The Brewing Distraction

ENGAGEMENTS By with  Chidi Amuta

The Nigerian politician is a most futuristic animal. He is above all else a most distractive creature, forever creating political outlets and ventilations. While our civil society remains reactive, our political class is eternally ahead in terms of setting an agenda for distracting the attention of the polity for purposes of keeping itself busy in terms of the direction of what happens next politically. Check: 2027 is literally four years away. Check: the Tinubu presidency is a little over a year old. Check: all the calamities that  hell holds in stock for bad places on earth has converged on Nigeria. The possibility that Mr. Tinubu and his rabble assembly of a government is likely to solve any of our serious crises remains an illusion. Yet, politicians must remain active and relevant.

Four years to the end of the Tinubu tenure, some politicians are gearing up for what happens in the next election, in 2027. Overwhelmed by the present realties of a state that is literally at a halt, some politicians would rather overlook the present so that public attention can skip present difficulties and focus on 2027.

Creative and futuristic as always, our politicians have found a way to keep busy and get the people politically engaged. The specter of 2027 has been fast -forwarded. It is as though the next election is next year. No need to worry about bandits and the endless flow of blood all over the land. No need to worry about the elongating unemployment queues. No need to worry about how many baskets of useless Naira notes you need to buy a miserable US dollar.  Forget what the market women are telling you about high prices of food items. They are all killjoys who are hell bent on spoiling the party of the Tinubu renewed hope mandate party. Just listen to the new song from the politicians or better chant the new old national anthem.

Mr. Bode George, a constant gadly and overgrown child of South-west political rabble rousing, has been busing engaging Atiku Abubakar in recent times.  He has advised Mr. Abubakar who aspired to be the next president to prepare instead for the 2031 presidential elections instead of even the 2027.

Worse still, several groups of serious politicians from the northern hemisphere of the nation have lately been meeting. There is no secret about their agenda. They are prepping for the 2027 presidential election. Their agenda is simple and straightforward. They are united by two things. They got left behind by the Tinubu gravy train and now  all crave for the centre stage next time around. They cannot wait. More importantly, they have nothing tangible to keep them busy between now and 2027.  For now, they are united by a curious consensus to recruit ex- President Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2027 presidential election to ensure that Mr. Tinubu does not have the chance of a second term in the Villa. By this rough script, the political North wants to snatch the presidency from Mr. Tinubu who has not shown good faith or sufficient gratitude to the region in spite of his Muslim-Muslim ticket and inheritance of the former Buhari throng of voters.

The strong argument is that the Northern hemisphere of our political space in the APC supported his emergence of Mr. Tinubu in the Presidential Villa in compensation for the clueless Buhari whose most important object was political recompense to Mr. Tinubu. The aftermath of the Tinubu victory is looking more skewed to the northern political mind.  It is not just the sharing of pork that is at issue. The region is in a poor shape, perhaps worse than since the creation of Nigeria.

Security in the north is nasty,  brutish and almost non existent. The distribution of the gravy content of ‘renewed hope’ in the region is not quite as generous as was expected. The handouts to interest groups in the region do not seem as generous as it was even under the xenophobic Mr. Buhari. Bandits are helping themselves to the spoils of war instead of waiting to be served by willing political actors. So, what to do? Support the apparently harmless Mr. Jonathan to complete his entitled one term  so that presidential power can return effortlessly to the north.

The quest for the return of Jonathan is strictly not about better governance for Nigeria or indeed the beleaguered northern hemisphere. The power arithmetic is not about the quality of governance or what could make Nigeria a more manageable federation away from its present dilapidated state. The gathering political distraction is not about how to understand the dynamics of power and the current social and economic forces that have made the north such a dangerous place or even made the whole of Nigeria a bad place. It is a rehash of the same old North-South nonsense that has left Nigeria damaged and destroyed. The impending distraction is just another chapter in the bad chapter of Nigeria’s unending tragic tale of disastrous governance. We are still waiting for the political class that sees beyond region, religion and axis on the national compass.

