PMB’s and APC’s suspense and the Keynote for the Nation’s Political Character -By Jimi Bickersteth

On a private engagement at the Adó Àwáyè, Iyake Suspended lake, in Oyo state, I took time out to admire the ancient pottery found in stratified layers of earth and was generally having a swell moment with the locals, men, women, boys and girls all on an inspired precision ‘lockdown’ ever since the awesome pandemic. Nothing much was really happening.

It was here in this calm but sunny locale, with the bright, early morning sunlight, (a clearer departure from the tortured blackness of the night without light), coming through the slatted shutters of the window and laid like prison bars across the bed.

I stirred restlessly as a distant clock chimed eight, dimly conscious of the sunlight, I closed my eyes again. I struggled out of sleep and up in bed to discover that the vision or was it séance of a broken down society, with the woodpile and the mocking crop in its hollow, came, and it came, flashing off and on all through the return journey back to my Abuja base.

On getting to Abuja, I discovered that the PDP (with a look on its face a dog gets when he thinks there’s a bone and a bonus around), was in charge of the much-touted APC’s convention.

I thought that was the most beautiful bit of corruption and contraption I’d ever seen on the nation’s political front. Doubts, like the slow movement of a cloud across the face of the moon began to settle in my mind about the APC’s future. Indeed, the move portrayed the APC as a party that had thoroughly began to lose its luster and cohesiveness, and on the trip to its eternal implosion.

Sitting by the window looking into the streets of Abuja and its admixture of rural, cosmopolitan and exclusive outlooks. The decaying flamboyance, the extravagant damp and stale sweat in Abuja, an Abuja, their Abuja, a seat of government that appeals and invokes emotions, where the policy of government have little or no relevance to logic and relevance. Why? Why, because it deals with abstracts and theories of philosophy of democracy, and the ground rules that provided the contexts within which formulated policies were influenced.

Skipping the mystery and veil incorporated in Abuja at the moment, the seemingly, endless and unregulated pumps prices of Petrol (PMS), Diesel (AGO), cooking gas and kerosene were beginning to take toils, touching, severely, the costs of living for the high, mighty and the lowly, depicting the heartlessness in the society.

Abuja is a place where the fulcrums that runs government and provide policies are situated. Policies we are told, are the instruments for governance, and that the job of governing is carried on by means of public policies.

Its expected that good governance, required good policies. Thus, producing good policies requires not only enlightenment, clear objectives and specifically targeted programmes, but, also, readiness to articulate the overall consequences of any policy package and initiatives. All of which were apparently lacking and or in copious short supply.

The absence of leadership and good policies were debated lyre that was making meeting the nation at its points of needs helpless in the vagaries of life and living. Abuja as a clime, has in the past 23 years or so of ‘constitutional improvisation’, continually symbolises, rightly or wrongly, a place where political leaders were merely interested in consolidating their holds on power, political power than with actual governance.

Hear here, the lamentations of a countryman, as this was what it turned out to be, considering the facts of the situations in Abuja. My memory, diving into the past, conjured up this visions of dashing bewilderment, young men and adults and the idea or was it the knowledge of certain troubles, basically, poverty connected with the younger generation and the nation’s straitened circumstances, and how no word had ever passed between the legislature and the executive (who were expected to be upholders of national interest, dignity, solidarity, cohesion, honour and prestige) on any of these subjects, other than the fandango of nonsense the nation had been watching and listening to, whereas, there are so many germane points deserving of attention.

At the Three-Arms square, the sergeant-at-arm with the mace – national symbol of authority and power, held aloft on his shoulder walked in, followed by a procession of the ‘lawless’ lawmakers led by its ‘padded’ principal officers, all trotting sedately at his heel’s.

To all intents, I have no evidence as to why they do what they do in those forsaken, red or green chambers, although, I will not say I have no idea, for, its been a nasty story and testimonials; and contributing circumstances which presented certain difficulties in the polity to the people, and that has become a genetic code, so to speak. There had been a sequel, if the serial flicks in the last two decades of democracy were anything to go by.

