It is strangely amusing how some Nigerians attack themselves on digital platforms and open discussions when fighting for or defending the people they perceive as political messiahs, tribal redeemers and turnaround experts, gloating as new-day nationalists. It is just a case of perception, as this class of political leaders has never failed to undermine any likelihood of a breakthrough we sometimes accidentally bump into.
Some Nigerians would easily have come to blows if such opportunities had presented themselves. I wish they had a better understanding of the brand of leaders they want to kill themselves for – that this class are not bothered about them but the satisfaction of their lustful passion.
Nothing better exposes the unity of the conspiracy among Nigerian politicians against the citizens than the recent and ongoing primaries of the same big political family mushrooming under the umbrella of different names, just for the sake of differentiation. The primaries of the parties, sadly, once again, expose the fact that for Nigerian politicians, no matter how passionate they appear to be about service, the ultimate motive is the satisfaction of a personal political and mostly financial agenda.
A close friend, who is now late, told me, in a voice lazed with disappointment, how he ‘relocated’ from his state to Benin, the Edo State capital, to support the election of a governorship candidate of one of the top contending parties. His candidate won eventually. A few weeks after the election, he could no longer get across to the now sitting governor, through whatever means. E don cast!
I remember a politics professional (are you confused?) who later became a minister in charge of the megaphones of the party and the government at different times. Despite not having met in the physical or spiritual, we were like buddies on the telephone. When his party was jostling for the Villa, he would call regularly throughout the day seeking assistance for certain stories or reactions to be published online. As the Online editor, the newspaper’s digital platform equally needed the ‘two-fighting stories’ to grow traffic.
Soon after the big man got to the office, my desire to get exclusive government stories and confirmation from his office became elusive. The telephone, with the same number (for emphasis), continued to ring without a hitch, but no one was ever at the other end to answer.
Deliberately, I will avoid concentrating on mentioning personal names in order not to undermine the message intended to be passed across. Where necessary, though, trust me, the names would be mentioned, without any apology.
I’m aware that you might have been wondering why the earthquake of defection has been so loud after the primaries of the political parties, not just in the major parties – All Progressives Congress, African Democratic Congress, and the National Democratic Coalition – but in the disintegrated Peoples Democratic Party, the Labour Party, Social Democratic Party, among other mushrooming parties. You may be tempted to fall into deception, thinking that the swiftness of the cross-carpeting of most political heavyweights after being outmanoeuvred in their anticipated political targets in the highly contentious primaries is because of you. Fa..fa..foul!
A former Deputy Senate President, who was accused of being the brain behind the disgusting mace theft in the Senate in the past administration, ‘japaed’ to the NDC less than 24 hours after he lost his senatorial ticket bid to his former state governor. A former speaker of the House of Assembly in the state, who has been an executive director of a Federal Government’s maritime agency for about eight years, suddenly discovered that he was no longer needed in his former party simply because he lost his bid to pick the ticket to contest his district’s senatorial election. He had to head for the NDC after his defeat to pursue his political career.
It was not only in Delta State where there was a political combustion due to the loss of the primaries. In Gombe State, a former minister, reputed to be a religious fanatic with a controversial professorship, who could not pick his party’s governorship ticket, headed for the NDC to grab the waiting opportunity in the party.
Our dear governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, took time off the trauma of the abduction of scores of children and teachers in his state to accept the adoption of the Allied Peoples Movement as its presidential candidate. Don’t forget that our dear governor had plotted to railroad the splinter group of the PDP into a blind alliance with the APM, all alone!
When his name failed to feature in the calculation of the factions in his beloved party, Makinde embraced the easiest of soft landings by landing the topmost ticket of the APM. The presidential ticket of an obscure platform is definitely better than being the de facto candidate of a non-existent party. Brilliant engineer, you will say!
The loudness of alleged irregularities in the ADC and NDC primaries and the top-of-the-table seeming revolt in the APC signpost the desperation of our distinguished politicians not just to fulfil personal ambitions but to keep the same recycled heads in charge of the system and resources they had continued to undermine. Former governor Rotimi Amaechi and Babachir Lawal, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation of the grass-cutting contract splitting fame, have been unapologetic in alleging procedural fraud in the ADC presidential primaries won by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a veteran of serial primaries across multiple parties.
