Awo’s evaluation of military rule

“The worst civilian rule is better than the best military dictatorship,” Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Could the sage, one of the best politicians ever to walk on Nigeria’s democratic corridor have said so at a time that temper was high due to conflict with the military and might not have said so it if tempers weren’t high?

I sat down to x-ray the chief’s celebrated tirade recently due to the democracy we have witnessed for so long with absolutely nothing to show for it.  In our day and even before the end of an assembly, some folks are jostling for who becomes president of a hallowed chamber, never bothered about Nigeria’s problems.

Identity politics, sorry to say is what Nigeria’s democracy has been reduced to.  Many a politician flees from democratic obstacles and thorns of national life, failing to realise that according to Tai Solarin, without the thorns of life, there can never  be “creation, no ingenuity, life will be uneventful, a drudgery and useless.”

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Soldiers do not run from obstacles. Thanks to the same military that Papa Awo criticised, all of the significant infrastructure put in place in Nigeria were put there by them and never the political class. Tell me what they have done since 1999 other than wastages. The political class has never taken any hard decision to end insurgency and put Nigeria on the pedestal of development.

There is nothing the political class can do about the past, they cannot undo it, but the lessons of the past can help Nigeria’s political class not to mess up the present by acting like timid persons destroying the future like they do now.

Only negative people behave that way, pessimists who do not believe in the country and I tell you soldiers believe in the country more than the political class. History in this fourth democratic experience has shown clearly why the political class cannot be trusted.

These people who do not believe in the sense of urgency always desire to win on lies and not on principle? How can the Nigerian uneducated class be capable of good judgment when they listen to demagogues from sunrise to sunset?

Elsewhere, nations that have the opportunity to breed great men, promote their expressions of greatness, because of their belief in the extraordinary; but in countries such as in Nigeria, the political class fight fire with fire leaving citizens with ashes.

Is Nigeria truly a secular state in this dispensation? Some religious precepts override the Nigerian constitution. Many of the political people I see here aren’t as half disciplined as the crop of Army Generals, Commodores and many fine officer gentlemen I have interacted with in the course of my career. These politicians are so empty and that is putting it mildly. How can Nigeria ever develop with politicians who cannot do without sending tykes and rowdies to beat voters with cudgels to win elections. Would Papa Awo have ever supported this in a democratic dispensation? I dare to think not.

Simon Abah,

Abuja.