Light A Candle -By Sesugh Akume

Two days ago, I had the displeasure of being where a jobber and local organiser for a senatorial candidate was peddling his boss’ reelection bid. I at first wasn’t part of the conversation but was amongst the people he was selling to so had no choice than being part of it.

First, he parked the ‘evidence’ of how his efforts are working, a campaign branded car his benefactor gave him for his hard work and how great the senator has been, touching lives. You can’t argue with evidence can you? Second, this fellow has just been replaced as a supervisory councillor at the local government, his benefactor had made him one through the patronage system that runs and dominates the political industry. Clearly, not in his life could he ever have imagined being and/or having these. I saw his reason why his candidate can’t be compared with, from his view, that is.

So he went on and on about the wonderful things his boss has been doing: ‘projects’, patronage by way of giving people appointments in the government, motions moved, bills sponsored, including one to establish a federal polytechnic in the senatorial district, and so forth. He had these in publications he was sharing which had pictures and tables of the senator’s ‘scorecard’. I couldn’t help and asked if the senator had ‘achieved’ all these after his sleeping and snoring in plenary? To which he denied that the senator ever slept in plenary, he said the senator would only once in a while close his eyes to meditate on the ongoing conversation to intervene wisely as an older gentleman. We all laughed, and I agreed with him. What else was I to do? After then all I did was to agree with him and egg him to say as much as he had in mind.

What are these ‘achievements’ and ‘projects’? Pictures of installed electricity transformers, boreholes, road constructions that have been going on since forever. Classroom blocks some uncompleted, hospital equipment, motorcycles, sewing machines, and the other patronising stuff politicians give hapless citizens to ’empower’ them. I found 0814 089 9905 most grating on my nerves as this same candidate was the MD of by far largest and most influential company in Benue in his mid-thirties. The company was so formidable that in the early 90s he deemed himself too important to be a governor himself. He was rather a financier and kingmaker. Likewise during the return to civil rule in ’99, when he created the disaster that was the governor for 8 years now a senator for the 12th. At the time, who cared about the government or being in government? People who worked in government had nothing on those who worked in this company. Who needed government contracts when one supply at the company or accessing its products was a guarantee to a handsome profit?

The economy of the town hosting it was clearly ahead of the state capital itself. But this septuagenarian now thinks that what a succeeding generation of young people deserves is wheelbarrows, headpans, shoe-shiner boxes, and the like in the name of ’empowerment’. 

I didn’t know where to start addressing this, or to explain to this victim and others like him there that building a block of classrooms isn’t an achievement. The achievement is the learning outcomes gotten from the school (or preferably schools in the area) as a result of providing that facility or facilities. In other words, what impact has the building brought about? Let’s have the data and evidence. Donating hospital equipment isn’t an achievement, the achievement is how this has impacted on the health and wellbeing of the people, in specific and measurable terms. Has the rate of maternal and/or neonatal mortality dropped, for instance? I don’t even like talking about boreholes with their overhead tanks. Such nonsense! Thousands of years ago others were doing sophisticated waterworks and piping water to their homes for domestic use, also to their farms for irrigation, and so forth. We’re here talking of boreholes as achievements in the 21st century. In the publications were also images of transformers ‘donated’ to communities to connect them to the inadequate and already overstretched national grid. Not the number of communities formerly in darkness that now have electricity but images of transformers.

The greatest hypocrisy of it all, and the most annoying part is, many of these ‘projects’ aren’t operational. The transformers aren’t connected to the grid and therefore not providing any electricity. The ‘vocational training centre’ he built in my hometown was under lock and key for up to 5 or so months, and was only ‘commissioned’ weeks ago when the politician came for his reelection campaign. It’s not as if anyone is using the facility as of this moment. But it’s still an ‘achievement’. Why are we having publications now at the twilight of his second tenure, whereas we should be having these quarterly or at worst semiannually? With these and many more questions raging inside, I decided to keep quiet, wear a smile, and agree with all the fellow was saying, till he was done and left. He said he had to leave in in order to travel the next day to bring more ’empowerment’.

The abuse and rape we’ve suffered in the last 20 years in particular can’t be explained, it can only be imagined. We can’t even estimate the extent of damage. There’s only so much talking can do, the way I see it. I couldn’t utter a word there because, where would I begin? It’s difficult to get people to imagine anything outside of their present reality. I’ve also learnt to be pragmatic. I only engage at a level they’d readily agree with me. I go no further because they’ve been bruised and abused and can hardly believe that anything is possible. I’m likely to win the election as a rep in the next less than 4 weeks from today. ‘It’s better to light a candle than curse darkness’ the Chinese say. In this circumstance, if/when I do win, it’ll be best demonstrate for them to see, then explain to them and expand their horizons, and show them some more and expand their perspectives, and keep moving in that order. The healing will take a long process and great effort. But it will come.