‘Not until I am disgraced’

His lovers are many. They know how the whole thing will end and so they try to save him from himself. They ask him: ‘Must you go on this journey? And if you have to go, when will you return?’ Tortoise looks at his lovers derisively and retorts: ‘Not until I am disgraced.’ What would make someone love himself to this high degree of self-hate? Tortoise is that character who fights on both sides – plunging the world around him into needless wars and anguish. He is really master of events and he knows and he flaunts it. The problem with tortoise is his seeing himself as the charmer who cannot fail. He has no moderation in consumption and in assumptions. Will tortoise come back? And with what? He won’t ever show his face for us to ask. When a being wires himself with unusual excesses, he will bathe in unusual loss of face and influence.

Should a political party be so sure of itself and be satisfied with its powers to the point it thinks poison does no harm? I am talking about the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its suicide missions. That is a party that was conceived in promise and weaned in promise. But it is a party that daily showcases itself as the enemy on its side and on the side of its foes. It fights itself with destructive neutrality. In the absence of an enemy outside, the APC has spent the last two years plus boxing itself and kicking its own scrotum. Exactly like that Aare Onakakanfo who itched for a war to fight and found none outside. He looked inwards, created one at home which he put down swiftly, heavily. But this APC is a clumsy war monger. It can create rebellions without efforts  but lacks the expertise to put out the fire. The PDP in its first thirteen years had a method to its madness. It knew how to make and unmake its big men. No one was big enough to own it. It was always changing its diaper as soon as it messed up the public chair. But then, the PDP convulsed the moment it failed to put out some fires it wilfully started. Now, this APC is a very poor student of PDP’s politics of rebellion and its management of crises. In its very short lifetime, the APC has been so infatuated with death that you wonder why it won’t at least give itself a little time before it buries itself. The prayer of every child of promise is for it to grow and mature to eat the fruits of its labour. Check APC’s record of disgraceful outings: Senate versus presidency; minister versus National Assembly; National Assembly versus Code of Conduct; EFCC versus NIA. I am not sure the party remembers again why the people thought it was an alternative to the stale PDP. If a man slaps himself everyday – morning, afternoon, night – how is his sight going to serve him till old age?

I am also talking about big bosses and strongmen, especially in government, who think and act like the Aztec god, Tezcatlipoca, the one who triggers change through conflict, the original chaotic neutral character, the Necoc Yaoti – the enemy of both sides. The big men inhabit a binary world, representing beauty and ugliness, peace and discord. They give the best at will and take the best back at will. Riches, fame and offices are in the drawers of the big men who see tomorrow – they hand over fortunes to whoever catches their fancy. They are everywhere and in all generations. History is replete with how they made and unmade people around them. Like the Chief in the world of the Kegites, the big men de-keg anyone whose face they no longer like. The APC has crises every where. And it is because its big men don’t know when to draw a line and set their followers free. But it calls itself a progressive party, the party of freedom. Now, why all these talks and sounds of chains and padlocks in the house of liberty? Has progressivism morphed into the vortex of conservatism? In that case, we may have to address the APC henceforth as “our friend, the enemy.” Look at Lagos and its local government primaries. Has the APC done anything different from how the PDP used to do its own? Why should there be so much bloodshed and bad blood within the same party?

The APC serves the people unusual meals. The president is abroad minding his health. The acting president and the Senate president are here in Nigeria sizing up the system. There have been firefights over space and authority. Some people would maul the Senate for the acting presidency. But when the lawmakers and the law executors don’t agree, shouldn’t we be happy? They must not be too cozy in their embrace as to desecrate the land with incest. But they must not drift away too wide as to have one branch stronger than all of us. We still do not know what we want. Is it good governance or a strong, intrusive presidency? Some want the president to be the macho master in the Villa ruling without legal encumbrances. We will lose our liberties if that is what we have. That cannot be democracy. Autocracy is when an arm of government thinks it is the Kabiyesi of the system. But that is what the APC is giving us in excess measures: an unbending presidency versus an unyielding National Assembly. An old American journalist once scored low his own system: “The executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid.” Here, each of the three branches daily has a smooth blend of the three afflictions. The result has been a standoff as government and a standstill as accomplishments.

You saw that senatorial by-election in Osun State? Out of 10 local governments, the old, weak PDP won in nine while the powerful APC had one. Whatever happened to the APC in that election flowed directly from its perversion of values. That election asked questions beyond the constituency. Do you sincerely think that was a mere legislative by-election or a loud bang from something very fundamental? The campaigns were as if they were for a presidential election. Outsiders would not know why the frenzy, the tension. They would seek rational answers to the irrationality of spending billions on a tenure that ends less than two years from now. But insiders understand what was at stake. Today is the father of tomorrow. That election, to both sides, was not the destination. It was a key, decisive first step towards what could be a change in how things would be, especially in the South West. But even if you are an outsider in that contest, look again at the election. How much of “change through conflict” and “the enemy of both sides” could you see in it? APC is the tortoise, journey-bound against wise counsel.

Tortoise had genuine lovers. They thought they could offer him valuable counsel on his choice of direction. He wouldn’t listen. He did not. You mortally hurt yourself sometimes thinking you are dealing the other side blows. That is when you cross the line, becoming a threat to your own troops. The APC had the opportunity to score a historic goal in that iconic contest. It bungled it.