One of the DNA in the genetic code was poverty, increasing cooperative poverty. You’ll think poverty is poverty, and you’ll certainly be very correct; but in the nation today, poverty has class – acute, sub-acute, chronic, “I – better-pass-my-neighbour”, ”Dúpẹ́ ẹ tì ẹ”, and ”Ogadinma”. The nation boasts of six different types or is it levels of poverty, all of which indicated wanton penury.

In the full awareness of this national conditions the ruling class’s – a stereotype child model with smouldering eyes and pouting its lips provocatively. You know a child that always pouts when teased, if you know one, then you’ve gotten the picture.

The cult of good living from the purse of the state for majority of the people with no living wage was indeed lamentably neglected in the Government’s hunger, and health management schemes, if ever there was one in all sincerity and honesty. (One female minister in her dreams was quoted to have said she distributed Covid palliative to all, eventually, the palliatives were discovered in government hired warehouses).

The symptoms of poverty may be entirely absent or vary widely, but taking the facts and everything on ground into account, and without any bias whatsoever, I am of the opinion that leadership absence contributed so much to the development of underdevelopment, and there perforce, the matter have to rest.

Save to say in an anticlimax, that, the poverty-stricken society in a poverty trap is grievously suffering from the incipient attack of lack – the endless Boko Haram battles, the restive insurgency in the Niger Delta, the IPOB headaches, the mini-theaters of war in the North and Middle Belt, the ersatz and extenuating formation of the bullying military Operations.

All of these were offshoots of the amnesias and sufferings the ruling class bequeathed to the society, and curiously, some of it, since the days of the 1914 amalgamation, and had without any exception, reinforced and built upon by subsequent administration and the resultant effect on the government today. Hence, the nation was winning the war on all fronts and losing the battles.

The effects of the problems the nation-state have had to grapple with was the unevenness and inequality in the power distribution, the revenue allocation formula, the disequilibrium in the power devolution and power sharing and the inept creation of a nation in which poverty and inequality are endemic and a whole bunch of victims of the inequities of the legal system, ineradicable failings, prejudices and conflicts.

There are all sort of human indignities meted out by the system to people all over the place. That is what I believe. No – more than believe. I am sure of it – the ruling class’s whose combined power could not achieve synergy, but an apparent, complete callousness to the severe pain they inflict on society.

If the remarks here are not the facts, then, that’s the worst of this game of democracy and representation. It gives that every single little thing that the elected Representative did or left undone is open not only to screening but also to the most sinister constructions. That’s where you hear the president’s name all over the place. If a man is not too strong at night, “in za oda room”, its mister president, is an erection an election? Was PMB here in 1914? You’ll ask, was the President the only elected representative? Even the councillors at the grassroots should be involved.

In all of these, the government appeared to have sworn an oath of conspiracy of silence, and in its taciturnity and corresponding strange reticence, could be found the keynote of the nation’s political character, which were in every material respect, a typical product of the Nigeria of the 1914 on tests run, with both its virtues and vices; the leader’s, autocratic and overbearing. All this were the nation’s antecedents. “No be today!”

To myself, I admitted, reluctantly though, what I would never have admitted to another human being, my dissatisfaction with the younger generation in the light of the happenstance on the political terrain and their individual and collective response and the lack of it, and to quote the sage Awo in his treatise on politics and religion, the passive religionisation of politics and the politisation of religion, both have got the nation stuck and rooted in one spot. Terrible at its best.

You’ll be forced to agree with the perception that the nation lost control over its youth with their slightly mocking manners, since the youths have found a way out of the morass by instituting a pastime – Yahoo and Yahoo plus, have come into their own money and with it certain notoriety, and so, see the struggling elders as failures.

They belonged to a young, bright, go-ahead set – a set that had freak parties where assorted wines, spirits and large doses of Rophnol, codeine were on offer generously and for the asking, and generally, living life very fast on a dangerous lane.

