Hailing Nigeria’s morticians at their brazen best

Around thirty years ago, the legendary Michael Jackson released “They don’t really care about us.” It was his literal cry against injustice, neglect, abuse of power and other such vile dividends people directly receive from politicians’ game of power. If anything, the title of that song rings so true today when the brouhaha on how Nigerians’ votes would be handled in the next general election is considered. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would not have denigrated all the gains Nigeria made as a country in a difficult electoral journey with one sentence if they cared about us. If they cared about us, they would rather come up with ways through which our elections would be purified.

Elections are about the most important means through which democracies make leadership recruitment, especially into the government. Other democratic nations are on the road to making this very important aspect of their societal life better and more transparent and credible. In Nigeria, however, our president has just assented to a controversial amendment to the country’s electoral law which has introduced another layer of confusion to the one the people wanted removed. It does not matter that the amendment is in hot dispute among the entirety of the country’s lawmakers, and among the people of the country. What seems to matter now is how not to alter the statutes so as not to disrupt the status quo. There is no thought for future recruitment exercises and the fate of the screeching country.

However, whether they care about us or not, we will continue to ring out our hapless cries for a better country. We will, like the chick in the fatal grip of a marauding kite, keep shouting. Like that ill-fated chick, we will sustain our panic not because the kite would let us go, but because it is important that the watching world remembers our voice and knows that we tried our best to attain egalitarianism.

It is often worrisome that Nigerian supporters of their oppressors don’t look beyond their immediate environment. They belong to a class which doesn’t care about the benefits of a credible recruitment system. Today’s Abia State stands as a credible example of vox populi in political recruitment. As things stand today in that state, their governor, Mr. Alex Otti, can do no wrong. He does not need to embark on winding speeches or tumultuous campaigns, he will win an election flatly. And while his reign lasts in the people’s public life, his acolytes too will benefit from his huge popularity. Otti is a result of a credible recruitment system and a testimony to what could happen if Nigerians are allowed that all-important freedom to choose their leaders.

Alex Otti didn’t come easy for Abia State people. Nigerians might have forgotten the battle fought by the Returning Officer for the governorship election in the state appointed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Her name is Professor Nnenna Oti. She stood firm in the face of threats and intimidation to announce Alex Otti as the winner of the election she oversaw. Those who don’t care about us had wanted her to announce a result contrary to what the voters said. She was enticed, threatened, pushed and warned to comply but in her own words, she refused and stood her ground. She displayed rare resilience while expressing the need for people to be allowed to make their choices and reap whatever benefits that come from such choices.

Professor Oti in reaction to the accolades which followed her heroic action said: “If I perish I perish. It is still humans who would do it (the right thing). They came with their money, they came with their threats, they came with their intimidation; I am unshakeable.” The English language does not truly capture the depth of her assertion in the Igbo language that literally means she is unshakeable: “Á bu m á kwàá a-kwuru.” It is in the same context of the kùkùté in Yoruba… It is better imagined if she had cowered to the threats and intimidation and muddled things up in Abia State as they did in Rivers State. The people of the state would still have been putting up with a putrid Aba, and only dream of the day a messiah would rise to deliver the land. The messiah came in the form of a woman named Nnenna, an academic who said “if I perish I perish” for doing the right thing.

In Ogun State, we also have an example that speaks to proper recruitment of political leaders. The Ogun State example is another variant of “if I perish I perish for doing the right thing.” A man, Wale Adedayo, was elected as a local government chairman in Ogun State. As he journeyed into his three-year tenure as the “Executive Chairman” of Ijebu East Local Government, he found that he was everything but a local government chairman. He realised that while the label says “Chairman”, he was indeed an acolyte, a ‘yes massa man’ known in more ugly terms as “a house nigger”; an errand boy and above all, a conduit. He saw that he was not just a figurehead as the LG chairman, he was one of the governor’s ATMS and a loosely-important appendage to the state government.

Adedayo kicked. He refused to continue the superficial life; that life which dresses you in borrowed robes, The type which formed part of the foundation of the downfall of Macbeth. He said he could no longer continue to be hailed as “chairman” when, indeed, he could not even practically be equated to a domestic assistant. He wondered how a man elected as local government chairman cannot answer his people’s questions when they ask him why their rural roads cannot be graded or potholes in township roads cannot be covered. He could not continue to answer his people’s questions by dumping the back of his palm in his other palm. He demanded that the allocations belonging his local government be paid directly to the local government.

Wale Adedayo spoke up and damned the consequences. He wore the “if I perish I perish” garb. He was arrested, detained and was impeached. He was later freed by the law courts. Adedayo proved the value of courage and proper recruitment.

The National Assembly led by Godswill Akpabio is doing everything it can to ensure that Nigerians do not have credible elections in 2027. Dr. Mike Igini, a former INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner has espoused so much  INEC had been doing to ensure that the process of recruiting our leaders in the country is sanitised. But the principalities and powers in the legislative and executive arms of our government will always do their thing. These principalities and powers themselves are products of the kind of recruitment system they are bent on sustaining.

But how long will this sustenance last? Orji Uzor Kalu has come a long way in the politics of Abia State and I think he has come to the end of the road. The transformation in Aba Ngwa, the commercial nerve of Abia State is a testament to Otti and sadly to the shame of Orji Kalu and his two immediate successors. What has happened in that city alone is enough to throw whatever political party Kalu represents in his face and tell him off. The people of his senatorial district are doing that already, and they are no longer saying it in whispers that they do not want him anymore. That is a sign that the masquerade would eventually turn to a human being. His constituents have become the cock crowing at the rooftop which the man in the compound and the women in the other compounds are all bound to hear. That cock is not just telling the time, it is tolling the imminent demise of a political system that has consistently ignored and subverted the wishes of the people. That is a metaphor for APC everywhere.

It is now glaring to Nigerians and the watching world that laws are not our problem. We have enough laws and really good ones too which could guide us properly to recruit leaders with fairness and firmness. Attempts to review the political recruitment process and make it cleaner and better are currently being thwarted by Akpabio, Barau Jibrin, Opeyemi Bamidele, Tajudeen Abass, Benjamin Kalu and their puppeteer, President Bola Tinubu and other desperate beneficiaries of the old, corrupt system. But for how much longer can they resist the persistence of the people? These politicians, who act more like morticians of Nigeria and its perpetually fledgling democracy, have confirmed that they are the problem. They are running away from the chaos they created and are still littering the country’s paths with chaos.