The Land of Comedus -By Tony Osakpamwan Agbons

In the all-time literary classic, The Animal Farm, famed writer George Orwell painted a clear picture of a dire scenario of the power of greed, avarice, and communal disorganisation. It tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. As the plot thickens and plays out, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state even worse than it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.

You may wonder why I am pulling out this allegory. Look no further dear reader. The Nigeria of today is no different from the Animal Farm. The human farmer in our case is legion. They are some satanic creatures and wicked constituents of our political class who have held the country down especially in the last two decades. These devilish venomous political elites are suffocating the ‘farm’. Like vipers they are snuffing life out of the millions of ‘humans’ on the farm – 133 million of them as at the last count by the National Bureau of Statistics in November 2022. As the report highlighted, these demographic hundreds of millions are ‘absolutely poor’. Nearly 70% of the Nigerian population are absolutely poor. No wonder we pride ourselves as the poverty capital of the world. Shame, shame.

Speaking with some friends last week as we analysed the above, the question on our mind was, HOW ON EARTH DID WE GET HERE? The answer is simple and yet not so simple. Successive governments at the local, state, and federal levels in Nigeria have failed to develop the country. They have failed to harness the enormous natural and human resources God Almighty has blessed the land with. Critical sectors – Education, Health, Agriculture, Transportation, Aviation, Power, Housing, Technology remain comatose.

A major catastrophe of our country is the contamination of the democratic process. More worrisome is the STATE CAPTURE (to borrow the words of the cerebral political economist/scholar, Professor Pat Utomi) by the dark minded political class. The propensity of our current political leaders to appropriate our collective patrimony and commonwealth to their pockets is earth shaking. These daredevil ‘inhuman beings’ live in opulence while those they are elected to serve live in abject penury.  These inhuman beings are out again during this 2023 election cycle promising the ‘beaten people’ heaven on earth.  They are the APCPDP sucking duopoly. There is thankfully a silver lining after the tunnel. Nigerians are being offered OBIdiently a different pathway to national rebirth and regeneration.  The question however is, are Nigerians ready to take their destiny in their own hands? Are Nigerians going to once again swallow hook, line, and sinker the recycled lies of the political hawks holding down their necks and snuffing the life out of them.

For 16 years (1999-2015) the People`s Democratic Party, PDP superintended over the affairs of the land. With hindsight some will say now, those years were better. Enter, the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. Like Napoleon in the Animal Farm, they promised ‘change’ (2015) and ‘next level change’ (2019). Change indeed! Are Nigerians better now in 2022 than we were in 2015? I will leave you dear reader to carry out your own personal empirical analysis and decipher your answer. No ifs, no buts, ipso facto. Three months into the 2023 election campaigns, the stage is agog in the Land of Comedus. What a joke our beloveth Nigeria has become.

The first consideration in my cerebellum is what exactly do Nigerians want? Are we ready to change the status quo and make a departure from the current dilapidated political structures doting our landscape. By a divine arrangement, Nigerians are being offered a new menu of transformational leadership via the Obi-Datti ticket. It is a nutritious healthy diet ladened with vitamins, carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, fats, and oils in their right proportions. This menu is set to cure the current social-economic malnutrition in the land. Curing our socio-economic Kwashiorkor and the reset of our style of governance at all levels is an urgent imperative. Failure to do so will mean our continued socio-economic loss of muscle mass, and an eventual implosion of the entity called Nigeria. Not sounding overly pessimistic, there already are ominous signs and symptoms of looming danger ahead. With the high level of unemployment among the youthful population, the higher level of insecurity and the highest levels of abject-multi-dimensional poverty in the land, it is only a matter of time before a sulphuric inferno consume our land. The dooms day is fast approaching if we chose to do nothing.

Looking at the campaigns of the frontline candidates for the presidency in 2023, it is laughable that it is same old, same old methods and techniques from the so-called establishment political parties – APC and PDP. It is the same old storyline and rhetoric. Long on talk but short on creative ideas, strategic plans and the how. It is the same name-calling, insults, and abuses of opponents as well as deliberate `dodging` of facing the real issues. It is comical that the APC `emilokun` presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in an attempt to play the ethnic and religious card, has inadvertently convoluted himself in a spider web. The Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC is a dagger on the nexus of the central nervous system of project Nigeria. At a time, when the ethnic, tribal, and religious temperature is at fever pitch, the APC has shown a lack of respect to the religious sensitivity of the Nigerian state. Some may argue that it doesn`t matter if both the President and Vice President are Muslims. That is a story for the gods! It certainly does matter in a country like ours.

