Fools still die in Nigeria

IT was a week of primary elections, but it was also, unfortunately, a week of violence and deaths. Except for a few states, chaos marked the conduct of primary elections in both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in almost every state.

In Asaba, Delta State capital, two students of the Federal College of Education, were allegedly killed at the venue of the rescheduled primary election of the APC for the Delta North Senatorial District. The story was not different at the PDP primaries for the House of Representatives seat, where four persons were left injured as a result of gun battle that ensued after some people allegedly snatched ballot boxes. The same scenario played out at the Akwa Ibom State governorship primary last Sunday where one person was killed. The victim, Ukeme Efanga, was shot dead in Ifiayong, Uruan Local Government Area, during a disagreement over the distribution of election materials in the area. Last Thursday in Epe, a 30-year old man, Idris Alooma, was killed by hoodlums who attacked a polling unit, while several houses were razed during the APC primary for the House of Representatives. Another person was killed in Oyingbo, while mayhem was unleashed in parts of Kosofe and Agege local government areas of Lagos during the All Progressives Congress (APC) primaries for the National Assembly polls.

During the National Assembly primaries in Niger State, supporters of two House of Representatives aspirants of the APC clashed, leaving 15 people seriously injured. In Imo State, members of the two factions of the party in the state clashed as each side wanted to gain advantage over the other during the primaries, several persons sustained various degrees of injury. One person was reportedly killed in Bauchi, while two others were injured following violence that erupted during the governorship primary of the APC. In Gombe State, the PDP gubernatorial primary earlier scheduled for last Sunday had to be rescheduled as a result of violence that broke out, leaving several people injured. So, for the past 10 days, it has been a reign of violence, mayhem and killings.

The young men who got killed will have their relations regretting their involvement in politics for as long as they live. Their parents’ hopes are dashed and they will carry for the rest of their lives the pain of their sons dying unnecessarily in battles that were not primarily theirs. The parents will nurse, for as long as they breathe, the pain of the young men not living long enough to fulfill their potential; the name they could have made, the children they could have had, and the succour they could have provided for them in their old age had they not been killed during the primaries. For the injured, the reality will now dawn on them that those for whom they were willing to get their skulls cracked do not even spare them a flying thought.

• I want to end it all!

Man is a political animal, therefore, expectedly people will always have their biases for political parties and politicians. While I have no problems with anyone defending their political positions, I feel profound pains when I see the hoi polloi put their lives on the line for politicians under the illusion that by so doing they win their confidence. But nothing can be farther from the truth. The unveiled reality, which unfortunately has been ignored by the masses, is that most Nigerian politicians do not care a hoot about the people. To the mass of our politicians, the masses are mere statistics, useful only for the actualization of their selfish ambition. To most politicians, the masses are nothing but cannon-fodders, expendable in the pursuit of politicians’ interests.

Most politicians remember the electorate when they have need of them. They come out to mobilize the people during voter registration; they woo them with rice, fufu, gari, Ankara and naira during elections and abandon them thereafter until the next elections.

When there is an appointment to be made, the politicians limit such to their ilk. It is not uncommon to see a governor appoint his wife as the chair of State Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS (SACA), his brother as chief of staff, his cousin as senior special assistant, his concubine as special adviser and offspring of his godfathers as commissioners. The appointer and the appointees regale in their new found status and stature. Meanwhile, the masses, who braved the sun and dared the rain to put them in offices, are left in the cold to grapple with run down schools, ill-equipped hospitals, dilapidated roads, poverty, deprivation and squalor.

The country has been hit with a gale of defections recently. Which of the politicians took the followers into consideration before making such move? How many of those who lost limbs and eyes in their defence of PDP bigwigs were consulted before the big shots dumped PDP for APC? How many of the legislators who defected recently held any town hall meeting with their constituents before quitting the party on whose platform they got elected?

The bottom line is that a politician is only goaded by interest, and it is not the people’s or public’s interest; it is his personal interest. Every action of most politicians, no matter how seemingly altruistic, is motivated by personal interests. So, only fools follow politicians with their two eyes shut. Those who do so, more often than not, die unsung.

• Wasted is the life risked for a politician.