Be ethical and godly in your ways as we approach the primary and general election. Should you ultimately scale through the contest and eventually be elected, remember your duty of accountability to the people and God, the giver of power. It is sad that what I am saying here is not new.
These admonitions have been made in the past but your Ojelu colleagues have refused to change. I must not forget to send you to the superhuman in your class; the Aristotelian unmoved mover of your mould; those politicians who behave like God and test the will of God. They are another species of politicians.
They are the godfathers who believe they are God. They are the ones behind whom nobody should be appointed or elected to a political office. The fortunes of others must receive their sanction or endorsement or, otherwise, will be turned to misfortunes. They are the ones who dance on the fresh corpses or graves of their colleagues in the struggle to purloin the seats just vacated by the deceased.
They do not think anyone deserves to live but by the mercy of the godfather. They think and behave like mafiosi and arrogate to themselves what God did not endow them with. These people are the ones that the masses worship in order to earn an undeserved living. They are wealthier than most states in Nigeria but their sources of income are not traceable to legitimate efforts. They adorn the political landscape of the nation. They live in palaces beyond human imagination at whose tables crumbs are available for the masses and yet they pretend to be lovers of the masses. These are the giant parasites that have suffocated the system. With them holding on to their creed of politics, this nation cannot survive.
Within the subdivide of the Ojelus are the less privileged politicians who are on the lower rungs of political parties but are in the majority. They are the ones who mobilise for the big Ojelus to continue dominating the political space. They believe it is a virtue to be jobless politicians with the entitlement mentality that they must be paid for rendering no economic service to earn a living. They are so optimistic that one day they shall be appointed to hold political offices, notwithstanding their competence or lack of knowledge of governance. They are the ones who bad-mouth good and performing office-holders who have decided to provide infrastructures with public funds rather than distribute it as a largesse to members of the party.
These people are Ojelus who claim to be politicians and are encouraged by the big Ojelus to continue in their vocation of laziness and parasitic excrescence. They are ever willing tools in the hands of the Ojelus. More than 1,000 women gathered last Monday at a party office, claiming they were politicians and doing nothing but dancing around in the name of politics. They claimed they were endorsing a particular office-holder for a second term. These are women young enough to constitute the entire workforce of a local government. They are contributing nothing to the economy of their community but living as parasites on the system. Some of them see politics as an opportunity to fraternize with men of reckless sexual appetite who market political activities as a cloak to access women who are in desperate need of money. Some are actual widows while many are “widows” with husbands. These are women whose husbands are the living dead whose responsibilities only comprise sleeping with women to father children but with no economic contribution to the home. These women call themselves politicians and are passionate about party politics, the kind you have created for them. They are the prolific inventors of beautiful songs to praise you to high heavens at public gatherings, sending you to perpetual slumber and indolence in office, while reserving the most acerbic and derogatory lyrics for your real and imaginary enemies.
Worse is an army of young men, agile, strong and able-bodied, who believe that the only way to riches is politics. Once appointed into political offices, they live in pubs, impregnate loose women running beer parlours and, in some instances, put the same women’s daughters in the family way at the same time. Only God knows how many women are regretting the day they introduced their young daughters to their political concubines who turn out to be husband to the young woman but concubine to the mother. What an inglorious avenue you have turned politics into! Your cliché of “no morality in politics” has become a national anthem among your followers. Moral depravity has become a virtue in your household of politics that no one bats an eyelid to protect personal interest, to the detriment of collective interest.
The Monday event I referred to was a festival of shame. These men and women are vermin produced by the system, nurtured by the political class to sustain its hold on power. This is the product baked by our politicians. This is the no-value-added service rendered by politicians to our economy. Do we need any soothsayer to tell us that, with developments of this nature, the future is bleak for the nation? This obviously shows the emptiness of politicians’ productivity to the nation. The politicians must, therefore, be credited for elevating the negative side of politics to an enviable status among the masses. Young politicians do not see anything wrong with this style of politics, as their mentors have been seen as specimens and role models of what successful politicians look like. Politics is now the main focus and vocation among all and sundry in the nation.
It appears to be the only surviving industry in the nation, as everyone lives on the rentier economy effectively fostered by the government. It is the shortest route to fame and wealth, no wonder the cost of governance in Nigeria is astronomical, with sizeable portions accompanying the politician’s home. Have you noticed Nigerians in other vocations that ordinarily are enviable resigning to go into politics? Some resign as bank managers and from other lucrative jobs to enter politics simply because the Ojelus among us have made it the best source of survival and reverence. They have seen their predecessors amass wealth within a short time beyond a lifetime’s earnings can put together.
