2023 ELECTIONS: JUST ANOTHER ROUND OF SHENANIGANS!

To accurately predict the possibilities of tomorrow, the nexus between history and the realities of today must be preserved. Since 1999, the Nigerian State has had unfettered rounds of quadrennial elections, which have acted as mechanisms for ushering-in new governments to hold the reins of national affairs for another subsequent four-year period. Ideally, the idea is one that should inspire improvements to the health of the nation by every index possible, but the reality is profoundly contrasting such that, the only element in the recurring loop that visibly enjoys continuous improvements in all ramifications is the Nigerian Politician; no wonder why politicians do anything and everything to get into office?

The seventh of the seven deadly sins as propounded by the great sage– Mahatma Gandhi– is, Politics-Without-Principle, and according to Stephen R. Covey, “if there is no principle, there is no true north, nothing you can depend upon”. To understand this, one needs to grasp that the key to a healthy nation is to get its national value-system aligned with correct principles, which will then have its compass needle pointing to true north– true north representing the natural law upon which the nation’s value system is calibrated. This, is the politics of Nigeria, one without principle, played by self-seeking power gluttons– politicians, hence the obvious absence of the natural basis for calibrating the nation’s value-system. The resultant effect of this is evident in the erosion of societal moral values and the proliferation of corruption and impunity that has encapsulated the entirety of the Nigerian State.

Upon this framework, one can accurately say– or predict if you may– that the 2023 elections, if embarked upon, will be just another round of shenanigans that clearly holds no benefit for the Nigerian State, but for the politicians. The politicians know this, and this is why they spend millions of naira to create an image, albeit superficial and lacking substance, in order to get votes and gain office. Even the mechanisms serving as springboards for these politicians– the political parties– were designed to foster this; their internal operations are deficient of the natural grundnorm principles. However, the politicians’ sentient crave for absolute influence is one borne of the fraudulence promulgated by the hypothetical guiding document of the Nigerian State– the 1999 Constitution.

While the 1999 Constitution– sitting on a foundational fallacy– alongside its administration, has only functioned as the source of subjugation to a people, stripping them of their natural occurring liberties, it has conferred a life of perpetual affluence upon another set of people, along with a guaranteed ‘El dorado’ for their offspring; this characteristic functional-contrast of the 1999 Constitution, is one of the plethora of evils that has pervaded the Nigerian State for decades. Whether foundational or functional, the concomitant flaws of the 1999 Constitution have successfully aided the sustenance of the existing polarity among the Nigerian people. Often times, this polarity is given the coloration of ‘Northern-protectorate-against-the-Southern-protectorate’, but in reality, it is that of ‘Oppressors-against-the-Oppressed’. However, one thing remains implicitly clear; the north has never been equivalent to the oppressors, if it were, it wouldn’t remain the poverty capital and most underdeveloped region of the Nigerian State. The real oppressors have ensured a continuous propagation of this lie to perpetually hold their northern pawns within the confines of ignorance, and endlessly binding them to their chains of servitude. Worst is the fact that, the northern pawns have so internalized their erroneous beliefs and the evil indoctrination of these oppressors. They have defied every effort made by other compatriots to rid them of the veils of ignorance covering their faces, and vehemently refused to reason beyond the ideologies handed them by their oppressors; this is the case of the Arewa Youths who have blindly vowed allegiance to the common oppressors of the Nigerian State. They lack the basic understanding that their own quandary is far worse than their southern counterparts’.