Aisha Yesufu have been tutored the difference between activism on social media and field politics in the NDC primaries. Meanwhile, the nation continues to wait for the new-day political messiahs who will emerge from the parties ahead of the 2027 elections, especially as propagated by online propagandists on X, Facebook and WhatsApp.
It is a common scenario that in our political system, politicians don’t lose elections. Any defeat is automatically regarded as manipulation, imposition and the most famous of all, rigging by the ‘victims’. I have always wondered, as an amateur political analyst, why our political leaders always fail to realise that in a contest, someone must emerge as the winner, not all the contestants.
Of course, I do not claim ignorance of the fact that the process of picking a winner might not be perfect. To date, Mr Donald Trump has not accepted that he lost his re-election bid to Joe Biden in the 2020 United States presidential election. When Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), now late, lost his third-term presidential contest to incumbent Dr Goodluck Jonathan in 2011, and the unfavourable outcome of his petition in the election at the Supreme Court, the former military head of state broke down in tears. It is debatable what motivated the hot tears of the soft-spoken Katsina man – Nigerians, his supporters or Nigeria itself.
To date, only Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, who died in office on May 5, 2010, ever accepted that the election that produced him as President in 2007 was fraudulent with irregularities. He did pledge reforms in Nigeria’s electoral processes, a promise death did not allow him to see through.
Have you equally noticed that the PDP and the LP have produced two presidential candidates while the ADC factions are still battling for survival with legal weapons? Recently, President Bola Tinubu, who has been under serious pressure of late due to the unbearable level of insecurity in the country, jokingly said trouble broke out in a party when a former privatisation czar wanted to “privatise” a fledgling political party.
It is somehow amusing (and surprising at the same time) that the PDP may not field a presidential candidate in 2027, as I once said some months back. The legally recognised PDP, backed by the Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Mr Nyesom Wike, has its own agenda, while the Saminu Turaki faction, which has been outlawed by the court, claimed to have adopted former President Jonathan, a heavyweight political figure, as its presidential candidate.
What is comical about this adoption is that Jonathan has not told anyone openly that he is interested in contesting the 2027 election, but powerful forces, who are supposed to know better, have consistently been speaking for the former President; attending screening for him; setting up machinery for his adoption and capping it up by receiving the certificate of return on his behalf while the Otuoke-born zoologist has been cooling off in his peaceful home with Mama Peace, PhD.
Another distressing phase of the primaries, which has exposed the deep flaw in our electoral law, is the lack of a safety valve to stop the tricks of those who have been convicted, arraigned for fraud, until they are cleared and those who clearly looted funds under them, employing brazen, strange or extraordinary strategies to undermine any move to answer for their sins. A former FCT minister, Bala Mohammed, now governor of Bauchi State, on whose watch the $485m Abuja CCTV contract never materialised, is in the seventh year of his eighth-year term as a governor. His trial for alleged graft by the Economic and Financial Commission was ongoing when he became governor in 2019. Case closed.
If Mohammed’s case intrigues you, you may need to know the case of his predecessor, Abdullahi Abubakar (2015 – 2019), who just won the governorship primaries of the APC in the state, seeking a second term in office as governor, which he was denied in 2019. Two days before his exit from office on May 27, 2019, the state got N11bn allocation from the Federal Government. Within 24 hours, the Abubakar administration had spent N8bn, claiming it was paying money owed to contractors, for contracts that, findings later revealed, never existed. No agency of government is asking any question about this obvious malfeasance. Life goes on there!
Have you forgotten that former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, is on trial by the EFCC for allegedly stealing government money when he was a minister? The ex-AGF has successfully emerged as the governorship candidate of the ADC in Kebbi State. If he wins, Malami will effectively scuttle his trial till he leaves office in four or eight years because he will enjoy immunity from prosecution as a governor.
You may not need to ask too many questions concerning those who were behind the Electoral Act (as amended), leaving deliberate gaping holes to facilitate escape routes for light-fingered government officials to escape justice and perpetuate corrupt practices. This menace has escalated poverty among the people and deepened the nation’s underdevelopment for ages. The same ruling class, of course, protects family members.
So, let me ask you again: do you believe that the struggle for political office by Nigerian politicians is job hunting, a means of gaining political power, or a self-serving mission to access the nation’s vast financial resources, currently under the rule of the ruling class? Let me assure you that I agree with your own conclusion in totality. Yea!