It seems politics is, therefore, the only vocation left for them to consider since there is no such free money in business as guaranteed in our model of politics.
Young graduates move into politics directly now aspiring to go to the House of Assembly, become local government chairmen or, worse case, become councillors. They are not motivated by the passion for good governance but just to be among the active participants in the pilferage going on. That is why, once their ambition of securing the ticket to contest an election is not met in one political party, many do not see any sense in retaining their membership of such a party but rather cross to another to which they would have been lured by some petty funds or promises. This equally explains why the country appears not to have any future.
These are the people that are supposed to be the leaders of tomorrow but are already contaminated by the Ojelus.
The youth are certainly not blind to the occurrences in the country and tend to emulate their elders who are the Ojelus. Whoever did this to us must be wicked! Whatever the Ojelus touch they violate. Even traditional institutions that are meant to be custodian of our values, morals and culture have been desecrated. Traditional institutions have been destroyed by the reckless office holders who, as Governors, do not think that the future of the people must be considered above their tenured offices. The process of selecting a king is already hijacked by politicians. They impose derelict elements on communities in the game of preferring a stooge to someone they cannot control. Such individuals on the throne have nothing to offer the people but only desecrate the throne together with the customs of the people. It is unfortunate that we have bandits in political offices whose sole ambition is to replicate their replicas in all offices. Community development is of no moment to the Ojelus. It is preferable to have a delinquent in a palace as a King than to have an educated and development-oriented prince whose aspirations for the people may not be in tune with the rentier politics of your Ojelu ruling class. You have travelled to various countries of the world. Tell us where things are done the way you do things here. You have marketed religion to our people as an opium which has completely intoxicated them.
Hence, you reward their political parochialism by sponsoring them on pilgrimage to Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. You use money meant for building schools, establishing and equipping hospitals, creating jobs, provide security etc. to rather send them on a spiritual journey of no benefit. They return with the confused minds that worship their destroyers. You demand 100% loyalty from them having made them unconscionable paupers and conspirators in the business of mortgaging their future. No wonder they willingly hand over their lives to you to do as you will. It is better for you to kindly reconsider your brand of politics. It is better for you to think of posterity while you still have the opportunity to be penitent. We cannot appreciate your egoistic altruism if you only realise the need for good governance when you are out of office and you consider us idiots that can be fooled again for you to be elected back to power.
Let me also warn the politicians to steer clear of the judicial process. In recent times, because the courts are beginning to assume the role of the electoral umpire by determining the elected candidates as in the infamous Imo case, politicians are beginning to be less aggressive election-wise and rather now permutate on judicial victory. They strive to ‘procure’ pliable judges to secure undeserved electoral victory. They should stop at extending their filth to the judges and contaminating the judicial water. While I will not discourage any petitioner from ventilating his right where desirable, I plead that the politicians refrain from tampering with the judicial process in any way. For now, I say no more on this as I do not want you to preempt the forthcoming letter to the judiciary. In the like manner above, I admonish you, politicians, to desist from thwarting the electoral processes through your manipulative tendencies and acts. As you do the ugly practice, remember that God will ultimately twist your and your family’s destinies also. There certainly can be no salvation for you. With this, I urge Nigerian politicians to turn a new leaf in the coming elections. This is the kindest call we can make or demand of you. We cannot demand of you to de-educate your children you trained abroad with our money while teachers’ salaries are not paid in Nigeria. We are not that wicked to demand that you lose your children to malaria that has rendered many families desolate by death when you took the money meant for stocking drugs in the hospitals.
We are not that unforgiving to wish you misfortunes that you visited on our people while pretending to be the leader they deserve. Such decisions can only be made by your creator who knows what you deserve. We are only entitled to demand that you politicians lift your knees off our necks to enable us breathe under good governance. It is when politicians consider our pleas worthy of consideration that we can allow them to tell us about the beauty of good governance that they currently deny us. Nigerian situation depicts simply bad governance and nothing more. Politicians across board must, therefore, in line with my admonition above, develop minimum national ethical standards. Their iniquities have put Nigerians in a dishonourable position worldwide and forced us into notorious vocations unbefitting of a human being. Please repent and allow us to breathe good governance. I am sure that all I have said above is not new to the politicians but in their usual characteristics of being deaf and dumb to wise counsel, we need to continuously reiterate it, hoping that God would touch their conscience at a point. In the absence of this, I may wish the politicians the nature of the year that they wish for the masses. I am yours sincerely, Muiz Banire.
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