Their fairytale that was often astonishing to me was that – this poor company suddenly became unbelievably wealthy, wealth’s that defied logic and the law of economics. This wealthy persons, the enunciation of the word ‘person’ been quite an artistic one, it was clear that they cut no kind of a figure. Shameful and disappointing to society who their sudden wealth’s could not help raise. Those are the feelings.

There are those who hold it isn’t right to be a ‘G-boy’, or to do Yahoo and or acquire wealth illegitimately (illegit). But, of course, there’s others as hold that everyone’s got a right to make their money and dispensed it as they wished, particularly, with society not been there to provide welfare, “Ku je ku raba”, employment and the wherewithal to
generate wealth, in a nation where PhDs and Masters degrees holders were part of the crowd jostling for the “774000 #20000 per month” temporary job. There’s something to be said for both point of view.   

In any case, we’ve all got our individual fancies: The wholesome liberty and freedom do not allow you to dictate how lives should be lived, especially, with the
new-fangled idea of individuals liberty all over the place, and in a society where your fear bullies you into living whether you want to or not, goaded by a ruling class – politicians diarchy wandering seemingly, aimlessly, and with a withering glare. The youths struggling to a feel like the Jones’s (K’éwe mákọ̀ wọ́n k’ẹ́gbẹ́ lè gbawọ́n)  mentality. Borrowing money to buy chicken and chips, pizza etc for numerous girls friends. A degree holder so dependent on a salary that he can do anything to get a job.

The atmosphere of the nation’s bygone days of lily of the valley sentiments, days of leisure, of refinement closed round me. The relish of dislike for the attitude of an extremely old man forced by unthinking persons to exert himself unduly that surrounds the nation. Very odd the way things happen. In my youth days, the elders would say, “You’re young, my boy,” you don’t realize what fine fighting material there is in age. It’s young people who turn up their toes and die, because they’re not interested enough to live. 

You show me  anyone who’s live to over seventy and you show me a fighter. Someone who’s got the will to live. Most profound. And its true, mortally wounded, always saying how wonderful are – their vitality and the way they’ve kept their faculties. But, today, figuratively and literally, the beats and the music have changed. It presented a somewhat inverted social dilemma to the new world order.

In the dilemmas that ensued, the young ones now have a strong vitality and the strong will to live and to fight for their survival. They’re very alive and to find their brain was as keen as anything. They’re very alive, very interested in life, but may be not in how they lived it.  They’ve with a spice of satisfied malice combined the vitality and the will to live of the elderly with the elders mentality and craving for novelty. Majority of them too are poor-spirited, irreligious creatures with nothing to dislike or like, but this youths deals with the elderly, and this include their parents, teachers and a society whom they see as having abandoned them in a colourless voice that held reproof for familiarity in it.

The young generation doesn’t take much interest in its grandfathers. True – history knows nothing of its greatest men! Grandfathers are marked out, marked out as they say in the game of football, and their fathers, if not in politics and its cults, rendered societally useless and irrelevant, pauperized by the ruling class’s Machievillean’s tactics, and the children turned to irreverent young devils to whom family history means nothing, and troubles and responsibility to their families. What a family tree to dread!

My eyes gleamed in the mirror opposite my writing desk, which from three metres or so displayed the image of a smaller me expressing the excitement of a fanatic. It struck me that the nation’s reckless political leaders do not care a hoot about its younger generation and in the Machievillean school the easiest way of removing someone you want to remove from the equation from your path is to take advantage of accidents and circumstances: Accidents are happening all the time – poor state of the roads, poor communication networks, drunkenness, and so are the accidents and circumstances of birth.

The youths have pulled through some narrow squeaks in spite of their colourless looks. I think the unwholesome habits of alcohol and substance abuse left fortuitously uncontrolled and uninhibited in their lives gave the ruling class an idea. The youths shortsighted, uncensored and uncontrolled; it was quite within the bounds of probability that they might stumble and fall headlong, or distracted by the frailties in how they are been governed. A wasted generation! The pathetic picture of  the disinherited black sheep – and a sheep not so black as was painted.