The Emilokun BAT certainly is topping the charts for gaffes in the Land of Comedus. The Nigerian people have never had it so comical. The comedy of errors have meandered from the `it is my turn rant` to `tia tia umbrelatta`, `God bless APCPDP`, `A town hall different from bala blu, blu, bulaba..`, `El Rufai changing a rotten situation to a bad one`, Niger Delta State and recently, to `Chatham House drama of Teamship` to mention but a few. Nigerians are stunned and wondering if Bola Tinubu has the physical and mental capacity for the office of President. The regularity of his gaffes has become one too many. Since becoming the APC flagbearer, BAT has been ‘dodging’ the independent Nigeria media, reputable ones for that matter like our darling AriseNews and Channels TV.  Any Nigerian politician, aspiring for our top CEO job and capable of pouring aspersions on these two distinguished, leading media brands is a joker.  Both AriseNews and Channels TV are unarguably the go to media in Nigeria at the moment. They are both not afraid to interrogate and speak truth to those in power and those aspiring to be in power. Both Television stations have done nothing wrong. They are doing their jobs excellently and professionally in line with global best practices and as the fourth estate of the realm.

A presidential candidate (no matter the level of self-entitlement) who cannot humble himself to attend a high-profile Town Hall Meeting and articulate his/her agenda to Nigerians and be interrogated by Nigerians is not fit for the highest office in the land. I stand to be challenged. Effective leadership all over the world is directly proportional to effective communication, engagement, and rapport with the people before and after assumption of office. Nigerians have been through this road before. The incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari adopted this same method. He evaded all attempts to make him take part in debates. Some may argue that nothing in our electoral laws makes it expedient for candidates to attend debates and town hall meetings.

Truth be told, any candidate unwilling to romance with citizenship in one-on-one Q&A discussions is definitely hiding something either from lack of content or due to cognitive deficiencies and decay. You can take that to the bank. To further rub salt on injury, the ‘spectacular’ display of ‘Teamship’ by BAT, in broad day light, at Chatham House, London is to say the least toxic. Nigerians were taken to new levels of mediocrity and utter disdain. The comedy became a tragedy! A presidential candidate unable to answer critical questions on national discuss verbatim is a no-no. Let’s not deceive ourselves. Anybody literate enough in the English language can read anything from a scripted paper or teleprompter. This BAT can therefore not hide under the guise of ‘Teamship’ to cajole Nigerians. We are smarter this time. If Tinubu gets away with this, then interviewing process for hiring the best candidates for private and public sector jobs in Nigeria could as well be done by proxy. Students will write exams by proxy. Every Nigerian going for a job interview can pass interview questions to a Daniel, Shadrach, or Abednego. Welcome to the Lion’s Den! There will be justification for such actions. God forbids!

Similarly on the flip side, there is also the self-proclaimed, decorated, recurring heavyweight presidential contender of all time, former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar. He is trying to turn back the hands of the clock. He has been in the `ring` for 30 years vying for the top job. At 76 years old, many wonder what it is he is looking for at the Presidential villa. Afterall, US President Joe Biden got into office aged 78, some will argue. They forget that the United States is a nation on auto pilot. They already have a system in place that is running unlike ours. The challenge before Atiku Abubakar is the Law of Karma. For the 2015 elections, he insisted that then seating President, Goodluck Jonathan step down for a candidate of northern extraction. Reason? President Olusegun (South) has done 8 years and Late President Musa Yar’Adua (North) didn’t complete his tenure. President Jonathan therefore had no moral authority to contest in 2015. Atiku defected to the APC and joined forces with Bola Ahmed Tinubu to install incumbent President Buhari from the north.  The latter is about to complete 8 years in the saddle and this same Atiku is plotting to succeed him. What an irony of fate? I laugh in Latin! Atiku ran back to the PDP after falling out with Buhari and the cabals in the APC. Does it add up? Is the north – south power shift arrangement Atiku championed pre-2015 no longer the norm? Why is Atiku changing the goal post during the match? Does he think that Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia? The same Atiku Abubakar is now running from pillar to post trying to placate former President Goodluck Jonathan to join and add his voice to his campaign train. You try well well sir. Let me remind you in case you have forgotten. You cannot eat your cake and have it. The world certainly does not revolve around you alone.

For Nigerians both at home and in the diaspora, suffice it to say that we have a chance of a lifetime to change the course of our history and take back our land now. The Obi-Datti combo are the drivers of the vehicle to deliver the pristine product. They are the drivers to take us to a new Nigeria. Both men have track records showing they have what it takes to deliver the transformational leadership we have been yearning for. We must not let this opportunity slip past us. Nigerians everywhere are tired of been tired. We need succour and rest. Every nation has its ‘Aha moment’. Ours has come via the Obi-Datti ticket. This is not the time to sit on the fence and do nothing. Get up, go get your PVC if you haven`t done so. Come on election day in February 2023 and vent your anger with your PVC. Your PVC is the bullet you need to get your shot at National liberty! Vote obidiently and wisely for character, competence, fitness, and capacity. Do not be deceived by the theory of Obi-Datti cannot win. Says who? Enough of all the drama in the land. Peter Gregory Obi and Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed will win. The ball is now in our court. We must quit the comedy that is the circus and adopt the seriousness with the focus to nurse our malnourished nation back to vibrant health. We The Nigerian People. We Decide Who Wins. Not Them.

Dr Agbons is founder of the Institute of Good Governance @www.twin2.org