What in 2023 should really be the Politics of a Pampered Potentate? -By Jimi Bickersteth

The trip towards Politics 2023 has begun even as the nation began to count loudly. The pounding of its men and women’s hearts kept pace with the counting amidst hunger and disenchantment for a number of reasons, some obvious, some latent and obscure, nonetheless, good grounds for the nation and its peoples feeling the way they do.

The RUGA War, the ethnic profiling and the Fulani herdsmen palaver, Zamfara massacre, the Boko Haram expedition, the covid-19 realities, the misconceptions about who we really are, the weak and trembling handsome across the Niger, the economic downturns, were cause(s) of the disenchantment, and, to add in parenthesis and bold letterings, a ‘Change’ that has kept the nation’s head ‘clean’ while the body is virtually left rotten and stinking.

The government on the other hand has been distracted from the present day realities and some of the peoples concerns and situations of fear; and, appeared to have got lost in the reverie of its daydream, grand designs and topped it all with the conspiracy of silence. The silence, deafeningly loud that no-one is sure about what was going to happen the next minute.

The government have Itself in a situation where its become self emasculated and deadened to the suffering of its mass of humanity in this Dickensian slum with bad social conditions and a narrative of why the nation was a disunited bin in the contemporary conception of modern governance in light of output growing and the mass of the people growing poorer.

The people are often dazed with the ever increasing fuel prices, increases in tariffs and charges and taxes etc, because its leadership had embarked on an unsolicited borrowing spree. The government have seen no occasion to blink or unveiled the truth about the nation’s true conditions and situations, including the correct information about its debt stock and commitment, the catalogue of grand insecurity and the resultant massacres, macabre and harvests of deaths everywhere: added to all that, the PMB’s administration couldn’t solve in seven years or so, the mystery of hardships on the nation whose nature it was apparently, becoming clearer they had no knowledge whatsoever.

A lot of things happen because of what there was in the past, and it is doubtful if the current happenings would not produce a sequel. The nation was existing in the past and in a new deluxe edition – a rebirth of the old sentiments and emotions as has been shown by the BAT’s visit to the president last Monday, a visit that has brought to the fore in a way, that there are things in the nation’s configuration that should be made known as a definite part of her history, conventions and construction, so that, those who aimed at eventual power being placed in their hands, in the future, would not return a verdict of misadventure. More on that another day.

A ‘clean’ nation with a dazzling debt profile of about $39.6trlllion, struggling compos mentis under the weight of an inflation rate that has risen to 15.63 percent and a government via VP Yemi Osinbajo Economic Council clamour for a Blue economy as a way out of the present malaise and quagmire. All of which has become burdensome on a 200million strong people whose nation thrives on its service industry and strangely enough, unable to run a 24/7 economy in its corruptly bastardised economic environment even before the covid-19 induced and new wave of recession, because of leadership absence and lacking the energy, power and human capacity to so do.

Talking about recession, were the countries borrowing the nation those large tranche of money from Mars? you’ll wont to ask, as I have repeatedly asked myself. The answer is capital, No! They are on planet earth, only that, they are knowledgeable enough to know that billionaires are made in recessions and have capitalised on those ethos, philosophy and as well capitalised on the nation’s leadership’s ignorance, even as the nation capitulated in the debts traps.

May I add here that, long after the recession the nation would still continue to wallop in abject poverty as it would be saddled with debt servicing and or rescheduling. Then the nation would know how much of its destiny that has been mortgaged. What the nation presently see is an economy in Red, and would perhaps wait patiently as it rides out this dithering, lustreless administration and begin afresh, and perhaps, add more to its debt stock and profile. Meanwhile, in the same instance, a Namibia, nearby was aiming at success with its green energy revolution.

The arid country is ambitiously setting up the world’s biggest green hydrogen plant – a game-changer anyday, as crude oil, Nigeria’s mainstay, has and would continue to be volatile and under immense pressure owing to factors that were,
i. out of the nation’s control,
ii. corruption,
iii.lack of transparency, and,
iv.an increasing capital-intensive exploration budget.

