At
the last count, eight states of the federation have drawn up parallel
Executives to counter what some people called “authentic Executives” of the
ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, during the recently concluded
congresses. One of the most unbelievable states where this happened is Lagos
Emergence of the
parallel Executives in the eight states came with re-introduction of politics
of blood-spilling into the Nigerian polity and this is the most unfortunate
dimension of the APC debacle. These eight states of Lagos, Oyo,
Ondo, Zamfara, Enugu, Ebonyi, Kwara and Delta, where parallel Executives
emerged saw violence. A few people died in some of these states while in
others, it was a day of bloodbath; like the case in Ondo State, where
notable citizens were grossly humiliated as most of them were stripped naked.
This is without mentioning Imo State where Rochas Okorocha, the
APC governor, was completely demystified and dethroned by the machinery
of the APC itself.
The
irony of this sordid shameful show of power is the fact that the perpetrators,
both victims and victors, are all members of the APC. They are all members of
the same APC family, speaking the same APC language, eating from the same
APC table, wearing the same APC Aso Ebi with the same APC
political blood-genotype running through their veins and indeed, the children
of the same wicked APC mother, a mother like Jezebel. This is where it takes a
more deadly and dreadful manifestation for the larger society in fear of things
to come.
If in the process of
“family” congresses like the one under discourse, lives could easily be
terminated without qualms, what happens when this deadly “family” of APC shall
meet with otherpersonae dramatis of other political parties in an
outdoor show of general elections, like the one we are awaiting in 2019? This
is not to say that APC is the only political party in Nigeria with
monopoly of violence. It would be absurd to say so because a political
observation over the years identified the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, as a
showroom of violence under President Olusegun Obasanjo. Through his two-term
tenure of eight years, mostly the last four years, violent deaths were
free gifts for members of the Nigerian political class, most especially within
the PDP.
We shall talk more
on this as we progress. Major-General Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for
Progressive Change [a political party the former Military Head of State formed
in April 2009], was another political party that introduced violence, albeit a
deadly one for that matter, into the Nigerian polity, only at post-election
level. The party which participated in the 2011 general elections but could not
deliver its presidential candidate to the Villa in Abuja for reason of abysmal
performance, succeeded in delivering souls of many Nigerians, mostly those youths
who were on service to their fatherland [members of the NYSC deployed to serve
in some Northern states], to the great-beyond. Of course, the First
and Second Republics had their own versions of violence and
brutality displayed but more in the First than the Second Republic.
The First Republic witnessed
uncontrollable wanton destruction of lives and property all over Nigeria.
Such madness was, however, moderated in
the Second Republic through the human-face character and person
of Shehu Shagari, Executive President of that Republic. The years between the
First and the Second Republics were the years the “Military Boys”, with their
styles of “decorated violence”, made incursion into the Nigerian political
scene and took away serenity, in addition to respect for lives and property,
from Nigeria. They came to loot. They came to destroy. They came to kill. And
they, all of them, achieved hundred per cent performances on these records!
Theirs was an era better forgotten for the sake of not offending the sensibility
of our collective memories but suffice to say that most of them, personae
dramatis of that era, who unleashed terror on us while they wore the
military uniform then, are back with us again as political actors in civilian
dresses [Babaringa or Agbada].
This is an
observation we must hold dearly to our hearts if we know the difficulty of a
Leopard changing its colour. What did the events of the APC nation-wide
congresses, recently concluded, with its frightful political violent results,
portray for Nigeria’s emerging polity, particularly in 2019 general
elections?
If the truth must be
told, there is likely going to be danger ahead in the Nigerian political
horizon if APC, given what it has manifested in the congresses under
discussion, and being Nigeria’s ruling political party, leads our country into
the next general elections, come 2019. There is an urgent necessity of
escalating the evaluation of this matter as such exercise will help our
preparation for what to expect and also, doing the needful as a people, in
order to avoid the impending evil day.
Comments
Post a Comment