The exit of a political giant from the ruling All People’s Congress is a usual exercise in the tradition of our polity and what is usual should not be news, or a matter of any surprise. What is unusual and should be news worthy is the fact that the man is still what he is – a politician of tall ambition who can stop at nothing to get his ambition of ruling Nigeria accomplished.
This is more so when the action and the actor’s political records were much expected and the expectation is as popular as the man himself and what he has been in the politics of Nigeria. Now he is becoming as predictable as any trend of politics in Nigeria. Thank God our political frame of reference is fast expanding. And thanks to Governor El-Rufai for acknowledging and stressing this fact.
In a better society, politics is politics and would remain politics but the calculations of the politician to nurse, to continue and to decide on their political ambitions is much determined – if the politician is smart that is – by the political context and by the reality of the society in that context. This man in reference has made his decision and right or wrong for him, it is a decision good for the nation and the democracy in perfection.
There a number of good for us in the exit of the man from the people’s own platform. The first is the exposure of the man’s innate trait and the kind of heart he has for politics. It is one more chance to reveal more about this man who rose to the lime of a vice president but his thirst for power can’t be quenched still.
It shows there is something about the innate conceal in the man’s heart that drives that burning ambition. And in this coming campaign, hard decisions will be based on what is not was; on what one has done, not on promises. But for him, his exit should first asks what can a president do about the road to his hometown from the State capital that he could not do as governor of his State and as vice president for 12 years cumulative and as a self acclaimed philanthropist giving politicians to buy them while his people wallow in needs?
Count the number of times he has shifted the tents, front and back, sideways and up and down. Count the fact that in every shift, the reason is not given but it has always been the same. In this latest move, it is the same reason again but we are learning more about a man and a politician who was imposed and still imposing themselves on the people.
And our knowledge of him is either a last point in the comic relief drama fancied by a part of the political gallery to which the man has always played for and with, forth and back or a final bury of an endemic ambition that once outlived the ramshackle of Nigeria’s politics and died in the end beauty of it.
The man has just told Nigerians that his earlier pledge and loyalty to the change campaign was fake and that nothing can be genuine in what he does in politics apart from the push of his own interest against popular demand. He has just informed us that all he preached for about change was lies and that change is what he stands against since, now and ever.
It demonstrates the man’s systemic lies to self, to his unfortunate followers – including one fine friend and colleague deluded by absence of personal principles and overcome by circumstances of fake living beyond means and the latest convert – someone I once shared much values and looked up to until PMB came to power and he lost his mind to his heart – to Nigerians who are now more conscious of his type and to the world which is watching Nigeria.
But more than that he has just said that nothing has changed about him and nothing can, will. In seeking power, he wants to take us back the years to live in dirty politics of rigs, thuggery and killing because it is only such landscape that can usher in his type and idea of ruling Nigeria. He is telling Nigerians that the present is too bad for our past and that the future of this country lies in its past not in its future. Anything may be possible in politics but I think this is an idea that cannot be accepted even in the ideals of the animal farm.
In all, the man has just told us that our best is in our past and we should go there not to restart to come back here. No. He wants us to go back and remain there. This is because the presence is inhabitable to his political whims, to his murky waters of anti-progress political ideas that are hidden opposites of all he has said in those self-sponsored and outsource-authored public lectures.
It is the idea of dirty politics that our children now mock as part of those things we can only remember in gratitude to God who lifted us out of shame to shape us into this top-bottom covenant with the people, but the God who puts this man in our progress so we deal with him in giving more thanks.
The difference between the past and the presence is just the redefinition of the term people. It is not a plural for person and not a sum of the individual and persons counted as citizens of Nigeria. No. It is a vague word – an uncountable, abstract, elusive, devalued idea that means nothing and refers to nothing. It is the most popular political word that bad politicians used on purpose for their evil good but not for the concern of the referent. The people. No one. Nothing.
I don’t know how much of the word the man has used but I am certain he has much less a number of people of his own he can claim to serve. At the least, ‘people’ cannot again, refer to the individual aggregate of Nigerians. It is a constituency he has lost to reason and to a more fundamental idea that works on the ground, for everyone individual without any reference to our vague, indefinite, assumptive entity.
When bad politicians represent or promise to do something for the ‘people’ they mean no body. It does not apply to any group of persons and therefore there is no promise to hold them for. It is the safest, smart word a politician plays with like a poet’s play with words to construct the unseen. But unlike the poet, a bad politician plays with the ‘people’ to destroy instead, not to construct.
The ‘people’ destroys the spirit of truth, evidence, trust and service among humans – the servants and the service. It violates every principle of the confidence that goes along with that trust that comes and goes with the years and men count the bond or jeopardy that comes and goes with the people’s trust with other men on behalf of all of us.
The man has made a mistake and for his own good. He should rest his lifetime excursion to nothingness. Those who followed him cannot afford to listen to him or anything about him. Nigerians cannot afford such nonsense again. No deception lies or proclaimed human mistake under any excuse is capable of getting our understanding in this negotiation for the future. We are far ahead upfront. Even if we turn back on the long lane, we cannot see the end of the lane. The only option for us in politics this 2019 is to look up front, to march on.
We are not parading one man or one party. No. Let there be campaign in the multi-party. Let there be competition, even stiff, among the parties. Let there be heat in the politics. Let there be democracy exercises. Let us hear the manifestos but let us compare them with the one we see not told.
Let us decide at the end. But no manifesto can sell on any idea of the past. The past is out of context and at a time when Zimbabweans have just laid a challenge ahead of us, no one is ready in this country to let any more mockery of us, after all that PMB has done to redeem our name and image. God will not allow it for any reason.
So every campaign should be about building on the laid down foundations of this government. Even if you are an enemy of yourself, you cannot argue in this campaign to dismiss this fact. It would amount to nothing worth hearing. Let it be clear to us about the person, the party, and the idea that is going to take us along in a great leap to the front, to consolidate on our achievements and to ease the final pain on everyone in want and in need.
It is worth the wait to watch PMB do more in another term. It is worth the wait to watch politicians of true worth wait to see the worth of the change we have achieved this far and what can accrue for us in the next term of PMB’s presidency. I itch to live to witness that in my life, at least to prove to the pessimists that to achieve greatness, you need time and here it is. My candidate this campaign has no equal.
Those who can wait are the true worth of this custody that binds us all as humans with common interest and destiny. Those who cannot wait are not worth anything in themselves, for themselves and for the country. Bid them the shortest bye ever and ask them to go to hell.
Congratulations to all of us for watching bad elements taking into hiding because we have all decided there is no place for them in our midst.
Hassan is the Head of Mass Communication Department and Dean, School of General Studies, Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi and can be reached at: 08032829772/08050551220 (text only with full names and address). E-Mail: abuna2406@gmail.com
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