Not properly understood and never had a fair chance; even the Almajiris. They couldn’t get the luxury – or beauty – or excitement they want. Some of the nation’s youths wear the same suit until it went into holes, and eat a congealed chop plus cowhides (Pònmó) (putting it mildly) everyday for lunch quite happily, and wash (whenever they’re lucky enough to get water) in a cracked tin bath. They do Okada, do Baba Ijebu’s Lotto.

Some took the inelegant meal of bread and excreta. Good looking boys and girls, ambitious but the society killed the motivations. Fanciful and absurd perhaps, but there it is. They are there – plain for anyone to see. It’s all very interesting – as a mental exercise, that is. The whole thing is fascinating – fascinating! Epizeuxis! It is of a special interest at the present time.

I shook my head somehow despondently. Shouldn’t the ruling class enjoying itself, as an audience the nation was forgotten, get into the burrow after its youths and redefine, reform them. The youths and the nation’s policy in regard to it – should be the burning question of the hour. But there is something in the Red and Green chambers and the house in the Rock – Something a little constrained, as though the airiness were more artificial than usual. I am bound to admit that there are so many issues that had enveloped the nation since 1914 that one does not understand and that cannot be explained by natural means. Profoundly true, Where there is no vision the people perish. Everyone seem to labour under that misapprehension.

Capitalism has proven to be the most effective way to generate wealth–though far from evenly. While the pandemic has underscored the shortfalls of the world’s current iteration of capitalism, there were plenty of signs the system was askew before Covid-19 hit. The current system does not have to be scrapped, but it does have to be rejigged if it is to survive. Examine the structural forces that shape individual and organisational success in capitalist economies, along with examples and data that point toward possible solutions to the inequalities and exclusions. The lack of jobs in Africa’s largest economy and most populous country is unlikely to get better soon. 

With the nation’s unemployment rate more than tripled in the last five years–and with what’s on ground, it will only get worse.  The nation can change the rules, incentives, predictions, and unintended consequences of capitalism–if they want to. While 2023 may not be the best year to make substantial progress against retooling jobs and economic opportunity for all, the public isn’t in the mood to wait.

The nation’s conspiracy of silence and the peoples disquiet silence and malcontents seemed to disquiet me. Looking dull as it was taken in by the ruling class’s dutiful attention stunts. The people were horrified, but powerless. I’ll begin a sentence with Are you sure? Are you sure our leaders irreproachable? Nigerians! Too kind-hearted, you won’t get them to impute bad motives to their leaders moral sense. The people and the ruling class, most of whose delivery on the floor were spasmodic and consisted of gasps, make a comic pair. The attraction of opposites. An enchanting study.

All the various characters in the Nigerian soap opera since 1914? to date have emerged more clearly as complicated individuals, and in some ways it resembles a play acted from the novelette of olden days. It’s real!? Very galling! 

The country all got engrossed in the tragicomedy, its ruling class, an exclusive and restricted circle, took advantage of the collective silence and confusion in the nation’s doped state to sweep on. Isn’t the symbol of the ruling party a broom!

On allegations of corrupt enrichments, NDDC etc – the chambers were looking fixedly at the allegations involving some of the members, and with the details unearthed, there was anxiety, a fixity, about a gaze that seemed out of all proportion to the subject-matter. A bêtise, either way a damming indictment – speaking generally – rebuking the attitude of quite unreasoning scepticism. But, of course, everyone, sees from a slightly different angle and prism, some, even see from the glass with an obtuse image.

Nonetheless, vary in the manner of speaking about the nation, its ruling class – politicians and their impact and effect on society. Even as they conveyed the
impression – how I do not quite know, for their manners were almost wearily indifferent – of being at least twice as much alive as the people that voted them into power. There hung about them the restrained energy of a whiplash. But their latent energy were less apparent after the NDDC exposé. It was as though they withdrew into a shell. Bí’wọ bá ṣe rere, ara kì yío ya o. If thou dost well, shall thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well…so say the scripture.

