. There are quite a few who are just there to make a living. Which is fine. As we saw at the airport, some of the immigration, FAAN, and police officers who allowed the breach may just be indifferent or may have been suborned. But the consequences of their attitudes may be more malignant that they imagine. We must keep this line in view. “The opposite of love is not hate. It’s indifference,” wrote Elie Wiesel. Hence the most dangerous people are those who have no skin in the game.
It is even more so now because there are no ideological fidelities. People have no beliefs, but interests. A man can move from any party to another because the only qualification is your foot to walk in.
