Season of Party Primaries in Nigeria: Heart of Darkness The ongoing blizzards (or should say hurricanes) of party primaries sweeping through the countrys political landscape are good pointers of character. They demonstrate quite clearly the true colours of the individual political parties involved in that threshold political exercise which serve as a prelude to the general election. Both the PDP and the APC are equally culpable in their own different ways. But I guess the PDP is much more villainous, in this instance, than the rest. From my observatory perch on top of Mount Siddon Look, to which I have voluntarily banished myself politically since November 2001 or so, I have a good and commanding view of the shameful goings-on in the exceedingly polluted valley below. Like the gruesome and cold-blood murders and or harakiri being committed daily by BH, ISIS and other terror groups in this fast- dwindling world of ours, the two political parties mentioned above are busy killing and maiming internal democracy on a scale scale that arguably has no precedent. It all began with the PDP national giving to Pres. GEJ an automatic and uncontested ticket to contest the 2015 presidential election under its platform, thereby completely and effectively shutting out all other aspirants to the same post within its fold. Now, the season of party primaries is fully here, coming in upon us and swamping the nations landscape like the incipient harmattan season. Ironically, though also much like the harmattan with its monochromatic grey pall, an exercise that is historically and conceptually designed to ensure political openness, transparency and the enthronement of people power via its democratic processes, has been turned into an audacious instrument of political darkness and obfuscation, complete with such vintage electoral deviousness conspiratorial disqualification of otherwise qualified aspirants, doctoring or falsification of delegates lists, ballot box snatching and disappearances, parallel primaries by members if the same political party, buying and selling of delegates votes and or souls, etc. etc. The more I survey the political valley beneath me, the more the activities taking place there resemble preparations, at different levels, for political failures. According to the Yoruba, Ile ti a fi ito mo, eri ni yi o wo - a house built with saliva will collapse at the touch of the morning dew. Definitely, it must be so; it cannot be otherwise. Wrong candidates being declared winners at the charades called party primaries and the mercenary delegates smiling to the bank with their Judas bribe-money. How can these evil oddities give birth to free and fair elections come 2015? Yow can such purchased candidatures result in vibrant, resourceful and benevolent representative governance? NEVER!!!! To that extent, where is hope or salvation for the common man in the sterile and fearful political afonifoji (a lonely and completely deserted road) described by the next time-bend, 2015 - 2019, in Nigerias calamitous journey to nationhood?
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 12:45:07 +0000
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