Those interested in the
dustbin of Nigeria's history will one day find APC inside the rubble, among the
putrefaction, just beside PDP, and bring out her carcass for examination.
Such students of the
dustbin of history will likely conclude that APC's signature contribution to
the Nigerian tragedy is not in the empirical failure to deliver on measurable
electoral promises in virtually all areas of national life but in the deadening
of the Nigerian mind.
A nation's mind is lost
when the capacity for ironic sentience dies. And no group of Nigerians, at any
moment in our chequered national history, has contributed more to the
assassination of irony than the confederacy of parochial interests in the
leadership of APC.
If blindness to irony
stopped within the ranks of APC's leadership, if it was limited to Governors,
Senators, Reps, and other political figures within her ranks, I wouldn't be so
worried. It would be their funeral. I am not in the habit of shedding tears for
members of Nigeria's political elite over their intellectual impecuniosity.
My worry lies in how the
leadership of APC has democratized blindness to irony, especially among their
followers so effectively. If irony hits you like a Dangote truck and you are
unable to recognize it as a citizen, you wear that condition of ignorance like
a badge of honour and hit social media for celebration in this APC era.
Chief John Odigie Oyegun
fired the first bullet to assassinate irony. APC had just won the election. She
was still in that period of grace when the people could excuse anything.
Euphoria was still in the air. One message of change that APC could send early
and effectively in order to write her name in gold was in the retirement of
campaign funds.
The notion of retiring
campaign funds is a complete stranger in Nigeria. We have at least two adult
generations who have never heard of it because it has simply never been
practiced. No Nigerian has ever retired campaign funds. After elections, you
privatize the leftover funds, campaign vehicles, and other resources. You keep
everything for yourself and distribute some to your cronies. This, of course,
is a crime routinely committed by every Nigerian who has ever run for public
office: there is no separation between their bank accounts and campaign
contributions.
President Buhari,
especially, most especially, had a moral and ethical obligation to inaugurate a
monumental paradigm shift in our polity by being the first politician to ever
retire his campaign funds, especially after making such a show of seeking a
loan for the nomination form. He lost that golden opportunity to inscribe his
name in gold - as he has frittered away every other opportunity since his
election. To this day, President Buhari’s campaign funds have not been retired.
Enter Chief Odigie Oyegun
with an early press interview. APC, he assured the nation, was not the party
that should retire campaign funds. The onus, he continued, was on PDP to retire
her campaign funds. I gasped and nearly had a heart attack when I read such
ignorant comments from the Chairman of the President's party. To this day,
Chief Oyegun has not explained the sources of his sick political theory of
campaign finance retirement to Nigerians.
The irony was supremely
lost on Chief Oyegun and APC. They had campaigned on a mantra of change but
were telling Nigerians that the change ought to start with the party they had
vanquished! Did PDP promise change? This was the beginning of a history of
criminal blindness to irony that has led APC to the dustbin of history.
More tragedy was to come
from APC. The party promised financial prudence and frugality. President Buhari
held on to the most visible evidence of the long history of financial irresponsibility
by the Nigerian Presidency - the harem of presidential jets. No change here.
The irony was supremely lost on the changers.
President Jonathan was a
junketing President. He traveled the world so irresponsibly that Reuben Abati
was forced to pen a funny piece on the gains of President Jonathan's foreign
trips. However, Reuben could not possibly have believed the nonsensical claims
he was making in that essay.
Did President Buhari change
the paradigm of fruitless and irresponsible presidential trips? For where? He
doubled down on it, determined to cover in a few months the air miles that
Jonathan covered in five years. But for the unfortunate illness that has largely
truncated his trips, President Buhari was approaching a point where he could
very much have offered to build an airport for a country without an airport in
order to be able to visit such a country. No change here. The irony was
supremely lost on the changers.