The power-mongers of the Nigerian State are too familiar with the underlying strengths of unison, so, to perfectly wield the wand of power, they understand how critical it is to keep the people disunited. They have carefully mastered the craft of hegemony over the Nigerian people by employing the inherent potency of ethnic and religious ideologies. They have constantly fired these canons of ethnic and religious discord to continually disunite the people, while employing the merits of political-cohesion to strengthen the ties between themselves and their cronies. Their selfish exploitation of this knowledge has consistently yielded anticipated results in their favour, but at a prodigious detriment to the hapless people who have painstakingly clung to their ignorance of same. The power of politics is by far greater than the underlying powers of ethnicity and religion combined; while the people have chosen to be ignorant of this, those at the corridors of power have long profited from the yields of this knowledge. The people’s disunity along these lines remains the biggest impediment to their capacities to reason-commonly beyond their imposed weaknesses to be able to fashion-out a pathway that would eventually lead them out of the perpetual servitude handed them by the Nigerian oligarchy.

For decades, the Nigerian people have survived the oligarchy’s hegemony using a cocktail of sheer resilience, and late Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s concept of suffering-and-smiling. However, having been battered for so long by the harsh economic and social realities, the people have become weary of merely trying to survive under the whims and caprices of their oppressors. The elastic limit of their resilience has been reached and almost at breaking point. Due to this, some have woken from slumber with a renewed vigor to hold their oppressors to account. Recently, the bravery of the Nigerian youths birthed the #ENDSARS movement, which was initially aimed at truncating the infamy of a supposed tactical unit of the Nigerian Police– Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) – as a result of the systemic and institutional impunity pervading the country. The movement metamorphosed into a globally acclaimed blanket-agitation for the immediate address of some perceived economic and social ills that have plagued the Nigerian State for a while.

At the very zenith of the many positives of this movement, is its emphatic conviction that ‘Power belongs to the People’, but in all that the #ENDSARS movement has been– as commendable as it is– it remains a slingshot aimed at plucking off some bad fruits from a tree; with time, the tree will bear more fruits and status quo will become inevitable. In reality, putting an end to the ordeal of bad fruits would mean to cut-down the tree that bears them; so the question is, are the Nigerian people really ready to cut-down this tree? Are the people agitated enough to genuinely want a deposition of their evil oppressors? The people need to understand that it needs no army of them, but only a determined critical mass of them to pull this off.

Each passing day, the functional mode of the Nigerian State proves to be unsustainable in all facets. Human lives have lost every sense of worth; people no longer have guaranteed homes– especially in the North; national security is at stake. Sophisticated criminal elements in the form of Fulani herdsmen, bandits, and insurgents run territories within the Nigerian State, they displace people at will; maim and kill with little or no resistance; cart away people as though basket of tomatoes; and the nation’s security architecture seem to have lost all grip of the situation. What’s more? The Government is in open trade with these felons; it encourages their trade with huge sums of taxpayers’ monies disguised as ransoms and honorariums. Little wonder why those marauding elements become brawnier and more elusive after every successful transaction.

Economy wise, the Nigerian State has become a tale of woes; an utterly dismal subject to discuss. All the macro-economic indices are at the worst levels ever, the nation has zero production capacity, and since its only viable source of revenue has crashed beyond sustenance levels, the nation has resorted to borrowings to fund its survival– largely for consumption. The mindless borrowings of government have assumed astronomical dimensions such that government is fast running out of credible lenders, hence conceiving to borrow from unprecedented sources like Pension Funds, Bank Dormant Accounts, and Unclaimed Dividend Warrants; how more criminal can the government be? The nation has been driven aground into a state of despair, no thanks to an indolent and clueless government whose intelligence only functions optimally at the conception of borrowing survival-funds from predator-nations. In all of these systemic rot, the Nigerian people have been sandwiched between penury and despondency, while the Nigerian oligarchy and their cronies are drenched in the continuous growth of stupendous affluence. In what better way can one elucidate Mahatma Gandhi’s Politics-Without-Principle?