I have often had occasion to notice how where a direct question would fail to elicit a requisite response, a false assumption brings instant information in the form of a contradiction (no matter how highly educated, brilliant or intelligence) as in Genesis, so it is in the 9th National Assembly, so it is with FFK.The NDDC, etc. Tthe simile of a whiplash came again into my mind. I believe there is always a way to do things – if you don’t mind being unscrupulous. A righteous refusal, shows you the exit door.

Meanwhile, must one remind the peoples representatives that the people want something better out of life! They want the best! The best food, the best clothes, not Àkúbè – something with line to it – beauty – not just suitable covering in the prevailing fashion. They want to live and enjoy – to go to the Mediterranean and lie in the warm sea – to sit round a table and play with exciting wads of money – to give parties – wild absurd extravagant parties – not some day – They want it now! But they have been denied, instead, all these niceties were what the political elites desired and get, the people got the endless
belt-tightening therapy. This the nation had patronised, but should not be the kind of notoriety the nation should approve.

With a sigh my thoughts passed on the girls, who in the mêlées, have become indifferent, but had their feelings slightly confused. Without undue overgeneralization, the girls, worldly, ultra-modern, with their faces beneath its plentiful Mary Kay, IMAN make-up, are slightly, haggard and there were lines around their eyes due to undue stress. It was no sure blinding one’s eyes to facts. The new craze was their Brazilian wig, worn at wrong angle, that had their hair inclined to straggle in wisps in Madonna fashion on their bald heads. The momentary glint in their eyes seemed to affect me disagreeably with a pathetic eagerness to assimilate and memorised their slightly bizarre clothes and other accessories; as if it was their fate in life to be passionately fond of clothes without having any clothes sense; because they often tried to earnestly copy elegance at an inferior price and cut. That’s what the situation in the country had reduced them to.

I saw myself at Garki, Gwagwalada, Wuse, Maitama, Asokoro and what have you, I saw a long list of not too self-indulgent women on the prowl – but thwarted. Plain girls, leading a dull existence, unable to attract the men they would like to attract, finally accepting the men they did not care for rather than be left an old maid. One could trace their growing dissatisfaction with life. Their husbands devoted to them, but they come secretly to dislike them more and more. With the men out of jobs and or rendered redundant by obnoxious government policy and inertia and lack of money, the wonderful all – intoxicating money, prostitution illuminated their drab life and the expectations of easy money and the means to educate their children as they wished where government have failed society. And so quietly and determinedly, this self-contained unhappy ambitious women always wanting what they haven’t got ( people go a bit queer sometimes when they are like that). As time went on these women could no longer be able to conceal their dislike for their husbands. The poor men would become seriously upset and distressed and helpless. A gale of divorces, separation and single parenting and the burden on the society in a glass.

The Almajiris – people marked out by fate and society to be a victim. Here are kith’s and kin’s, everyone for himself, hanging in and around the nation with their mouths open, all as poor as Church mice – whatever church mice may be – all hoping. And what do the ruling class’s do? The miserly relatives sit down on the dibs as if the treasury was their own to do with as they liked. The country was the worst for it.

I felt suddenly tired, old; depressed. What legacies was the nation from its deep well of considerable fortune ever known to man under its ocean beds bequeathing on this innocently sinful eyes. Is the nation doing the right and equitable things or was just enjoying watching it’s future as if they are a scientific specimen. It just crossed my mind to wonder whether there might be some way of securing its future; while presently it was looking far from well.

Its youths now feel, they don’t understand – old people still chasing free money, don’t, they can’t, they don’t know what it is to live. And there they are – young, able to enjoy – and to spite the elderly, – they want their fun now. In this confusion, hope the nation in its calmness and detachment would be honest and examine its youths mindset. It would seem to me narrow-minded to condemn a thing that you have not even taken the time to examine, this time, its youths imperfectly understood, hectic, grasping life in a clear logical coldness.

