The history of political evolution in Nigeria has revealed that politicians are the real enemies of democratic governance in the country, and not soldiers. The latter are just opportunistic adventurers that occasionally ride on the atrocious shenanigans of politicians into political power houses. It started in 1966 from western Nigeria when political treachery and unbridled personal ambitions combined to draw fratricidal inferno to the entire nation in the forms of coups and counter-coups that culminated in an internecine war. Nigeria recovered from the avoidable and unnecessary debacle through divine intervention, for those of us that believe in the existence of a superior being. Again, the same western Nigeria and precisely in Ondo State, was birthed the political intrigues that once again allowed our ‘gambari’ rulers, or is it political oppressors, to gain a foothold in an unmitigable oduduwa enclave through election rigging and political violence. However, the khaki boys did not wait for it to fester into the morbid self-destruct orgy of the first republic before it terminated late President Shehu Shagari’s second republic. The joy ride that the soldiers enjoyed in the corridors of political power nearly made them to usurp the clan of politicians permanently until they got tired of the rumblings, grumblings and heckling of politicians. The politicians were back in the saddle once again by 1999, and have since remained latched to political power till date. Everyone yearns and prayed for democracy in Nigeria. No politician wants the soldiers to rule us again. Democracy is the ‘in thing’ globally and Nigeria cannot be an exception. However, the Nigerian politicians have shown from 1999 till date that they have learnt nothing and have forgotten everything. From former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s third term misadventure, his despotic choice of late President Umar Yar’Adua as his successor, the intrigues of a sully and greedy cabal surrounding the secret illness and eventual death in office of the latter, Nigerians witnessed the unchanging characters of Nigerian politicians. Although former President Goodluck Jonathan that succeeded late President Yar’Adua was a new kid on the political block, he nonetheless showed his precocity through an effeminate and very corrupt administration against whom an avowed troubler of soldiers and self-styled democrat rallied a strange political support base against to oust from office unceremoniously. From that time onwards, Nigerians began to regret why they asked the politicians to return. They however hung to hope with a replacement taciturn former President, retired General Muhammad Buhari whose eight year rulership over Nigeria turned out to be the worst in Nigeria’s political history to the shame of his political base. He vacated office for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu under a ‘turn by turn chopping’ arrangement to become Nigeria’s president under a ‘Renewed Hope’ mantra. Today, there is hardly hope anywhere, let alone renewing it. This is the work of Nigerian politicians.
But the one that irks and rankles me the most is the impunity and political rascality being exhibited by most of Nigeria’s 36 State Governors without anyone or anything in place to checkmate them. Today as you read this piece, state resources have become the personal properties of State Governors and public servants in Nigeria. The Governors particularly convert State resources into their personal wealth and use them wantonly to acquire properties illegally at home and abroad, indulge their families in profligate travels at home and abroad while using stolen state resources to curry the patronage of state security apparatuses and deploy them indiscriminately to harass, harangue and eliminate real or perceived opponents. Let me use my State, Kogi State as example. The former Governor of Kogi State Alhaji Yahaya Adoza Bello rode on divine wings and political treachery of a few ethno-religious extremists to become a Governor. He employed the Biblical Ahitophel’s counsel to govern Kogi State with iron fist, plundering the State mercilessly and used state security apparatus to eliminate many innocent souls that dared speak out or opposed him. The youthful political newcomer that many thought would bring a new and refreshing vigor etched in transparency and accountability to governance turned out to be the worst political despot ever seen in the history of state politics in Nigeria. Many Nigerians cannot forget in a hurry how, with the help of former President Muhammad Buhari, he used state resources with security apparatus and platforms to rig himself back into office for a second term in 1999. When most Nigerians thought that his political base was going to be uprooted at the end of his second tenure iwith former President Buhari out of the way, Alhaji Yahaya Bello re-invented himself to unconstitutionally and craftily earn a third term for himself through proxy. He fraudulently chose a dour, clumsy and timid relative of his as APC’s gubernatorial candidate for Kogi State in 2023 and with the help of INEC, also got the proxy into Lugard House. In the real sense, it’s Alhaji Yahaya Bello that is still governing Kogi State and it is him that sits atop the State’s resources; corruptibly enriching himself and wasting some to buy judgments or curry political favour all over the places. Neither the constitution nor President Bola Ahmed Tinubu could check him because he has all the decoys in place with the soiled hands of the Nigerian judiciary supporting him firmly. Currently, he is up playing one of his devious games regarding the recall of the embattled female senator representing his Kogi Central Senatorial geo-zone in the ‘hallowed’ green legislative chamber. It can be recalled that Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan representing Kogi Central is currently on suspension after a run-in with the Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio. It can also be remembered that the embattled female senator defeated Alhaji Yahaya Bello’s proxy candidate that would have merely held the position in waiting for Yahaya Bello to usurp at the end of his second term as governor had his candidate won. Senator Natasha won a re-ran senatorial election with outside help and thus denied Yahaya Bello of a seat in Nigeria’s senate. That is why the former Governor cocooned himself in Kogi State Government House, running affairs of the state directly while his proxy governor performs ceremonial duties mostly from Abuja, except when required to provide some bogey front as the incumbent. This can happen only in Nigeria, taking a cue from the classical political colonialism in Lagos State. However, the experiment in Rivers State failed woefully with a huge potential to scuttle Nigeria’s democracy once again; this time Nigeria’s from south-south geo-political perhaps. After all, it’s not the prerogative of western Nigeria to scuttle Nigeria’s democracy repeatedly, even if one is tempted to think that it is responsible for what