Nigerian Patriot, Tuesday, September 10, 2013 Page 5 Afflictions of retardative political clientelism COLUMN 08035496379 (sms only) e-mail: okeyelebe@gmail The PDP primary elections held recently across Ebonyi State to choose candidates for the local government election coming up in September in the State represented a damning and conspicuous display of hooliganism which politics and election management have come to be associated with in Nigeria. One of the local tabloids in the state was manifestly resourceful to bring to Ebonyians a detailed account in text and pictures of the brigandage that characterized the exercise. I believe, like many Ebonyians who are truly concerned about the efforts of some individuals to create and sustain at all costs hotbeds of crisis, that the outcome in terms of physical breaches of peace, law and order is just the nadir of what to expect in the main election. I saw the picture on the cover of the newspaper and it repugnantly expressed the fierceness of a man intent on eating up another for what we have been taught and touted as a mere game that should be bereft of bitterness. Nigerians have been consistently treated to gruesome and malignant events in the political field such that no dimension of violence is now new or shocking. But what is really dreadful is that even in the face of outrageous happenings, not even a lament is heard from those that Ebonyi people look unto for direction and leadership, especially the founding fathers, who rightly ought to be the moderating factor in the madness that is threatening to consume the state. The founding father group is one through which the struggle was actualized to earn a state for the people of Ebonyi to take their destiny in their own hands. Thus, they are inured with the principles of that struggle. It is therefore regrettable that they have stood by and watched the systematic stymieing of the growth and development of the state while an atmosphere of anomie is enthroned in the state by political predators. Are these truly those who dared the military? If they are, what has eaten up their courage, love for the state and fighting spirit? Some highly placed politicians in government exploited the authority and influence of their office to manipulate the PDP party primaries. From their offices and homes they placed calls that were taken with trembling and prostration by the party functionaries. Quality candidates who otherwise would have made a difference from the existing socioeconomic and political situation were mindlessly and unjustifiably disqualified to assuage the horrendous thirst of the buccaneers who are determined to appropriate our common wealth and auction the state. At the end, names of all manner of people, including nitwits and nincompoops were penciled down as qualified to contest for the office of Councilor in the various wards of the local government system. They were mostly hooligans, ill-bred, ignorant and illiterate persons who will be willing tools for evil assignments. Such are they who neither love themselves nor their communities, who readily relinquish certain percentage of their salaries monthly to their patron masters but also maintain maniacal devotion to the fetish oath they took. The stratagem is also aimed at ensuring that in the events and processes towards nominating and or electing candidates for higher offices at the state and national level, they will enjoy effortless birth at their targets. Nigerian masses have become puns in the chess board of ruthless politicians who mercilessly grab, knock and crush them to keep them in tow. They are gullible instruments in the hands of both the politician and the community elite. I have expressed it severally that governments in Nigeria, at all levels, have perfected policies and programmes to sustain or indeed up the current status of illiteracy and ignorance which have blinded the people to the atrocious denial of their rights, and their manipulation for the political advantage of the politician alone. The community elite is an ally of the politician. At the crucial time he exploits the people to serve the base desires and needs of the politician at the expense of the community’s growth and development. Of course, illiteracy and ignorance deny the people the courage to ask questions about things they don’t understand or demand for their rights. Without the elite, they have no voice. They are unable, therefore, to demand accountability. Rather, they are willing and contented to scramble for the crumbs from the politicians obscene and stinking pocket. The unfortunate death of Obasi Nwode, exposed not only the plundering but the sophistication as well, that take place at the local government system. It was alleged that during the swearing in of the former Deputy Chairman as the Chairman, the local government’s seal of approval could not be found. Information had it that the seal had been in the custody of the late chairman’s godfather since he took office in 2003. The new chairman had to produce another seal to enable him conduct with authority the financial transactions of the council. That revelation as published by one of the local newspapers is a damnable expose of the corruptive influence of godfatherism, political patronage or political clientelism, and the ignoble conflict between individual politicians’ inordinate desires and the people’s expectation of service delivery. It has brought to the fore the unmistakable fact that government, irrespective of the level, is yet to derive its powers from the people. As such, those who run government can hardly be held accountable