I was still at the task of putting this together as the birds in the trees around me awoke to the dawn and twittered as they foraged for breakfast. On the other side of the perimeter fencing the city came to life. A train whistle shrieked, wagons rumbled over cobblestones. I had a view of the men on the wagon tops. Shopkeepers came out of their homes, breathed the crisp morning air deeply, and headed for their businesses. My wife dragged the sleeping children out of bed and made them ready for school.

Seeing the maddening and struggling crowds I shuddered and my spirit was broken, knowing full well that the crowds were struggling for mere pittance and subsistence living. I saw a nation finding it difficult to rein in its large population metastasis and with no aim of fertility reduction, and whose only techniques to get water from the stream to the city was using a basket. Pure dithering, simplicita!

As the days pass by, the nation continue to toss and roll, albeit, to all intents and purposes, it is becoming increasingly imperative that the nation needed serious export to balance its trade so as to cushion the implications of its current debt stock on its macroeconomics and in the face of the multidimensional threats posed by the great Chinese trade encirclement of Africa named Road and Belt initiative aka the New Silk Road, especially as berthed in the Suez canal, Egypt.

The world knows that the primary objective and overiding strategy of the Road and Belt initiative is clearly, to:
a. choke off Africa’s manufacturing by Africans,
b. create a gigantic and enigmatic Chinese behemoth, and,
c. fill up all openings in business, investment and even industrial opportunities.

Europe as it were, proactive as always, is breathtakingly, rallying to contain the Chinese onslaught, because this Belt and Road initiatives transverses all of Europe and by inference the EU by rail, all the way to the British isles. But for the nation, the government’s reaction to the challenges posed to its wellbeing by the Belt and Road initiatives have further shown how backward in thinking and reactionary in nature the nation’s policies were; and what banal and an arcane ritual(s) its ‘Politics-of-no-vision’ have become amongst the committee of nations, and how, rather than being proactive and forward looking with insight and with benefits of hindsight, or what maybe called foresight the nation have at best remained static with its ‘silly game.’

As the nation again launches into Politics 2023, all the prospectus on display have shown presently that the nation’s own version of politics is still going to look like such a ‘silly game.’ A game in which one must be lucky. The card has to win or lose. How do you get good odds in that type of game. Even at that, one must watch it, so that one’s intuition is not defeated. In the next few days until the declaration of the winner and subsequent swearing-in, the nation would be soaked with sweat, and tears and passion’s nectar.

Presently, early days yet, its become more like war in the North, South, East and West with verbal weapons and combatants trying to overpower and destroy each other on the one hand and killings, maimings and kidnappings on the other. After all said and done, nothing would be settled and nothing resolved. Politics- treachery-scandal. The nation’s Politicians make us all pawns in the greater game of history. But, they hardly recognized that no one can stand in the way of history.

So bad this days that government with all its inherent and extant powers can’t frighten or intimidate, no more. A government is just a puppet these days, a symbolic representation. The beginning of tragedy, Goethe’s Faust. The season when ambitious persons surrender moral integrity in order to achieve power and success for a delimited term.

I could hear the rustle of leaves against the window pane and the small noises of the house settling itself into recess as it was now empty and devoid of the children and their mother’s presence, I caught sight of the TV analysts assessments of the state of the nation, the wisdom in the north/south zoning arrangement or understanding, the permutations and the chances of which geopolitical zone gets the nod to present presidential candidates and the choices of the contenders at the primaries and election proper; and what appeared like one of humanity little victories in its war against life. I came to the conclusion that, for some of the contenders, to be great is just not to stir without great argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honour’s at stake.

The nation’s politicians would always move and toss and bargained hard to win looking like the cat that stole the cream. Mother nature watching us with an expression of supreme disgust on our face. Nigerians! Cowards! Politics was our mistress and we give ourselves up to the pleasure of the moment and let the future take care of itself. But a nation on the horns of dilemma needed to do more.

What the nation’s got today as the distance between the gulf of reality and truth and lie widened the nation’s burden of confusion and doubt begin to double. But it’s future would resolve itself. It has always been like that. In the search for good governance, freedom, liberty in 2023, equity and justice were all the nation want and desire.