is happening currently in Rivers State. Well, back to Senator Natasha and Alhaji Yahaya Bello’s story. Brooding over the scuttling of his senatorial ambition by Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, Alhaji Yahaya Bello saw a renewed opportunity, or is it the elusive hope, to appropriate the former’s seat in the upper legislative chamber through a recall agenda by her constituents. And so using state resources, Yahaya Bello commissioned his hirelings, comprising political jobbers and gluttonous party agents to deceitfully gather Senator Natasha’s supporters together for a bogey empowerment Programme. They were told to come along with their voters’s card and NIN for authentication before being included in the list of potential beneficiaries of the false empowerment programme. They were also required to append their signatures to the list. Before Natasha’s supporters could realise the infamy for what it is, the agents of Alhaji Yahaya Bello had collected substantial number of names already. The people revolted on realizing that they were being used ignorantly for a different purpose other than social empowerment and therefore began to protest wildly. Yahaya Bello’s agents beat a hasty retreat to the safety of their hideous enclaves from where they continued to fictitiously populate the list of purported supporters of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan that want her recalled for representing them badly in Nigeria’s senate as seen in the viral videos circulating in the social media recently. The import of this story is not about Alhaji Yahaya Bello or his penchant for corruption and compromising political processes. Far from it! Rather, it is to show how parlous Nigeria’s political landscape, and by extension the Nigerian State,
has become. A nation of impunity and a country of ‘anything goes’. The pity of it all is that although most Nigerians, including the Nigerian President, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of House of Representatives and Chief Judge of the Federation; including the Chairman of Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) that will eventually supervise Senator Natasha’s recall process and Inspector General of Police may be aware of Alhaji Yahaya Bello’s current antics around the female senator’s recall, yet the former Governor of Kogi State may have his way ultimately without any of those persons occupying exalted political and executive offices blinking a resentful eye lid. It is a familiar game to Alhaji Yahaya Bello. When the former gubernatorial candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a former member of APC National EXCO and enstranged ally of the former Governor in the person of Alhaji Muritala Yakubu Ajaka (Muri) sort to win the ruling APC’s gubernatorial ticket in 2023 to succeed Alhaji Yahaya Bello in Kogi State based on some ungentlemanly agreement between the duo, Yahaya Bello used the same tactics to outsmart Muri. Just as he is doing currently in Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s issue, Alhaji Yahaya Bello simply sent his foot soldiers to Muri’s ward in Ajaka town in Igala Mela/Odolu local government area to gather APC’s ward EXCO together for a meeting. At the meeting, the EXCO members were told that the outgoing governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, wanted to send some ‘goodies’ to the Muri’s Ward EXCO in appreciation of their previous support and to solicit for their continuous support both for the APC and whoever emerged as APC’s candidate for the 2023 gubernatorial election in Kogi State from among many potential candidates that included Muri their son. The ward EXCO members signed the document gleefully and it was after they Yahaya Bello’s emissaries returned to Lokoja, Kogi State capital that they realised the real intention behind the visit and for obtaining their names with signatures. These were loosely attached to a letter purportedly written by the APC EXCO in Muri’s ward in Ajaka town expelling the same Muri from APC for anti-party activities. The State EXCO of APC that was led by Yahaya Bello’s kinsman ratified the purported expulsion of Muri hurriedly and notified the national headquarters of the ruling party which equally endorsed the position of the State EXCO expeditiously. Meanwhile, the gubernatorial primary election of the APC in Kogi State was a mere four weeks or so away. Muri ran to the court in an attempt to stop the infamy or upturn it but got neither of it until the APC primary that produced Alhaji Yahaya Bello’s anointed candidate and current proxy governor of Kogi State came and went by. It is Yahaya Bello’s game and no one has rivaled or beaten his record in this shameful democratic theft of mandates till date. Similarly, nobody or institution, including the judiciary could stop him. So here he comes again with another shot at his familiar game. Grapevine sources alluded to Yahaya Bello working in concert with some of Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s current political enemies, including those in the Senate with her. Based on all these happenings, how can true democracy that will serve the interest of the people as opposed to the interest of a few privileged Nigerians take root in Nigeria? Are the same politicians that don’t want any other form of governance outside democracy not also threatening the very foundations of our dear country which is rooted in democracy? One thing that I am sure of is that Nigerian politicians will not always have their ways forever as the masses are becoming more enlightened and emboldened. They don’t need the soldiers to stop the politicians any more because the soldiers have proven time and again that they were not any better than politicians. Rather, the people will take back their power through the electoral system willy nilly. Henceforth, they will vote and defend their votes vehemently and no intimidation by security agents or manipulation by INEC officials can save bad and corrupt politicians. Not even the political schemes and intrigues of desperate politicians like the former Kogi State governor can stand in the way of the people of Nigeria, going forward. I believe the message in the title of one of late novelist and poet, Nadine Gordimer’s works for the collapsed and now defunct apartheid regime of South Africa. ‘Some Monday for Sure.’ In that title, she predicted that on one perfect Monday morning in the future, South Africa would become a free and democratically governed country where the majority shall carry the day. Her predictions came through on 27th day of April, 1994 when South Africa’s late freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela was elected as the first black president of the country. In the same vein, I believe that Nigeria’s electoral system will become so strong and perfect one bright Monday morning such that,
no evil, corrupt and inept politician or political party or group can manipulate it easily as they are doing currently again. Amen!
Politicians Are Enemies Of Democracy In NigeriaBy OPALUWA OGACHEKO
