This moment in our political history, we should fight for a better Nigeria were human capital matter. To assume that the destiny of two hundred million people should be tied to one old man is the acceptance of failure by all of us.
Today, you are held in contempt if you oppose Buhari, who is now held in veneration by supposed democrats throughout the country. The president is now far more worthy of veneration than the Constitution and the wellbeing of Nigerians.
It is unfortunate that people like Femi Falana have also turned themselves into the intellectual wing as hypocrites indirectly seeking power and privileges.
Falana now comes out to berate decamping, I tried to look into his position in the past but there seem to be none. It is either he has short memory or he is just playing the hypocrite. Let’s forget 2014, in 2017, Senators Nelson Effiog (Akwa Ibom State) and Hope Uzodinma (Imo State) left PDP for APC. And there have been other defections in the House of Representatives as well. So why the hues and cries about the latest round of defections. Most annoying is Adams Oshomole’s insolence, pernicious lies and barrack mentality.
From the happenings in the country presently, it is clear that there is still no universal understanding of who has done wrong or of what “wrong” is for that matter. Moral courage is in short supply and the temptation to make excuses, to justify crime and injustice is all too prevalent.
After all, those who benefitted the most from the return to democracy have never thought to label certain actions in our recent past as either treasonous or prejudicial to the creation of a democracy which is pro-people and exists to serve the interests of the many rather than the few.
Very few, especially when we attain leadership positions, have the principles or strength of character to act against injustice or to bring to court those whom evidence show have betrayed public trust.
If President Buhari, in his first term, allowed himself to be intimidated or browbeaten by people who claimed the heavens would fall if he immediately went after the real villains of our history rather than just their accomplices (even though the latter claimed to have followed orders from very high up), will he be able to convince Nigerians that in his second term he will have not just the courage but the strategic ability to finish what he started?
Will he be cast, like his predecessors amongst those who didn’t try hard enough or those who frankly didn’t care or will he carve out a place in history by liberating a submissive people who don’t always know what they should be fighting for? In a country where truth and justice have been turned upside down for so long even the most committed to redressing these wrongs can’t always be sure they’ll have the people’s support. The idea of “crime” itself, or law-breaking, corruption and official misconduct is hazy in a country where everyone belongs to somebody and never acts in the name of the majority but goes into politics with the intention to benefit only a few.
We believe that “tribal hatred” is our natural state because some people have taught us this is the only way to be, forgetting a very long history, even in pre-colonial times, of migration and inter-relation. In fact, very few of us know that the idea of an “indigene” is a colonial construct.
Even the so-called ethnic groups we all refer to today as a marker of our identities were also crystalized under colonisation: the notion of “state of origin”, or “indigene”, the idea of stopping someone from acceding to any position based on their gender or origin would seem quite foreign to our ancestors who migrated and took on new identities or group memberships based on new relationships and attachments. Relationships and attachments.
In short, Nigerians, like most Africans, are the victims of a double lie, the first is the lie told by colonisation, about the inferiority of the African past and the necessity to correct it using only foreign concepts and then the lie told by an exploitative class who took over from the colonial masters and used their playbook to continue to manipulate and divide the masses.
We are constantly told that fighting corruption is “victimising” the accused, that asking questions is infringing certain powerful people’s rights and therefore “undermining democracy”.
In Nigeria, only powerful people have rights or are allowed to call themselves “victims” despite all they gain from our dysfunctional system. Perhaps, it is human nature to love and worship power and to hate the victims of our corrupt social order because they are precisely that, victims who remind us of our own defencelessness.
So, we make looters and thugs our heroes, thinking their might and stolen funds will sustain or protect us from the injustice others suffer. We can’t rebuild our society without interrogating our history and establishing the truth: how and because of whose action or (inaction) did things go wrong? We need convictions for corruption so we can stop hiding behind the word “alleged” attached to “looter” and stop making excuses for bad behaviour or be pretending it doesn’t exist. Recognising and distinguishing heroes from villains is the moral challenge we must pursue.
***With Tabia Princewill - Politics and moral courage: Distinguishing heroes from the villains of our history
Vanguardngr.com
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