for its actions because those actions are not taken by them but by the politicians who installed them, and so captured and pocketed the councils. It typifies a blatant and brazen disregard for democratic ethos, and indictment of government’s insensitivity to the gross misconduct, perfidy and connivance to fleece the people’s treasury and deprive them of their rights. The wanton concessioning of councillorship positions to the highest bidders and ruthless politicians has over the years exerted terrible effects on the development of the council areas, nay the country, and the socio-political and economic progress of the people. And unless something drastic, like revolution, takes place we shall continue with one step forward and two backwards. It is the tragedy of our political management that we have weirdly opted to traditionalise, idolize and idealise indolence, incompetence, deception and manipulations. It is because of this curious inclination to the unconventional that Nigerians were not taken aback by the ingenuous performance of Senator Ayo Akinyelure of Ondo Central before the women of his constituency when he was taken to task for his position on the controversial section 29 4(b) of the 1999 constitution slated for amendment. The Senator confessed his poor understanding of the intents of the clause as contained in the section dealing with the renunciation of Nigerian citizenship by women married to non-Nigerians. Nigeria’s education sector similarly suffers as a result of the perfection of the political aberration that established mediocrity as a norm in the affairs of the country. An alliance of those who claim to lead, and the ignorant and illiterate Nigerians provide the impetus for government to be brazenly and indiscreetly negligent of not only education but its high ideals, and to incautiously spurn agreements. Nigerians are unaware that they do not only deserve but are entitled to good life from the stupendous wealth endowed the country by God but are subjected to inhuman conditions and stone age experiences. Were Nigerians educated, they would have known that without competitive and functional education, they will live in their country like domesticated animals, if not worse. After all, the yearly budget of many Nigerian families will never equal the budget for animals being kept in Aso Rock. Any Nigerian who believes that there should be some differentiating qualities between man and animals should contribute in the present struggle to prevail on the government to suspend some of its crazy programmes and projects and channel the funds there from to the improvement of educational infrastructure. What happened in Anambra State between 1976 when it was created and 2007, when Dr. Chris Ngige became the Governor, is a shameful culture of larceny, lawlessness and impunity. They are being vigorously promoted, aided and abetted by government itself through deliberate disrespect for professionalism, impartiality, honesty, merit and accountability. Ngige’s ascendance to power in Anambra, though flawed and tainted, was a divine instrument for the deliverance of the state from political hawks who reaped bountifully for their personal development while the state lay prostrate, famished and rustic. Unfortunately, today, it has become a tradition that allows politicians to whimsically wield power, authority and influence over the local governments, and enact policies and decisions that deliver the resources to their pockets and homes.It is this anomaly that ensures that local governments pursue the narrow selfish interests of a few mindless politicians, which accounts for the opposition to autonomy for the local government system by such Nigerians. So, in Nigeria the ignorant and illiterate are in the lead. In such situation, both the lead and leader are fated for the pit. That is why Christ in Matthew chapter 15, verse 14 says: “Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” Nonetheless, the blind leader in Nigeria is so crafty that while he is leading, he dictates with his guiding stick the bread that the benevolent one lined the routes. He stoops, collects them without announcing it. At the end of the day, the leader has something to sustain the body and the soul, while the led go hungry. Those who accumulate ignoble wealth, power and influence at the expense of the poor, ignorant, illiterate and deprived masses do so in order to apply them to the oppression of the masses, to keep them in sub-human bondage, and leniently, in subservient conditions. They do so to carve out fiefdoms for themselves while the people wallow in slavery. Such men have the sentinel of judgment pronounced by God awaiting them. They will not escape it. For God said that what you sow is what you reap. For, according to the late pioneer Editor of the Newswatch magazine, Dele Giwa, no evil man will go unpunished. Any evil done to man must be paid for, if not now, then in future, and if not by man through human justice system, then surely by God in the hereafter. •Ugorji Amaoti, Ebonyi State PDP Chairman “...those who run government can hardly be held accountable for its actions because those actions are not taken by them but by the politicians who installed them, and so captured and pocketed the councils. It typifies a blatant and brazen disregard for democratic ethos, and indictment of government’s insensitivity to the gross misconduct, perfidy and connivance to fleece the people’s treasury and deprive them of their rights.”
Posted on: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:31:14 +0000
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