Fast forward. Roll over two
years of daily evidence of blindness to irony on the part of APC and you arrive
at restructuring. Suddenly, APC has a committee led by my friend, Nasir El
Rufai, whose mandate is to help her understand restructuring and frame her
position accordingly. APC's entire electoral manifesto is a promise of
restructuring by other names. They called restructuring all sorts of names in
various parts of that document but they cannot possibly pretend not to know
that restructuring is what they promised. In some places, they called it
devolution. In other places they used other names but it all still comes down
to the fundamentals of restructuring: empowering the margins, de-centering the
centre, putting an end to Nigeria's obnoxious financial feeding bottleism from
the centre.
All of a sudden, nobody in
APC has ever heard of restructuring. They now need a committee to study it,
help them understand it, and, Allah be praised, the committee just must
comprise all the Governors in their ranks who have declared war on
restructuring recently one way or the other! No change here. The irony was
supremely lost on the changers.
The most difficult part of
APC's tragedy is the part of their manifesto and agendas pertaining to health
and health care delivery in Nigeria. Nigeria would become the Dubai of health
facilities within five years and progress on the road to Dubai would start to
become noticeable within the first two years. You must, of course, read APC’s
manifesto on health in tandem with President Buhari’s campaign statements
vigorously condemning foreign medical safaris.
All of these promises have
led to the sorry and tragic spectacle of APC Governors and the Party Chairman
at a medical safari breakfast table in London. During President Buhari’s first
stint in London, it had been the entire leadership of the National Assembly. It
is painful to see what these leaders are doing to themselves. I take no
pleasure in watching their naked dance in the marketplace. At various times, the
President of Nigeria, the Senate President of Nigeria, the Speaker, Governors,
and the Acting President of Nigeria have all gathered in London. No sense of
shame. No trace of the understanding of irony in their demeanor.
I wager that they are doing
it because there is a sense that they have so battered and clobbered the people
into intellectual submission that the ability to engage and vigorously examine
the empty ethical and moral proposition of their actions is no longer available
in the land. I wager that they are doing this because their spokespersons,
supporters, and foot soldiers have so battered and clobbered the people into
submission and silence that nobody is going to even dare to ask: who funded
APC’s jamboree to London?
I wager that these Governors
are going to say that the London trip is a working visit, hence the deployment
of public funds on such a woolly-headed jamboree at a time when, from Lagos to
Port Harcourt and everywhere, Nigeria is showing the world a spectacle of
flooding and salaries are not paid. If the Governors considered this trip to
London a working visit and expended public funds on it – I suspect they did –
this would be another tragic nail in the coffin of the changers.
From the same political
party, the Acting President made a cameo appearance in London a few weeks ago,
assured the nation that the President was in great condition and was primed to
return to the country very soon. If we are to believe a Pastor of the Redeemed
Church, what could have been so urgent that the APC Governors couldn’t wait for
the President’s arrival? Could it be that they did not believe the reassurances
of the Acting President?
Whatever be the case, this
London trip is a tragedy on so many fronts. On that medical safari breakfast
table was assembled those who promised to change the paradigm by putting an end
to medical tourism. The supreme irony was lost on them.
Also lost on them is
another supreme irony – and this one is a tragedy for Nigeria. Wait for it: the
only two instances of leadership by example on the issue of foreign medical
trips that we have come to us from the cancerous stables of PDP. Idris Wada is
one of Kogi’s worst Governors. He was also very accident prone. He never went
beyond Abuja for his medical woes. All the broken bones he sustained from his
many convoy accidents were treated in Nigeria. And His Excellency Chief Otunba
Dr. Peter Ayodele Fayose (Jerusalem Pilgrim) has been doing a lot of chest
beating about his own medicals in Nigeria.
Wada and Fayose as the best
examples of the change promised by APC? Nothing makes sense any more. APC has
turned Nigeria into a Yeats-ville where:
“The best lack all
conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate
intensity.”
When the best lack all
conviction and, blind to irony, fly off to London to waste public funds in
defiance of the very principles they swore to uphold, you can see the worst
running riot all over the land (Fayose, FFK, etc) with passionate intensity.
Yet, the irony is lost on
the changers.
And their followers. And
their defenders.
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