On voter education and the survival of Nigeria (2)

BY CHRIS ANYOKWU  

Chris Anyokwu, PhD, a dramatist, poet, fiction writer, speaker, rights activist and public intellectual, is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Lagos, Nigeria and has joined Business a.m.’s growing list of informed editorial commentators to write on Politics & Society. He can be reached via comment@businessamlive.com and +234 8035297582 (Text Only)

Under the PDP, living had lost its salt; life became meaningless. Then enter the messiahs with the New Brooms (apologies to Odia Ofeimun). You may call them the “Change Brigade”. We are referring to no other political organisation than the All Progressives Congress (the APC). Frankly, the less said on the storied depredations of the APC the better. But suffice to say, under the current administration, Nigerians’ fate has become NYSC: Now Your Suffering Continues! A catalogue of woe, just a few, will do in this regard. The APC has worked with meticulous care to make certain that, our own dear native land is the second most terrorised nation on planet Earth. The organisation called the APC has also seen to it that Nigeria is the world’s poverty capital, with over 18.5 million of her children roaming the streets, out of school, according to the UNESCO. This figure makes Nigeria the worst in the world regarding the out-of-school-children problem. What is more, the country at present has 53.40% youth unemployment. What shall we say of the ASUU-Federal Government war of attrition, which, to discerning observers, is down more to the puerile ego than to the paucity of funds on the part of the government? How about the Twitter and crypto ban which in effect muzzled for a time Nigeria’s youth? The policy to close our borders, on the one hand, and impose visa-free entry into Nigeria, on the other, only exacerbated insecurity in Nigeria. The consensus is that bandits and terrorists murdering at will, raping and sacking communities are foreigners who entered our country illegally due specifically to this diplomatic clanger. To cap it up, with the unprecedented and endless borrowing spree of this government, the fear is that generations yet unborn have got their future mortgaged; stolen! A Sisyphean future awaits every child born to Nigerian parents today! So much for the happiest people on earth! Under the APC, the country has witnessed fraudulent oil subsidy payments, breaking all previous records (kindly listen to the Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Lecture on YouTube). Heartbreakingly, again, billions of naira are being spent on unproductive, functionally dead oil refineries. What’s Turn-Around-Maintenance (TAM) if not a shorthand for fabulous fraud? Recently, government promised that Nigeria would soon start refining her crude as some of her refineries would soon roar back to life. That will be the day. With corruption, finally, elevated to the rarefied level of state-craft, with rampant and rampaging terrorism, mass abductions, kidnappings-for-ransom and the scourge of the Unknown Gunmen (UGM) as well as a rubberstamp NASS and a deeply, deeply compromised judiciary, “from top to bottom”, Nigeria only seems to exist in name! Whither the Nigeria/n?

Today the Nigerian seems all but gone. Poof! into thin air! What we have are ethnic nationalities: Yoruba, Igbo, Ika, Edo, Fulani, Hausa, Tiv, Urhobo, Nupe, Ijaw, etc. We have, sadly, our ruling class to thank for our widening fault-lines, our deep divisions, our mutual mistrust and bone-deep antagonisms and resentment. The conflagration is barely below the surface, only requiring the spark of casual infraction or verbal interaction between, say, an Igbo and a Yoruba to ignite Armageddon. Go to the workplace, our schools, hospitals, streets, compounds and yards and even places of worship. They are all toxic with the stink of ethnicism and tribal bellyaching. Bad and admittedly hopeless as things are now, the question is: can Nigeria be salvaged? A cautious “yes”, with a big caveat, though. The earlier the people realise that the political class is united by the commonality of interest, greed and lust for power, the better. One party is the mirror-image of the other, in varying degrees. Speaking of class or interest, all the frontrunners are aggressively pursuing neo-liberal, Bretton-Wood-inspired policies and programmes. Ours is a rentier state happy to dole out patronages and preferment via prebendal means. So, the sooner the masses know their place as scum of the earth, the proles the better. We have always said that Nigerians have not risen to the status of citizens yet. So let’s not kid ourselves.

But lucky is that man who throws a stone into the Nigeria market without blinding his kinsman in the process. Such is the Cretan Maze of interrelationships of the Nigerian society that fighting a supposed foe is akin to indulging in self-destruct. Given decades of cross-cultural alliances in marriage, business, religion, club and so forth, one ethnic group cannot afford to do battle with another without suffering immense and immeasurable collateral damage themselves. As they say, you do not cut your nose to spite your face. But the real tragedy is that, in Nigerian politics, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Thus, in spite of the unspeakably horrendous eight-year Apocalypse we are living through now, those who vote, the electorate, are no wiser! The voting pattern is still going to be along the following lines: (a) religious (Muslim-Muslim ticket versus Northern Christians; (b) tribal (Yoruba versus Igbo versus Fulani) and (c) generational (the EndSARS/ASUU-strike youth distemper versus the age-old ancien regime of “We-are-told-to-vote-our-kinsman”. Ethnicism, our politicians’ trump card, may yet carry the day. As someone once perceptively observed, Nigerians don’t mind their servitude and enslavement so long as the slave master is their kinsman. The child-voters as well as their longsuffering parents will vote their kinsman in the north, just as pauperised adults in the south will cast their ballots for their southern kin without any rational reason to do so apart from ethnic affiliations. Stomach infrastructure, as always, will have its say but will not carry the day. You shall hear things like: “Collect their money; take their bags of rice and Indomie but vote your conscience”. How convenient! Have we factored into the equation the unsettling issue of thuggery? Ballot-box snatching? Intimidation? Threats? And violence resulting ineluctably in loss of life and property? Will the electoral umpire itself stand up and be counted? Will it be independent, in deed and in truth? How about the various security agencies? Will they be professional enough to be above board or will they bolster the arms of incumbency? And, finally, will the president do the right and proper thing: let the ballot speak without let or hindrance?

Let us end with the immortal words of Chief Obafemi Awolowo: “A day will come when Nigerian masses from the north and south, Christians, Moslems and Animists will merge as a force for progress and unity, and kick against rigging, corruption and tyranny”.

As the electioneering campaigns proceed apace, Nigerians must, for a change, put aside religion and ethnicity, and vote the person who has the physical energy, patriotic vision, abhorrence for corruption, a detribalised Nigerian who belongs more to the future than in the past, not a passenger in the departure lounge who is more comfortable with the way things are than to radically cleanse the Aegean’s stable. To the youth and the progressive-minded, east, west, north and south, I say to you: dare to wrest your country, your future, from the asphyxiating grip of geriatric power-mongers. 2023 beckons. Cometh hour, cometh the man!

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