The youths manners are affected. Boys and girls of no traditions, no roots – in fact, no breeding! Who got a certain amount of amusement out of their earnestness, and at bottom careless enough not to grudge the hardship their nation’s reckless and care free attitudes, obviously, gave to them, with its leaders fussy idea of governance, vaguely touching policies here and there without the least idea of what it was doing or where it is leading the nation; the youths, restless and excited, often view the nation with mingled affection, loyalty and contempt for a society that had made too many concessions to modernity.

My mind went over the nation’s sixty two years or so of independence and saw nothing glistering and notably noteworthy about its mien and atmosphere in and around the country. And – I’m being very sincere. Everything seemed vaguely disqui-eting and disconcerting. I tried to put this worrying thoughts out of my mind. It was no good. I stood up and like a shadow – stepped out into the living room and by the light of the night-light that always burned in a little saucer my bestie placed there because of the incessant power outages, I looked at the time, One o’clock, and I had never felt less like sleep.

The thoughts of the ruling class’s ludicrous queer fancies about political leadership and their ever recurrent lapses from virtues – though their apologies afterwards were always all that could be desired. With their optimism, would they know what they were and what to do? They could believe the worst with the utmost ease. The nation itself believed the worst with the utmost ease because of the painful boil on its intergluetal cleft that existed between the ruling class and the governed. It has become all quite quiet.

I went over it in my mind, in a panoramic view from the top of the tower down the rung of the ladder at the social, political and economic events – a bazaar that was a kaleidoscope of strange sights and stranger sounds side by side the journey from 1999 till I come to the present to be able to see at what point did the country arrived at the stairhead and started to descend the stairs in a stumble from its magnificence grandeur.

A thrill of incredulous horror shot through me, at the gloomy relish in disaster, poverty, wanton penury, lifeless and the dull, drab life all around. What a sharp interruption to the monotonous rhythm of the ruling class, and, what in plain English was a positive disgrace that with all the nation had gone and was still going through and had numerous bones broken, it might as well have taken down its shingle straight away.

To the damningly forthright exposé, the nation had to respond with spirit. But trust Nigeria – big brother Naija, lay with a frown on the face, thinking – thinking – responding absent-mindedly to the myriads of problems, well-meant fussing and then suddenly coming back to consciousness and rending her with a vitriolic tongue and a slight feeling of self-reproach. Maddening as everyone was, at being unable to do her best.

The youths here like everywhere else on the surface of the spherical universe are desperately unhappy. They had all a vigorous, strong-minded dislike of inaction. But could not decide upon any line of action, because the enabling environment were just not there. But their bark was a good deal worse than their leaders bite; they’re just being patient and good. A revolting habit for the radical growth and development the nation needed for its emancipation from the quagmires it had found itself.

My house built in a day when solidarity and beauty went hand-in-hand was on the main road, a modern by-pass now left it some two kilometres to the north of the mainstream of traffic, and in consequence it had kept an old-fashioned dignity and quietude. I was sitting by the window, looking out at the passing traffic, the stanzas of the hymns of the well-lined whistling pines complement the twittering, billings and cooings of the birds, and there was something particularly exciting to me in being once more in the roar of Abuja.

I was thinking how apt it was sometimes to attribute too much significance to facts capable of a natural explanation. I got the wind up, I realise that – but then – it was conceivably about something, the state of the nation. The reality on ground tells me so, and my instincts point it to me. At this, my spirit rose. There was something that was really odd about the present mood of the nation – one that one could not fathom. Not the fear of insurgency, Boko Haram, Fúlàní herdsmen, Niger Delta Avengers, Àmọ̀tẹ́kùn or whatever, but a kind of suffused, deliberately suppressed excitement seems to describe it best. Yet, all the young and the old with a kind of faint, anaemic satisfaction. The ruling class saying “We’re sorry”, without looking so in the least. The people are fed up. They want sound stuff. Good, honest politicians in the arduous tasks of nation building. People with – character – feeling. That’s what people, be it in America, Europe or elsewhere want nowadays.

