By Thomas Peretu
As we cross over to January 2022, it is not unlikely that the political temperature of the nation will be on the rise again. The reason is not far fetched; afterall the general elections are just a stone throw away.
Thomas Peretu
Hocksters of various hues will, without doubt roll out the drums, to ignite the polical firestorm as they trade in white noise aimed at manipulating the masses for electoral votes. This is a seasonal ritual, a commonplace in our clime and indeed elsewhere in tandem with a nuanced democratic culture. As the political contestation for power takes the centre stage, it is necessary to watch out for rhetoric hyperboles basically aimed at blurring our understanding of the most salient topical issues of the day. Be conversant with empty propositions of brand marketing strategies. They could be manipulative.
The stakes may be unnecessarily higher this season given the nexus of ills visited upon the nation in the last six years as a result of agglomeration of factors midwifed by state actors and non-state actors alike to sustain its ill-health.
The debilitating situation casts a pall of gloom over the country. And the once bubbly, cheerful nation is on her knees, prostrate and docile. No thanks to the political misadventure of progressive chauvinism evinced by spin doctors in government. A warped interpretation of the dialectics of progressive doctrine.
To say that Nigeria is haemorrhagic, and in dare need of haemoglobin as well as oxygenation is an understatement. We are at the nadir of existence or to be more charitable we are loafing menacingly toward the precipice of abyss.
No day passes by without the media— traditional and unconventional feasting on the orgy of violence perpetrated by dare devil bandits and briggands in different parts of the country. At the time of writing this piece, no fewer than 25 persons were killed in an early morning raid by bandits in a village in Kaduna state on Sunday. Sometimes, one wonders whether we are living in a lawless society. And what may have happened to our humanity. That we longer place value on the sacredness of life is appealing.
Howbeit, all the indeces of a failled state are stirring us in the face, yet the government at the centre lacks the fire power to stem tide of events. Is it not true that we are just a step away from Hobbes’s state of anarchy where life is poor, nasty, brutish and short?
We are no longer bemused by stories of insecurity, moreso, when they seem to have attained the dimension of a second nature. Or how else do we explain the avalanche of killings and kidnappings going on unabated in the North west, North Central, North East, not to mention South East. We have lost count of the dead in these places.
Not even the government is in position to track the records of terrorist activities across our landscape. Guess what, not even the President’s home state has been spared from a touch of banditry. The truth is government inadvertently created ungoverned spaces which are now safe haven for the business of banditry to thrive.
To complete the circle of the nexus of ills, the federal government has insulated itself from governance and it’s people. They distanced themselves from Nigerians. Government is no longer in government. Misrule is now a cliché in our country,
Why? Things have fallen apart, and the centre can no longer hold. The nation is at the brink of collapse. The people no longer feel the presence of governance any more. Our roads and other Infrastructures have continually been exposed to decay. It is impossible travel from end of the country to another within record time.
The economy is totally comatose. It is in a state of stagflation, a term invented by Alan Greenspan, a first rate ecomist and one time president of federal reserves. It is that point in the economic curve where the economy is totally stagnant, while unemployment and inflation is at its peak. Again, to add insult to injury, the country is neck deep in foreign debts.
Kelvin Phillips, an American author, ecomist and political commentator gave us an unparraled insight through his study of history, why nations fall as written in his book entiled American Theocracy: the peril and politics of radical religion, oil and borrowed money in the 21st century. In that explosive examination of the coalition of forces that threatens nation’s in the 21st century. According to Kelvin Philips, “…natural resources, religious excesses, wars and burgeoning debt levels have been prominent causes of the downfall of the previous leading world economic powers…”
Again in the same book, the further asserted thus “Oil as everyone knows, became the all- important fuel of American global ascendancy in the twentieth century. But before that, nineteen century Britain was the coal hegemon, and seventeenth Dutch harnessed the winds and the waters. Neither nation could maintain its global economic leadership when the world moved toward a new energy regime.” Isn’t this instructive?
Painfully, corruption, nepotism, religion, tribalism, political arrogance and a coalition of other devils have conspired to keep us gasping for breath at the lowly ebb of existence. Unfortunately, leadership credibility and excellence has been circumvented as the nation subscribes to base values of ineptitude. Often the best qualified person no longer gets the job: what matters in the employment equation is who you know at what quarters. Even at state levels, the story is no different.
The apostles of Progressives at the vortex of governance have shown ineptitude and inability to steer the ship of state out of the woods. The resultant effect of the absence of government is poverty and hunger that has taken the centre stage. Factories are gradually and steadily moving out of the country to neighbouring countries because of ability to provide a climate of ecomic safeguards to investors. It took the grace of God to get the Petroleum Act passed into law after over twenty years in the cooler. The Act is being touted as a game changer, hopefully, it will turn back the hand of the clock by bringing back the lost times of the past. The new electoral bill may likely experience similar fate if the President foot drags in accenting to it this week.
You will recall that the nation had absolute confidence in the rogue brotherhood hurriedly wielded together by strange bedfellows tagged All Progressives Congress. They were strategic in marketing the brand to Nigerians. The people exercised a blind trust on the coalition, hence the Progressives ran home with the electoral victory in 2015. The nation bought into the change mantra willy nilly.
But six years down the line, the party has lost its brand credit. Therefore, its integrity has been battered and beaten by misgovernance and failure of government to uphold the sanctity of good governance. The deficit of the brand is anchored on the monumentally and collateral failure of the government to abide by its commitment to the tenets of the social contract it entered with the people.
The good news however is that another round of general election will soon catch up with us. And Nigerians will have another opportunity to either coddle the path of retrogression which is the signature of the present spostles of democracy or that they desire a paradigm shift, in other words, to make a clean break from the present de javu. We must put a stop to the depredation and polarisation of the populace along ethnic and religious divides. It is important that we redefine the sanctity of our union populated by equal stakeholders. going on now. We must entrench the noble ideals of justice, rule of law, equity, fairness and dignity of the human person. We must frown at acts inimical to separation of powers as established by our grundnorm.
The nation cannot afford to abide with this unstructured “jankara” economic management system as well as the incoherent policy direction and its attendant policy summersaults of the present day saints. With due apologies to late Dr. Peter Adione-Egom, the jankara economist of the Guardian fame.
This is my stand
Thomas Ebikabowei Peretu
A social commentator and political analyst