Though the subject of unison among the Nigerian people remains a front-line debate– one clad in a jacket of explosives with immeasurable capacities to ignite various degrees of animosities if not carefully discussed– the Nigerian people have to mutually agree, upon the basis of their undeniable commonalities of the woes that have plagued their very existence, to the inevitable need to genuinely desire self-extrication from the shackles of long orchestrated oppression. It is however quite appalling that, even in the face of the obvious dire situation the country is in, some Nigerians, especially those from the more vulnerable Southern Nigeria, hold little or no belief in the recent 90-day ultimatum given to the Nigerian government by Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination (NINAS) to either repeal the 1999 Constitution or dissolve Nigeria’s amalgamation of 1914. Rather than dance to the melodious tunes delivered by their kinsmen-drummers, they’re more concerned with the sizes of their drumsticks– actually waiting to see how long the dog can bark; yet these same people are gearing-up for another round of the political shenanigan called 2023-elections. How better can one elucidate the concept of a people who pleasurably romance their chains of servitude? This category of people are like the dream-killers who believe in no cause nor hold the capacity to devise one, yet deflate the courage and esteem of those who dare to make an attempt. Given the predicament the Nigerian people are in, whatever non-violent initiative that aims at restructuring this country and discarding the 1999 Constitution, should become a priority cause every well-meaning Nigerian should align with, even though we can agree that unless there is a reasonable accretion of all the pockets of agitations emanating from different parts of the country into a common front, these agitations may never yield intended results.

To rightly fathom the quandary of the Nigerian State in line with its institutionalized impunity, one has to emulate the effigy of justice-and-equity by being blind to the national prejudices of political, ethnic, and religious alignments; only then would a critical assessment of the foregoing unravel the depth of the evils perpetrated by the administrators of the Nigerian State, which itself is a functional effect of the fraudulent 1999 Constitution. If indubitably, the illegality of the 1999 Constitution is non-debatable, then the people’s consistent belief that a document founded on illegality will someday produce forms of legality can be rightly considered as civil-insanity. More so, the ability to rationalize this precept is itself a validation of one’s sanity, which is the very reason some of us have been consistent with the #End1999Constitution campaign. To ask what would replace it if jettisoned is either simply ludicrous or sheer ignorance. Even if it is replaced with a draft by a ‘charge-and-bail’ lawyer, as long as it spells-out consequences for actions, agreed upon by all parties involved, and allowed to reign supreme; it is all the nation needs to set sail.

Just like the concept of garbage-in-garbage-out, the Nigerian State is a worn-out system that needs a holistic overhaul without which any of its offshoots will fail woefully. Holding the 2023 general-elections is to further setup the Nigerian State for another round of serial failures, despite that, the oligarchy will still be cashing-out; for how long shall we then continue in this rat-race? As long as subsequent quadrennial elections are held on the basis of the 1999 Constitution being the nation’s grundnorm, they’ll remain an iteration of political shenanigans incapable of liberating the people it was designed to serve; just as no amount of electoral reforms can achieve same. NINAS’ 90-day ultimatum– by its content– to the Nigerian government is today the closest agitation that embodies true emancipation of the people from the perpetual servitude orchestrated by the evil hegemony of the Nigerian oligarchy. If the Nigerian people– who have long been shortchanged– really understood the quandary of the nation as at today, every well-meaning Nigerian would by now be backup singers of NINAS’ emancipation song as against the futile preparation for the 2023 general-elections. Nigerians have to become soberly piqued and vehemently agitated enough to effect the long overdue deposition of the minute oppressors that have tyrannically evaded the subject of restructuring for fear of forever disrupting their hijacked source of milk and honey.

The Nigerian people, especially the youths– whose future is more at stake– should endeavor to take advantage of the many positives of the #ENDSARS campaign and align with NINAS’ emancipation cause rather than aligning with the preparations for the upcoming 2023 general-elections which has no therapeutic tendencies for the Nigerian predicament. NINAS has introduced an emancipation song, it is therefore the responsibility of the embattled Nigerian people to project– beyond deafening decibels– this song to reach all corners of the world. This, and only this, should be the priority of the Nigerian people at this time; else, they risk being caught in a perpetual loop of rubber-stamping their own enslavement every four years.

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Picture credit: The Citizen