In Edo, neither APC nor PDP merits a pint of your blood

Yes. I equally know that neither President Muhammad Buhari (PMB) nor Alhaj Atiku Abubabakr (AAA) would offer their son or sons as sacrifice to appease the gods of violence that constantly traverse this landscape whenever it is time to elect new authorities on this land. Why then would you offer your soul as sacrifice for the gods of greed and unconscionable ambition?

Do you remember his story? He was murdered by the party in power in that state during the latter’s campaign of vendetta against members of the opposition just before the court gave its verdict that it was the candidate of the opposition that actually won the gubernatorial election in the state. In other words, just before the king was crowned, just before power shifted from A to B, just before the rulers became the ruled, some people’s heads were put on the guillotine, mostly by force not by choice. They were killed in order that the king may ascend the thrown. He became the governor only after one or two of his most loyal followers had been sent to the other world by agents of the people in power who never wanted to leave power.

But that ironically is not where I am headed. Four years thereafter, just before the new governor completed his first term, the leader of the then ruling party, the governor who superintended the terror and brigandage which partly led to the murder of the supporters of the new head in the village, decided to jump ship. As soon as he did, the political equation in the state witnessed a quick and automatic realignment. Leaders of the opposition became leaders of the party in power. Murderers of yesterday became saints of today. The enemy of the new governor became one of his closest friends. What had been fair became foul; what had been foul became fair. Together, they now mounted the podium, danced and sang lullabies of love and friendship.

Meanwhile, the bones of the murdered friends and followers of His Excellency continue to wither and atrophy in their graves. Nobody remembered them anymore. Not their wives; not their children. Nor their aged mothers. Nobody could have remembered them thereafter. It is not because politicians do not, by choice, wish to remember their dead friends anymore particularly those who are killed in support of the cause and in defense of the mandate. It is simply because the dead has no value in political practice once it is dead. Unlike death in the cause of the Almighty, they who ‘taste’ death in active political practice while carousing the jaded and roguish political landscape of Nigeria might have nothing to ‘report’ in the hereafter. They who find death in the defense of their political parties or candidates may find difficulties giving good account of their sojourn while on earth.

Thus I pity the ordinary Nigerian who is caught up in the ‘madness’ of the moment. He has been told that there is no other alternative to good governance; that there is no alternative to democratic practice. But he equally knows that democracy is in and by itself a system of deceit, of treachery, of oppression. He knows that rigging is bad. Ironically, he equally knows that rigging has become part of democracy. Rigging has become part of ‘modern’ life. If rigging could occur in the United States, the socalled bastion of modern day democracy, then you have to forgive ‘riggers’ for perverting the popular will in other parts of the world. In fact, it has become arcane to “talk of rigging here” Bolaji Abdullah posited as far back as 2003, “when that is what the entire system is all about”.

Remember the injunction of the Almighty- do not push yourself, by your own volition, into perdition…’ (Quran 2: 195). if you kill for or allow yourself to be killed by these politicians, your death shall be a matter for ‘discussion’ between you and your Creator. On that day, PMB would tell you point-blank- “O! Almighty, I never met him in the world let alone gave him any instruction to kill or allow himself to be killed on my behalf”. On that day, PDP would disown you. The governoship aspirant would tell you to your face and in the presence of the Almighty- ‘this man is a fraud; he is corrupt. He wants to corrupt my account in your presence. I never met him for a moment while we were all on earth”.