Being loyal to a particular cause, a party, a religion and even a tribe is a custom or at least it used to be the acceptable norm for most people across the world. But the situation is not the same in the present day dysfunctional Nigeria. Our loyalty to a political party, an individual, a cause or social movement is mostly influenced by the present day full face value. Not the labours of our heroes past. Nor the dreams we hope for the next generation. No there’s really no luxury for such values, at least not for now. Not in the face of widespread poverty and increasing gap between the rich and the poor. The only bridge between these two extremes is politics; nothing else. The political class knows this to be a fact, so use it as a tool or a bargaining chip. The middle class-poor are all too familiar with this; and so some pray that every year is an election year.
Anyways, man must survive, and so a few mart players assume leadership of the low income- middle class by organizing dubious social awareness groups, action committees, youth organizations and the likes. With these groups they lobby and vie for crumbs of the national cake. Everyone’s a politician nowadays. It is all that’s worth talking about on Facebook, Twitter and questionable bars and lounges all across town; a little like how the hot topic was on the Nigerian stock market a while ago! While we were sleeping, our political consciousness grew overnight while our moral conscience died of natural causes.
We (the unsuspecting citizens) join or “like” these groups on Facebook, and so they gain their numbers and use that as a bargaining chip when demanding for mobilization fees, bribes, tokens, gifts and that comes with buying the minds of the people. Some of us know these activities being carried out. Others just follow blindly without even knowing they are puppets in the grand showdown for 2011. The few that realize that belonging to a group must mean some sort of financial reward in current day Nigeria don’t really mind, just as long as there’s a fair price on their membership to be gained. Everyone has a different angle of gaining their share of the national cake.
Like a good friend of mine, Chinedu Onyewuenyi succinctly puts it; evolving loyalties in present-day Nigeria is the evolutionary law as proposed by Charles Darwin, and a race of the survival of the fittest. In such a scenario selfishness and greed and self-serving leadership are advantageous traits that are strengthened with each new generation of Nigerians. While obviously weaker traits of honesty, values and traditions are quickly swept under the kitchen. While there’s food on the table, all houseflies gather. The chow is politics, you and I are the flies, and the cooks are our politicians and members of the present kitchen cabinet.
So who’s to blame when our youths figure out that everyone’s loyalty including their traditional rulers and religious leaders have been bought or mortgaged with payments made in installments every four years or so? We take up the guns bought for us by the same politicians and resort to kidnapping them. It’s the same thing the elderly ones are doing only difference is that they do theirs in plush offices with ball-point pens. They hold us captive educationally and financially for long enough and release us only on the grounds that we solemnly pledge our allegiance and whole-hearted support in exchange for some pittance when it’s time for re-elections. It doesn’t matter if we carry guns, or steal ballot boxes or organize thugs. It’s really supposed to last for only for a short while and the benefits are quite lucrative. However after a few heated months, the elections results are out; it’s now business as usual with the rich minding their business and the poor doing the same. However some restive youths get impatient, and revert to kidnapping these politicians or their relatives and hold them ransom in order to collect more monies when it becomes impractical to wait till the next elections to gain the benefits of democracy just once in four years. Should the dividends of democracy be as seasonal as a World Cup event?
How long before our shouts and heated debates for “Say No to Zoning” and “Nigeria needs Goodluck”, is replaced by the deafening sound of silence and cold shoulders of indifference from the ones elected to speak on our behalf in the grand auditorium of the National Assembly and corridors of Aso Rock?
Ebuka Anichebe
(The writer is a nonconformist and unpopular critic of the state of the nation called Nigeria. The lone voice of a dying conscience; his views will not be published by newspapers and magazines due to its apparent lack of diplomacy and ambiguity)
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