Celebrating democracy?

ON 29th May 2018, Nigeria was said to be celebrating her democracy day; and by implication, that is all of us herein this country! I had the chance this morning to listen to the radio for news. As many stations were doing various phone-in programmes on the said Nigerian democracy, I happened to listen to some of the stations in that regard. A reasonable number of the people who spoke were honest enough to acknowledge, with all due respects, that there is no such thing as a true democracy in the country, at least currently! Some sizeable number of people were still however lost in the self-deception that plagues the country by the lots of the rather uneducated or otherwise obviously selfishly challenged people that abound in the place! These later set of people think that Nigeria has a true democracy which only the Goodluck Jonathan/PDP dispensation did not do well in, but in which the Buhari/APC one is busy doing excellently well in! How much hypocrisy can you have? So, as I write this reflection for the tribune on Fridays, it is important to explain the origin of this article so that whenever it is published, people will know where the reflection came from.

Most people in Nigeria, with all due respects to the office of president, no matter whoever is there at any time, know the legacies of Buhari during the December 31st 1983 to the Dogonyaro-Babangida overthrow era of the man. They also have seen within their very first year of his current dispensation, the legacy of the now re-furbished “democratic Buhari”; that is, the repeat legacy of the man plus the runaway former PDP but now APC members and “the new South-West Nigerianpolitical Sage-Ahmed Tinubu”/APC consortium of the ‘Sidon-look, blame Goodluck Jonathan for everything wrong with Nigeria’ team. Many meetings of the various Nigerian ethnic nationalities and groups have held and been holding since the realization that this newly faked up political outfit is going to prove the worst that we ever had.These meetings and outfits have repeatedly and variously realized and informed us all, that what we have had since the so-called Nigerian independence in 1960 has been an attempted return to the Othman Danfodio radical fanatical Fulani Islamic jihad and their overrun of all the ethnic nationalities in the so-called country of Nigeria. This, again with all due respects, is the factual truth; in spite of the “honesty” that many of their protagonists may have with themselves – of Buhari himself, his cabin inner caucus cabinet at Abuja, of our academic colleague Professor Ango Abdullahi, Lai Mohammed and all others of the bunch!

This was the legacy left for us, apparently intentionally, by the British colonialists. They did so precisely because it was never in their interest that any country, least of all, African, developing country or non-Caucasian, should rise and dare to have the guts or opportunity to rival them in anything! Both before the independence and thereafter, especially from their notional late 1940s agreement with the British colonizers in that direction, Ahmadu Bello and his other Uthman Danfodio progeny have kept pursuing this agenda of long range re-colonization. They are to do this not only the core “North” (of the Gideon Okar fame) but of its remaining previously unconquered extensions there in “the North”; but also to the entire country, after the British had left. They have been busy doing this, largely because the British condoned with them on their departure in that regard; and also especially because they have always found willing subjects in Nigeria who cooperate in that agenda throughout Nigeria – for their petty personal economic/material gains against the universal common good! What a pity!

So, what we have kept having is ongoing attempts at the reactivation and extension of the Sokoto Caliphate of the pre-1914 era. The limited creation and running of a reasonable functional and politically sensible quasi-federation of the Nigerian ethnic nationalities between the three different political dispensations, of 1952 – 1960, 1960 – 1963 and 1963 – 1966, got completely returned on the path of the “to be recovered Uthman Danfodio” jihadic re-colonisation of the entire Nigeria by the July 1966 coup to the present era of military and quasi-military governments. So, every time of any so called national elections, we all wait for the apparent (and self-claiming) owners of Nigeria to select their Danfodio candidates or their stooges for us to line up to go and “vote” at the national and state levels; and their thugs at the local government levels. That is the “democracy” that Nigerians have and are celebrating!

Lately also, there has been raging calls on people to go and get their voters cards to repeat this silly exercise; and many apparently believe that they will “do democracy” through this repeated re-affirmation of their neocolonial personal slavehoods and slave country/nationality status. If anything other than this happens, the election will either be nullified by agents of the neo-colonisation or a rampaging slaughter of any persons of the other ethnic nationalities by the intentionally uneducated, impoverished and fanaticised foot soldiers of the system! They will do this as they have been indoctrinated to believe that they have a monopoly of violence, of their preferred non-education and impoverishment of the masses for this silly foot-soldiers status for the perpetration of evil violence; and also so as to begin, to make the case for the return of their caliphate rulership accordingly! And the rest of the country nationalities, out of simple petty jealousies of the true and progressive nationalities and persons in the place prefer to stay on with this “democracy”!

ALSO READ: OAU sex-for-marks scandal: Parents, NANS want sacked lecturer prosecuted, commend university

This was obviously the democracy that Nigerians were celebrating on the 28th of May; or is it not? Otherwise, they are celebration their truly silly collusions against the good, progressive and universally liberating elementsin this country! For over TWO whole years now, Nigerians of various personal or ethnic (original or “late comer but now true”) independence and democracy persuasions have been talking, meeting and doing many things concerning the needed ending of this rather continuing silly national enslavement. Former collaborators of the oligarchy but who have yet not truly genuinely repented in that regard but beginning to see the stupidity of this primitive neo-colonialist non-democracy, have also started calling for its opposition or “change”, but for altogether inappropriate or even worse states. These have included Gowon, Obasanjo and Danjuma, etc! But sadly, none of the essential actions, for the restructuring and its plebiscite or referendum thereof have started to be seen, both internally and necessarily internationally – as must be the case henceforth – from these later people!

• Asuzu is Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Ibadan