At this point, I began to wonder fleetingly about how politics could be the tools of destruction and devastation one moment and a saving source of money, profligacy, warmth and comfort the next. It would have been a good moment for a glorious prima donna rage for the nation’s political system churning out a list of ‘corrupt’ men. A sick system it was, a pampered potentate.

Here, in retrospect, I recalled to heart the last primaries in 2019, that evening, the sky was a vast gleaming canopy of stars in a country that had been festering on the edge of a precipice. I recalled the situation in the Portharcourt convention and everywhere else where the APC conducted its NWC’s programmed primaries, they were everything the nation had been led to expect, and worse.

The muddy streets after the relentless rains were jammed with hopeful prospectors, willing to sell their souls for a shovel or a spade, or even a coil of rope. Inspired, fanatical believers in anything, restructuring inclusive. People who were made nervous by selfish opportunism of the politicians. None of whom would have been so impressed if they know how the nation came to this sordid pass.

The people should acknowledge that beyond the lips restructuring, the nation needs an intelligent, efficient planners not this perverted men that has grown fat on the troubles on the land and who probably had stolen from their fellowmen to boot. This men with the eyes of cheats. This fumbling and gambling politicians with their Knaves of hearts distraught, dishonest wolves in politics, one would have thought in a game of politics every player would be honest, on every game, every card.

One’s sympathy goes out to the poor but good people and all of the rest losing out in the power game, the eminent list is endless and all encompassing; state governors, senators and so on, it was just their bad luck to have fallen in love with the political parties of their choices when it was at its worst, possessed by such passionate fury that they became irrational, traveling over the most hideous and desolate terrain.

At the February 2019 victory run a few children ran after the politicians waving and shouting. They were mostly the unwanted offspring of harlots, or children and wards of peasants and downtrodden. Mostly children of two worlds who belonged to neither. Boys and girls who had defied everyone, society and family and who badly need the nation’s help. But today, with 2023 around the corner, they were still where they were. That is what it is.

Of course, I’ve known the nation’s politicians and the people for a long time. They are like opposite sides of the same coin: one fair, the other dark: one kind, the other hard. Light and shadow. Good – and evil. Time Will tell. 2023 was going to be a classic confrontation.

The men contesting for the 2023 ticket would have on their launching pad the presumed sympathy to the causes that the South East and South South considered important. Some would pretend to be an Igbo president, I doubt if that was what the people of the Igbo extraction were actually looking for. In any event, may the better candidate win.

Nonetheless, in 2023, ‘We the people’ must save the country from the political parties or more accurately to save the country for the parties. The country is all we have. Hmpf! But then people would have to choose where they wanted to go, and no one had ever bothered to train them how. The funny part was that the press wasn’t given the real meat of the matter. Be that as it may, the contestants would be equally good, equally strong and gracefully sure of themselves. Fortunately, I thought they’ll not be equal in other things, and that makes the nation’s choice easy.

In 2019 the conditions in Portharcourt and outside the city enroute Owerri were unspeakably squalid and they still remained so. I passed a line of cribs (and I’m sure most of the serious contenders did too) which were really just mean sheds where the lowest grade of prostitute worked for virtually nothing. I compared the sheer opulence and grandeur of the FCT Abuja with what I had just seen. It hardly seemed fair.

Who is going to preach about social responsibility to our politicians. No one. That is why I was so unhappy with all the state governors for their ineptitude and negligence of.duties, particularly, on security matters. So upset at the shape things were taking, that I could hardly bring myself. It really wasn’t fair to the civil servants and pensioners to forget to pay their salaries and pensions or Afu (half) it.

I stared hard at the three fat goldfish in the aquarium in the sitting room. Lucky creature who didn’t have a care in the world. In contrast, it’s as if the politicians have put a brand on the people’s – hearts. Unfortunately our people take their illusions about the politicians and good governance to the grave.

#JimiBickersteth

Jimi Bickersteth is a super blogger and writer.
He could be reached on Twitter
@BickerstethJimi
@alabaemanuel
@akannibickerstet
Emails: jimi.bickersteth@yahoo.co.uk
jimi.bickersteth@gmail.com
jimi.bickersteth8@gmail.com