Have political beneficiaries, and Ethnoreligious bigots won again?

The trouble with Nigeria is squarely a failure of leadership — Chinua Achebe

Among many things, politics remain the bane of Nigeria. From the get-go, Nigeria’s democratic government has been inundated with many colossal failures. Even as we age further, the nation retrogresses more in development. In 1995, one of Nigeria’s top political economists, Claude Ake, said that the biggest thing holding Africa back from developing is its political situation. It’s 2023, and things have stayed the same. Years ago, Achebe wrote a book ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’, a scathing indictment of the Nigerian system and a demand for change to a more just and equitable society. Has anything changed? I guess not; rather, it changed for the worse.

On Saturday, 25th of February, 2023, voters trooped to the polls again to decide their hero. But one thing was evident: a hero incarnated, and a villain emerged. As it has always been, political pundits believed that votes would be divided along ethnoreligious and party lines. But what I witnessed was more than ethnoreligious sentiments. It was between generations, beneficiaries, and ideologies. It was a context between people who want things to remain as they are because they benefit from them and those who want things to change. After all, it doesn’t benefit them. It was an election between children and their parents. While the children are tired of the current order, the parents want continuity.

Regardless of whose will prevails, democracy connotes the government of the majority. The question then is: what group constitutes the majority in Nigeria? By group, I don’t mean ethnic or religious group. I imply “the intelligentsia who understand who is best for the job and the others who will not see politics beyond ethnoreligious sentiments.” They have a veil of hunger covering their faces and a noose of ignorance around their necks, masterminded by the ambassadors of poverty and ignorance. In Nigeria, most people fall under the ambience of the latter. This huge majority of the people is what Lippman called “the bewildered herd.”

In democracies, scholars believe the masses are just too foolish to be able to understand things. Little wonder why Nigerian politicians hide under ethnoreligious sentiments that help them get a considerable number of votes to rig elections and win power.

People may say that even though the mass is foolish, what about the untold suffering and hardship that has befallen them, isn’t that enough antidote to foolishness? In response, Anne Morrow’s words answer it best. Anne holds that “I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise since everyone suffers”.

Clearly stated, suffering is not enough; with suffering must come mourning. People who lost their sons or family members in the EndSARS protest, the man who paid millions of naira as ransom, and the family of the man who slumped and died in the bank because of naira scarcity will never pray for continuity because, apart from the general suffering, they had a significant personal mourning moment, which is the penchant for wisdom.

Every group of people is given a choice to build their nation into the form and colour they want, and Nigerians have painted Nigeria this grotesque. Some prefer the continuity of men who brought a giant to their feet, but the 25th of February, 2023, was a battle between regions, ideologies and generations.