My Letter To Gandu About Nigeria Political Skullduggery -By Adepoju Isaiah Gbenga

Dear Gandu,

I hope, at the point of writing this letter, I meet you well. How is India? How are the long shiny roads and the snake-like cars that looks as if it was built with their long-tail roads. I hope you are well and that finances of your academics is not stressing you out.

Barely two years after your departure, it then seemed to me as if I had just awoken to the reality of your departure really. At some point, I really was convinced that you purposely left Nigeria because of its political quagmire and skullduggery, and the little games played in-between, but my knowledge of your trip would seep through my memory, reminding me of your purpose to India. The political turn-out in Nigeria has become more devastating than ever. Politicians, acclaimed people’s representative, would sing bastardized hymns abusing the opposition parties and their representatives. They would get behind large microphones to speak against the existence of a democratic state and an independent people’s political and social consciousness.

Of course, some brave youths took to the street, raising placards and awareness, singing and chanting, heavy and famished under the Nigerian sun. But what should we expect when they get to the ‘government house’? What should they do when the president’s or governor’s representative comes out in his elegant suit to ramble in complex dictions and colloquiums? The youths would quietly March out, one after the other. The stubborn ones were scared off by the firing of AK-47s in the air. The state, for a time, would mourn, then few would raise up their placards again while the majority either minded their business of political non-interference or went about with the Earth’s providence. The few would, for a while, stagger and waver, their numbers increasing and decreasing like a chemical temperature in perpetuity. This politics of ‘chop-and-run’ has become so common that in some subtle grasp, one may think it has been conspicuously legalized.

Sowore, a man we both have debated about the originality and his astute stand on activism, was imprisoned since last year, and since his imprisonment, most of the youths seemed to have kept quiet about it. I mean, most people may have gone extra miles to see to the release of this ‘revolutionist’ but it is a kind of struggle that has receded to the background which makes it seem as if revolution isn’t in the priority of the people (or perhaps, they are seeing it as a revolt).

As if being doomed by the repetition of history isn’t enough, yet insecurity, hooliganism, banditry, terrorism, terrorism from ‘security operatives’, and the ironical increase of fraudsters who have been tagging themselves ‘yahoo boys’, is still being added to our misery. The Book Haram organization has terrorized more villages than usual, and their access to ammunition has become a mystery to the totality of the Nigerian federation (even though some analysts have made substantial debate as to the relatableness of the Nigeria political setting and the Boko Haram administration). While the bombing increases by the day, the government is still wasting itself away in the perpetual subjection of headless arguments and political propagandas and espionage and ‘game of numbers’.

Some once respectable citizens of Nigeria have become hooligans and ill-groomed terrorists, having suffered in the cross-hair of political propagandas and tyranny and the non-chalancy of the legal institution in the cataclysm. Yesterday, a governor (whom you may not have been so familiar with before you left), Obaseki, won the election and everybody is still jubilating, leaving societal issues at a halt of negligence. Everything here is violence here, anarchy there, and even in my last article to the Opinion Nigeria Newspaper, I was forced, by the use of reason, to end the article with: “cry ‘havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war”. Of course, the excerpt is from William Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Ceasar’ but the context in which it was used was suitable to the present phenomenal of social insecurity and the fall of the tragic-hero.

The political event and deadlock in Nigeria are thorny. Activists die on a daily basis: if not from the DSS razing down their homes, it could be open-letter attack from political godfathers, or a subtle (or conspicuous) threat of their relatives and career. The people have grown tired of always fighting, and staying awake all night to watch their right swooped away by hungry vultures. Some charlatans who bow before heavy brown envelopes, also mislead the people into the wrong lode of radical political activism and the related the ideology of non-conformity to undemocratic political settings. I wish to be capable of writing down the skullduggery and the game of back-stabbing in the Nigeria political sphere but I fear my words might elude me, and my voice would rather become that of a madman.

My regards to your Mum. I bear my most humble regards to India. To the weather at day that foamed sweat out of every farmer’s spine, and to the Night moon that laid them still in the nuptial chamber, promising them of another beautiful morning. My regards to those you would preach the gospel of Nigeria to, who will still, radically, want to be involved in the process of governing or activism. I greet you also. Take care.

Yours sincerely
Isaiah