A March 3 article on the CCN website captured the Nigerian 2019 election scenario perfectly. Reading through the article, you would be moved to tears for a nation that is sinking into revisionism and whose more than 80 million citizens (who live below abject poverty line) are made to celebrate their depravity, demonise wealth and plaster ludicrous envy on those who live a bit of the better life. They see those as the “evil men” who have benefitted from the looted bad money.
The article titled: “Socialist politics of envy: What the world can learn from Nigeria’s unfolding disaster,” written by David Hundeyin, not only gives vivid insights into the mindset behind the growing revisionism, it identifies the malaise as the centre point of the 2019 campaign of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Some aggregate or clone of Donald Trump’s man of the masses agenda. And events in the aftermath of the February 23 presidential elections have done nothing other than to reinforce the writer’s postulations.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who was declared winner of the elections by INEC, had lost the election in some key highbrow areas, including Victoria Island and Victoria Garden City, Lagos, where Vice President Yemi Osinbajo voted as well as the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT) Abuja.
The simplistic response from Presidency’s hands to define the loss was that the people of Abuja, Victoria Island and other such places who did not vote for the president are “lovers of corruption,” who were unhappy that the ruling party had stopped the flow of money as witnessed in the years of the PDP.
It was taken to another level when I hear residents of Abuja say that the deteriorating state of public power supply in the city in the immediate aftermath of Buhari’s victory was a punishment for Abuja’s refusal to vote the President on February 23. Worse still, some commentators have also expressed fears about the fate of Aso Rock workers who voted against the President in the election.
But the emerging revisionism is not a child of circumstance. The APC built its campaign on the fight against corruption, improvement of the economy and fight against insurgency. But the anti-corruption angle of the electoral promises has been the loudest. The media trial that drops high-sounding figures persuades the poor of its genuineness. They come away feeling that their condition was because of some mindless “looters.” The previous governments have been denigrated as having done “nothing” in 16 years, while allowing members of the administrations pocket pubic funds.
Members of the APC government have freely unleashed words such as “evil,” “corrupt” and “looters” on officials of the previous administrations. Even some turncoat officials of the “16 years of waste,” come around to paint the recovery efforts of Buhari administration as a herculean task made worse by years of “destruction and looting.”
Such refrains were used to propel the 2019 election victory of the President but the fallouts is the rise of undue revisionism only equated to the illogic of anti-Semitism and the racial incongruity of apartheid.
The songs appear sweet on the campaign train; ‘Nigerians must reject PDP’s 16 years of waste’ and all that. But with the election won and lost, a dangerous trend is brewing and it is one with tendency to rewrite our virtues and values-that poverty is good and that the rich are either looters or their agents. The wealthy and the middle class are to be resented. This is the sad end of it all and the beginning of a bourgeoning danger.
In what way is poverty a badge of honour ? When even in the religious circles we are told the money is the lubricant of the wheels of progress. In some religious books, it is noted that money answereth all things. Among the Yoruba, poverty is denigrated and abhorred with several folklores painting the oddity of that condition.
In the early school days, the children are encouraged to study hard and excel such that they can live better and wear high heeled shoes that would hit the ground hard.
It is ordinarily a shameful act to engage in begging; a clear indication of poverty. But the newfound revisionists would found nothing bad in that. If you drive around Abuja, you will find able bodied men and women confidently tap your car window. Some go about with children strapped to their back and a number of other children on their toe. Their shame having been wiped off by the feeling of entitlement fertilized by the growing envy and revisionism-those on good four wheels must have “looted” and “pocketed” their patrimony.
In a short while, such feeling could degenerate and invite further danger. If the economy fails to take shape quickly, the poor could get emboldened with anger and revulsion for the rich. A situation that could trigger unwarranted pogrom.
That is where President Buhari and Prof Yemi Osinbajo need to rewrite the songs and tone down the propaganda. The two of them are not poor men. Let them not paint any picture of helpless men who “live within their means” to give the poor a sense of comfort. Rather than denigrate the unknown “looter,” they should encourage the poor to feel challenged to changing his situation. Capitalism promotes ideas. And ideas, they say rule the world. You cannot designate a man who is reaping the benefits of his ideas as a “looter” just because he is living the good life.
Rather than promote lines that allow the poor remain in their unhelpful comfort zones, the leaders have to promote virtues of hard work and dignity in labour . Rather than see the imaginary looter as the source of their poverty, the poor should be told to work to change his status. The poor should be told in clear terms, he can change his situation with progressive and marketable ideas that are sound.
and then