I have not been able to watch this video, but I have the following observations to make:
- Politics in this clime isn’t saintly. Those who succeed in it have been playing dirty – THERE’S NO EXCEPTION HERE.
- During the 2013 election in Nigeria, as the APGA led by Obi and Umeh worked towards Obiano’s victory, I remember LP deputy governorship candidate Prince Eze (Arthur Eze’s nephew) complaining bitterly to journalists about pulling down of their billboards by those he described as “APGA agents”. One incident was at Onitsha where videos were made and circulated. Umeh of course came to the defence of the government and APGA and responded with so much venom as usual.
- Tomorrow Soludo, like Umeh, may find himself on the other side of the partisan divide, where he will as well complain of persecution and injustice. The cycle continues. Of course he had once cried of injustice when APGA led by Obi and Umeh disqualified him from the primary election just to pave way for the little known Obiano then. But fast-forward to 2021, what went around came around and Soludo was the favoured one this time as the same party disqualified Hon. Umeoji under similar questionable circumstances to pave way for him.
- Oh Ngigie! We remember the Alor-born politician crying wolf that APGA was conniving with Jonathan to undo him during that 2013 gubernatorial election when many polling stations in his stronghold, Idrmili, witnessed late turn up of INEC officials and when they came they had no result sheets. As an experienced man in rigging, he understood the game and simple remarked to journalists, “it is all deliberate.” Ironically, our whining Ngige had forgotten that just 10 years earlier (2003) he was on the favoured side of partisanship wherein OBJ-Eselu gang-up gave him an undeserved victory against the same Obi and APGA he was now accusing of rigging. The cycle continues.
- Yes Umeh worked assiduously for Soludo’s emergence. But in 2009 as Soludo ran against APGA and Obi, he siad in an interview that “Soludo is playing cowboy politics” and was therefore not fit to govern Anambra. In 2021, he conveniently forgot that statement and promoted Soludo as the fittest to govern. Wait for a while, he will soon return to his old song of Soludo playing cowboy politics.
- Then what of Ben Bruce? I remember Bruce in 2018 crying that the DSS had sealed off the National Assembly and prevented members from entry because Senate President Saraki was to announce his defection to PDP that day. He was angry about the dictatorship in the land. Oh poor Ben Bruce! He was just becoming aware that what we have had all the while (since 1999) isn’t democracy but dictatorship. He has forgotten that his party PDP under Jonathan did the same thing when the House Speaker Aminu Tambuwal and others defected to APC. The house members had to scale the fence to gain entrance into the N/A complex. The embarrassing pictures adorned front pages of newspapers and are still online today. The cycle continues.
- Politics is a roguish business. Just as there is no permanent friend or permanent enemy, there is also no permanent value or principle. This is especially true in our clime with our sick institutions and weak civil society.
- The intellectual elite (whether within or outside the academia) have it as a duty to lead the discourse from a purely non-partisan basis. Such discourse is the path to emergence of a strong civil society that will serve as a counter-force to the evil of bad politics, and the nation will rise (See Kukah, Hassan Democracy and Civil Society in Nigeria, Spectrum, 1997).
- Civil society is the much sought-after third force in our politics. Given its nonpartisan essence, it is that anti-thesis that will negate the thesis of roguish partisanship so that our country will start developing. Verify from Hegel.
- Without a strong civil society basis for democratic engagement, we will continue to experience our perrenial unfortunate fate of having always to look back to acknowledge in regret that yesterday was better than today. Mine is this: All those who are asking for my vote to become my president should simply convince me as to why they should have it. I’m not ready to canvass for votes for anyone because I trust no one. We know the antecedent of each of them in this roguish business of politics in Nigeria.
- Henry Chigozie Duru