The ruling class – a group of backstabbing knave gambits on the prowl as the race for political relevance and position (which is the premium) hots up, a tough competition. Competition spurs a man in, to a place of sharing the cake, misappropriation of funds and corrupt enrichments.

The people and their over-excited in manner ruling class and the ermine of the bench have a pretty opinion of each other – a pot that boils and seethes, and every now and then a significant fact comes to the surface and can be seen. However, the significant point came with a magnificent disregard of its significance. There is something in the depths there – yes, there is something in spite of the peoples insular prejudice on the politicians non below par performance.

I may as well say that, as far as it was proper for me to do so, on the ruling class’s proclivities – if you consider the state of the health, economy, environment, social infrastructure which were all flicks of a mocking crop in the nation’s woodpile, and you’ll be forced to admit, that one’s deductions were perfectly logical and admits of no misrepresentation. I’m not sure that the injustice to the poor people and the most vulnerable of the populace was legitimate in any way. That’s the ruling class’s creed. They were  jugglers juggling with a lot of different-coloured balls! They are all in the air at once. The different-coloured balls are the different lies they tell.

The pictures of the ruling class naively angling for space in the social circle with comedians and touts, thugs and their hangers on, it was like there was something wrong! I cannot be more precise than this, somehow, a feeling of unreality, as though there was something – some small point that was wrong – that the nation didn’t get right.

One finds the nation’s crop of politicians and their hangers on as a tomorrow that’ll always succeed today with monotonous regularity – an interesting study. There is I think, some deep-seated neurosis – but that is talking shop. I would not amuse myself in such a way.

To let a beautiful country run to seed is not the good policy. And some day, I think, there will come the air and crash! You can’t keep it up for ever. I must point out. That is true on one hand, and on the other, there will come the grand moment when they’ll catch the balls one by one; make their bow, and walk off the political stage. To yet another thunderous applause of a dull, unassuming audience; audience with no fight in them owing to a ravaging poverty of mind. That well may be, yes.

The nation have not learn pretty much in sixty years. After the rigmarole of elections, the people often say that they’ve done their best. Now it is on the knees of the gods. The elected Representatives with well-bred masks for faces, (how to strip the masks and show the faces for what it was, was the problem) hence, the quality that emerged often turned out to but nondescript and complicated; with the pendatic manners and mentality not suitable nor adapted to known norms of good governance, rather than a vivid, compelling creatures and ideas and deep underlying force of humanity in their visions and they see no occasion to blink or unveil the truth about the nation’s conditions.  But I knew a man once who had goitre and was proud of it! Wouldn’t believe that, but it’s true! Well, what I say is, it’s lucky when you’re pleased with what you have. It’s usually the other way about. The nation is grateful for democracy and may be for the personages it trumped up too. Let’s quickly subdue the mirth.

The nation should design new policies in its efforts at real development, integration and development of national consciousness, principles and politics. The government should:
a. direct forces and efforts at restarting the economy and putting it right.
b. It should be stocktaking to ascertain the extent of damage and degree of losses due to the lockdown occasioned by the Covid pandemic, and,
c. the prevailing status of affairs as a basis for meaningful future actions,
d.  economic decisions making should be democratised to enable individual economic units interact to take decisions,
e. enable the private sector to provide the driving force for economic growth and development,
f.  efforts should continue in this direction by the carrying out of more in-depth investigations on specific critical economic issues and its effective impact on the well-being of the citizenry,
g. security to guarantee the safety of life and property,
h. tailor the character of growth to meet the needs of the poor and address the twin problems of poverty and stunted economic growth,
i. revisit the bureaux de change and institutionalise reestablishment and the reorientation of the overbloated government bureaucracy to consider outsourcing, and make it a friendly, welcoming facilitator of investment and business; and frontier shifting activities, by government as initial steps to opening new grounds for the privatisation to operate.

The PDP fully in control of the APC’s convention, right now, the society was too much bad for its populace. A strange epitaph.

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Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger and writer.
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