Promise Adiele
Sunny Okosun, by every creative and aesthetic standard, is one of the greatest musicians to emerge from Nigeria. Born in 1947, Okosun developed a brand of music which encompasses rock, highlife, gospel, and reggae. His songs address contemporary issues of the Nigerian reality. They touch raw nerves, inspire, preach and educate the people, a contrast to nowadays music with immoral lyrics that offer no inspiration. His celebrated track, “Which Way Nigeria” provides a platform for a critical examination of the events in our country at the moment. The complete sentence of the title of that song is “Which way Nigeria is heading to?” Of a truth, attempt to answer that question can confuse even the wise, given our gradual slide to jest and jocular with issues of our corporate destiny. In providing answers to that question, we will need to engage some of the issues that have shaped our recent political experience.
This is not about party loyalty, neither is it about APC or PDP. This is about the soul of Nigeria. As I engage in these exegeses, party attack dogs should please look away from here. Political turn-coats who have sold their souls to the devil, those who have become collaborators in the entrenchment of predatory politics, resigned to lubricating the machinery of misrule, please move away from here too. This essay is for Nigerians with open minds. Social media war veterans, schooled in the science of propaganda, the misguided ones among us irredeemably lost to foul language in the defence of politicians who do not have their interests at heart beyond immediate putrid patronage, please move on from here. I am addressing earnest Nigerians who are genuinely concerned with the present chicanery that has become a major ingredient of our political menu.
It happened suddenly. The announcement was swift and deliberate. It rattled a country that was wound up in a fever pitch of expectations, a country that was ready for an election. INEC, the body charged with the responsibility of conducting the elections had prepared for four years. As at 10 pm of the previous day, INEC had assured Nigerians that they were ready and elections would go on. Then, the unexpected happened. Just few a hours to the elections, INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, replicating a forlorn picture which reminds one of a helpless Prof. Humphrey Nwosu while cancelling June 12th elections in 1993, announced to a bewildered audience that the elections had been postponed by one week.
Nigerians were devastated. For some, it was the most vicious announcement they had heard in a very long time. Some others fumed with rage, questions were asked without any answers expected. How could this happen to the most populous Black Country in the whole world? How is it possible that this kind of malfeasance would happen under the watch of Muhammadu Buhari? It is the answers to these questions that validate Okosun’s song by the title of this essay, “Which way Nigeria”?
Which way is Nigeria heading to in the present dispensation with a desperate desire by the political class to plunge the country into anarchy? Is it possible that INEC only discovered that they were not ready to conduct elections few hours to the election? Is it possible that INEC discovered that the two frontline parties, APC and PDP, were complicit in tampering with election sensitive materials forcing the electoral body to postpone the elections? Could it be that either of the two frontline parties foresaw defeat and had to engineer postponement? Could it be that the international observers uncovered some underhand, sharp practices orchestrated by the two frontline parties and had to pull the rug from under their feet? Were the elections already compromised even before the election took place forcing INEC to postpone it? Whatever be the case, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has blame in the matter. Is he a newcomer in Nigeria who is not aware of the kind of deviousness that resides within our political hierarchy? He had four years to prepare for this test and failed at the last minute. It is difficult not to say that INEC has lost credibility the same way the government of the day has lost credibility too. With the postponement, INEC can rightly be grouped among government establishments with renowned, subversive complications.
Which way is our country heading to if we cannot organize a simple election after a monumental amount of money had been disbursed for that purpose? Which way is our country heading to with a political class ready to achieve their inordinate ambitions at any price? Just which way are we heading to in this country if there are no honest men in the land with real integrity, people whose love for Nigeria is genuine, devoid of ethnic, religious or sectional prejudice? It is difficult to see beyond the present or plan for the future with our current gang of politicians. Defeat in an election is unimaginable to some of them. A life without political power which is the only business and industry they have known all their lives is totally unacceptable to some of them. Historically, this kind of obduracy and desperation for power has led some men across the world to their Waterloo.
Although Nigerians are very patient and sometimes docile, their calmness should not be taken for granted. Now, with the postponement of these elections, INEC has created apathy within the polity because many people have lost interest in the entire exercise and therefore will no longer bother to vote. Can these elections be credible since electoral sensitive materials are reported to be in the hands of political hawks in APC and PDP? The economic and social implications of the postponement cannot be equated. Airports and seaports were shut down, shops, malls, and sundry businesses were also closed. Weddings and many social engagements were all cancelled, schools were also forced to close for two days before the election. Now, all of these have counted for nothing. Nigerians do not deserve this kind of insensitive treatment. They do not deserve this subliminal bludgeoning to damnation in the pursuit of political power.
Political office holders must be aware that Nigerians are not happy. Politicians must be aware that endurance has a limit and when people are taken for fools, it wakes them out of their lethargy. They began to ask a question as they are asking now, which way is our country going to? Although PDP embraced the ignoble option of postponement in 2015, it didn’t save them from being trounced in the elections that followed. Because people refuse to learn from history, the current dispensation is walking the same discredited road of mindless postponement with all the destabilizing potential. It is within the rights of Nigerians who are the ultimate custodian of democracy to decide which way they want to go. “Which way Nigeria is heading to? I love my fatherland, I want to know. Let’s save Nigeria so Nigeria won’t die”.
Dr. Adiele writes Lagos via Promee01@yahoo.com
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