Democracy – our demonstrations of idiocy (2)

Aliyu Musa

A left-wing academic who used to relish criticizing the political class on the social media suddenly beat a hasty retreat after winning an election and was inducted into the luscious class of the ‘Ogas at the top’. He had been irked by the bravery of some of us who for once set aside our stupidity to ask the right questions. And like all those ‘Ogas’ that find us too dumb to realize even when we are blatantly swindled he took offence, provided no answers and distanced himself from the scums his new bedfellows always thought we were.

Once upon a time we were a country of ghost workers, ghosts offices, ghost wages, ghost contractors and ghost contracts and paperwork etc. But our democracy has given more befitting feathers unto our already overstuffed wings. We are now a country of ghost councilors, ghost local government chairmen, ghost governors and ghost presidents.

We have produced governors whose hocus-pocus left the eagle-eyed British police speechless by the time they were done with them. One suddenly transformed to a lady and slipped through the little fingers of immigration officials. But back home, where he stole the money for which some ‘overzealous’ British police wanted to prosecute him, he got a hero’s welcome. Never mind the face saving slap he got on the wrist from our judiciary, our president’s good office ordered a state pardon and he is now as clean as a newborn.

It is only in our country that elected officials can rule by proxy while we sheepishly cheer. Now domestic appendages (apology to Professor Wole Soyinka) have been smuggled into the constitution. So, we can be ruled by anyone insofar as they can claim the elected executive is aware and acquiesces (even if brain dead). This has always been the case, but it became more than obvious when the kitchen cabinet of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua hijacked the government and pushed his deputy to an obscure corner regardless of the provision of the constitution of the country, which their principal swore to uphold. But that’s all history now, from which we never learn any lessons.

If we do we would not be talking of a president behind whom millions of Nigerians, home and abroad, stood to insist the constitution be adhered to, that has now transformed to one of the biggest flouters of the same rules that were invoked in his favour. We would not have seen him deploy his domestic appendage (apology to Professor Soyinka, once again) to play tin god again and again. And Governor Rotimi Amaechi would have had a ripples free ride in the rivers.

Again, our amnesia is so acute that we don’t remember that tin gods only exist briefly and in reality have no real powers. Otherwise why is all this disquiet in Jalingo? Why has Mrs Hauwa Suntai allowed herself to be part of a jamboree that would lead to more tears and mockery? But it all happens because we love democracy even more when it exposes the stretch to our idiocy. So, by all means shall we be ruled. And ghosts do have slots too.

Stupidity sometimes fights back and that is why our ‘Ogas at the top’ must stride with caution. As dumb as people might appear something could suddenly trigger some reactions, especially when least expected. Right now all forms of resistance are easily suppressed either by means of calculatingly generated disunions or force. But January 2012 was golden though very short. It was spontaneous but lastingly memorable. It united the downtrodden for once but turned the table against those who have always manipulated it. And when it all finally died down, it became very clear that change was not only inevitable but also overdue.

These days we see some constituents apply their power to ‘recall’ in a different way. They accost ‘wayward’ elected representatives with questions to which evasive answers result in some form of ‘jungle justice’. But would anyone blame them for just realizing that the entire scene has all along been one big jungle and not playing by the rules has been their nemesis? If resorting to ‘jungle justice’ would open the gates to where the dividends of democracy (as we call it) are hoarded, by all means let them administer it. Perhaps that would change the notion that we are, indeed, an assembly of idiots.

Postscript

This article appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Friday August 30, 2013.