In the renewed distraction, there is hardly any thought about imparting skills that will work for Nigeria as a whole. There is no discussion about functional education, economic empowerment, population control, urgent modernization and investment in education, agriculture and a different work ethics that prioritizes entrepreneurship, grueling hard work and productivity for better self actualization and overall national development. It is all about North-South, Muslim-Christian balancing. It is all about feeding the same old insatiable and unproductive political elite that has left the majority of the people stranded and abandoned. It is the feathering of the nest of the same runaway elite that has abandoned the people and relocated to villas in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Abuja, Lagos and Cairo.

Meanwhile, the hapless Mr. Jonathan is busy attending every available social event around the country in an unstated gathering campaign for what he does not quite fully understand. Himself a prime beneficiary of Nigeria’s politics of entitlement and allocation, Mr. Jonathan may have garnered quite some experience and exposure after office in his countless international democratic engagements. It is also quite possible that he has had time to reflect on his work experience as president to be better equipped for a retrial run. But the Jonathan proposition is a politically convenient distraction from the crushing  urgency of the tasks that call us all fiercely.

On his part, Mr. Tinubu who understands mostly the language of political survival has responded to the hints of his eventual ouster. In response to the imminent distraction, the Tinubu incumbency has found both a convenient political distraction and  veritable challenge. It is urgent. Mr. Tinubu has just settled into a cozy world of luxury jets, lush villas, endless motorcades, sweetheart contracts and endless junkets to all ends of the universe.

Tinubu is first and foremost a power monger and political entrepreneur.  His is an ultimate political entrepreneur, a merchant of power in the mot Machiavellian sense. Every power has a price tag and nearly every political outcome is a transactional.  Political survival is his foremost prerogative. He clutches to no ideal, rules by no principles or set of ideas. His prime objective is to be president of Nigeria by all means, which he has achieved. The other two entitlements are to hold the oil and gas cheque books and the key to the Central Bank. He has all these imperial booties in his clutch plus endless air miles on a fleet of luxury presidential jets.

All these would mean little if indeed Nigerians could see a clear purposive governance in place or in progress. Not quite sure. A gravy train is on the rail, coasting down  a sloppery slope almost unstoppable gradient. Now comes a bunch of killjoys who have declared their intent to stop Tinubu midstream. And he is not likely to turn a blind eye to this distraction.

Yet for whatever it is worth, the protection of his incumbency and its possible  tenure elongation into a second term is an urgent political  challenge which no incumbent president can leave unattended. In response to the PDP- based maneuvres on the Jonathan proposition, the Tinubu political machinery has reportedly swung into action to counter what may be its most consequential political threat. Counter groups have been mobilized. Internal APC  work groups have set up with a mandate to thwart the moves of the derailers. What lies ahead is therefore a battle royale. The political back and forth between the two sets of political forces is likely to  be the grand distraction of the season. 

The grand historic question is whether the Tinubu presidency will consign the urgent task of national salvation to the counter force of the battle for supremacy in 2027. The possibilities are ominous and frightening. The forces poised against national survival as themselves gruesome and determined. The forces of anarchy fuelling banditry, serial kidnapping, senseless murders in high places and sheer lawlessness are mindless and unhinged. No one is certain that the Nigerian state in its present state of disrepair will prevail over its traducers.

Yet we are at the moment of decision and prioritization. National survival must precede and supersede the survival of any individual power regime or calculus. The guarantee of a second presidential term sounds like a political expediency. In the nature of nations. Existence precedes essence. No matter how fanciful its format may be, a nation must exist before it manifests its goodness. The very survival of the Nigerian nation is the more pressing urgency. Without a nation to call home, there will be neither a presidency nor a tenure to elongate or argue about. It is only by reinforcing the pillars of national existence and ensuring good governance and a fair society that tenure elongation can be placed on the table. The basic ingredients of national prevalence are the same basic existential issues that today haunt the entire Nigeria: food, shelter, poverty, costs of living in the open market and some hope that basic safety of lives and property can be guaranteed by the state.