Future of Nigeria

A riveting incident occurred in the street of Akure,
Ondo State a decade ago. A woman in her early sixties
was subjected to a mob attack at dawn on a Monday
morning, with the blood hounds almost killing her but
for the early arrival of policemen. What offence has this
languorously built and mentally inchoate woman
committed? A chirpy, female member of the lynching
volunteers offered me an explanation: yes, she is a
witch. A driver saw her change to a cat and after a
while, she changed back to a human being.
But the police, brandishing the penal code, were not
amused by the mentality of the mob in its attempt to
kill this woman, as the cops promptly embarked on
mass arrest, ostensibly to fish out the prosaic killer of a
housefly among broomsticks. Explaining off the guilt of
the mob to newsmen way back then, the police image-
maker had quipped, “Yes, what is the business of the
crowd with the matter? The woman has every right
under the law to become a cat; in that wise, she will be
seen as an animal and she will enjoy animal rights.
Again, this woman can under the law change back to a
human being, as she will also enjoy human rights.” That
laughable recapitulation aptly captures the raging
hoopla in social circles today as to what becomes the
fate of President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015
presidential poll if he stands to contest. In the cat-
woman analogy as lain bare by the then Akure police
spokesman, if Jonathan as a contestant wins in the
election, the law will recognise him as the President
and Commander-in- Chief of the Armed Forces, and if
he fails, the law will also see him as a member of the
public, though a former president.
That should actually solve the fret among those given to
the mob mentality, who are now divided into two
camps of war drummers over the 2015 presidential
election. That a group of aggrieved members of ruling
Peoples Democratic Party left the party in protest and
en masse, formed a new PDP which common suspicion
sees as the alter ego of newly registered Peoples
Democratic Party (PDM) of former Vice-President Atiku
Abubakar , should ordinarily not serve a 2015 war
notice. Again, that about four political parties
comprising Action Congress of Nigeria, Congress for
Progressive Change, All Nigeria Peoples Party and a part
of All Progressives Grand Alliance, resolved to fuse as All
Progressives Congress (APC) so as to effectively
challenge the dominance of the PDP in 2015, should
actually not be a problem. If the allying parties succeed,
they become the ruling party, and if they fail, they take
the place of a big, opposition party.
But nay; in Nigeria, failure to achieve a political goal
under this presidential system of government, or a
simple foreshadow of an electoral failure, instantly
brings crisis of unimaginable dimension, to the extent
that two siblings could be at daggers-drawn. For
instance, in the 1983 political conflagration that
consumed the streets of Ondo State, there were
festivals of sad oddities.
Then Governor Adekunle Ajasin of the Unity Party of
Nigeria (UPN) and his disgruntled deputy, Chief Akin
Omoboriowo who defected to National Party of Nigeria
(NPN), had gone for a governorship election, in which
the then electoral body, the Federal Electoral
Commission (FEDECO) declared the latter as winner. A
man in Akure, the state capital, who was in UPN, had
led political thugs to the home of his younger brother
in the opposition NPN, supervising his killing. Elsewhere
too, political goons of the NPN were seen packing fowls
from the poultry of a UPN man, throwing them into a
blaze. Did the fowls deserve death? Were they
politicians?
The contemporary political situation in Nigeria is
particularly benumbing, as it has become not just
wonky but patently convoluted. In the North, owing to
what is largely known as political disaffection over the
2011 presidential election in which General
Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), a northern candidate was
defeated, the resultant effect has been a sharp increase
in insurgent acts. On daily basis, the main insurgent
group, Boko Haram, either kills in scores or in
hundreds.
In the South, for factors still intrinsically linked with the
feeling of marginalisation under the existing political
arrangement, in which many feel the country’s
resources are unevenly distributed, or are not even
distributed in the periphery of the masses at all,
kidnapping, robbery and allied brigandism simply
overthrow sanity. All over the country, the prevailing
angst is palpably primed as foreboding for an inevitable
doomsday, of which we are officially asked not to talk
about, again.
The other time when the United States’ authorities were
alleged to have foreseen a break-up for Nigeria come
2015, there were cries of blue murder, as it were, with
selfconfessed federalists tagging the US a kettle calling
the pot black. They particularly cited the grim specter
of American civil war of the 1860s, which despite its
terribleness, the Union still survived.
But in Nigeria’s case, the indices are indubitably
different, and classy. Nigeria’s recurring strife of
attrition has failed to abate, thus necessitating a return
to the round-table. Glaringly, the presidential system of
government which ordinarily should serve our good
has rather, created deaths, disaffection and seething
polarisation. Therefore, should we continue to live an
abnormal life under what we see as a normal political
arrangement? The solution lies in a roundtable, truly
representative talk-shop, the genre of the officially
jaded Sovereign National Conference, SNC.
Otherwise, should we proceed to trudge on all fours in
neglect of the healthy use of the legs, as in the
subsisting pretentious living, there could be fatal
breakdown soon, and sooner than expected.