Fani Kayode and Dino Melaye on the loose

“I will, more than ever before, subject myself to severe self-discipline. Only men who are masters of themselves easily become masters of others. Therefore, my thoughts, my tongue, and my actions shall be brought under strict control always.”

Obafemi Awolowo, first Premier of the defunct Western Region, political thinker and leader extraordinaire offered those words in My march through Prison, an account of the events culminating in his trial for treason and subsequent imprisonment in 1963. This man, like other political leaders of his time, even though fallible in many ways, had deep philosophical foundations for his politics.

Awolowo, after only five years out of university, led one of the most intellectually-driven political associations in the history of the country. His party, the Action Group, had the complement of personalities whose sophistication, passion, and ideas still remain subjects of historical and political interest. They loved the people in ways that are still manifest today.

When the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) was formed in June 1949, its leader, Sir Ahmadu Bello, was 39 years old. Yet, he was an accomplished leader of men, managing a complex political machine with diverse ethnic, religious, and philosophical orientations. He had his people at heart.

Then, there was Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the ebullient Nigerian who bore the sobriquet, “Zik of Africa,” in appreciation of the contagion of his ideas and politics. This traversed beyond the shores of Nigeria such that ‘Zikism’, a system of political thought attributed to him and championed by some of his followers, remains arguably the most ingenious political movement in Africa.

Nigeria’s first and second republics, despite their shortcomings, threw up leaders whose passion was service, hinged on mostly original and creative ideas. There was Waziri Ibrahim of the Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP), known as the Apostle of Politics without Bitterness. There was Aminu Kano, who came from the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) in the first republic to lead the Peoples Redemption Party(PRP) in the second republic. Kano hinged his politics on the emancipation of the talakawas (commoners) by challenging the feudalistic tendencies of the ruling class. And then, Tunji Braithwaite, the lawyer and activist who led the Nigerian Advance Party(NAP), whose manifesto was centred on making Nigeria a welfarist state.

The last of these references was before the military takeover of 1983. Now, as Nigeria moves towards an election in 2023, four decades later, it is distressing that the political culture has retrogressed and its actors are nothing like before. 

In most societies, the quality of the people seeking public office improves progressively. In Nigeria, however, office seekers and their supporters become increasingly ungrateful, power-hungry people and opportunistic.

So, in the past couple of days, former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, and former Senator, Kogi West, Dino Melaye, have engaged in a disgraceful public exchange. They turned themselves into sources of comic relief from the daily burden of misgovernance that Nigerians bear, but they also assailed our feelings with sordid details of their misdeeds.

In one video that Melaye released, former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, claimed that a state government “handed over N2 billion to Fani-Kayode” to fix the runway at the Port Harcourt airport. He alleged that Femi Fani-Kayode “went away with the money!”

Whether this allegation is true or not, it tells about how government has become the personal estate of these politicians, and raises so many questions. For instance, how does a state government “hand over” N2BN or any sum of money to an individual minister? How does the minister take such money away? How is a man who allegedly converted, in fact, stole, public funds still walking the streets without any recompense? How is Amaechi himself able to even say this to Nigerians? The only answer to all these questions is that politicians have no regard for Nigerians! 

Ideally, the mudslinging between these two should irritate and agitate Nigerians. How do people treat national resources like this, flaunt their indiscretions in our faces and dare to put themselves in line for public office in the future? While they are not vying for any political office now, the scramble to defend their political affiliations is for post-election benefits! 

So, how would Nigerians feel when these men, who have exposed one another as unstable, unintelligent, untrustworthy, and kleptomaniac, become ministers of the federal republic after elections next year?

While there has been no announcement of Fani-Kayode’s role in the campaign structure of his party’s presidential candidate, he is already positioning himself for some relevance. In his own case, Melaye is an official spokesperson for his party. Therefore, the muscle flexing to show which of them has the loudest voice is each of them bidding for public office.

So, are these the types of men who should continue to run Nigeria? Men without decorum or any sense of decency? Men who can’t bridle their tongues, who will say anything to score a cheap point? Men with very shaky and even shady personalities.

Most shameless of their situations is that they have both flirted with the party that the other person currently represents. At one time or the other, each of them has said the most inconceivable things about the party they are now willing to die for. They have said the most derogatory things about the candidates for whom they now tear each other apart. So is this all for national interests or the feathering of personal nests? A complete disregard for the capacity of Nigerians to read between the lines?

My persuasion is that these narcissists and their ilk on the political landscape seek nothing but personal aggrandizement. Hear the two of them talk, and you wonder if the world is just all about them. One boasts of a pedigree, which he finds too staggering to sustain, the other flaunts his mysterious wealth in scorn of the multitude of hungry and deprived Nigerians. These men and many of their friends seeking Nigerians’ votes in the next few months are nothing but schemers who would wallow and drag each other in the mud just to grab public office again. Fani-Kayode and Melaye have been out of the kitchen for so long, the oil is running dry and all is fair in the effort to get into the room again.

In all these, Nigerians should be reminded of one thing. This country has one of the most mindless and crudely manipulative political elite in the world. The stones these characters are now throwing at each other have nothing to do with the hunger, sickness, insecurity, lack of education and other things that ravage Nigerians. It’s a strategy to have unfettered access to the cookie jar, attract the attention of the next emperor at Aso Rock, and continue to plunder the country for the sustenance of themselves and their generations. That is what politics has become in Nigeria.

Former American President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a March 1956 speech that: “If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.” This is the tragedy of political leadership in today’s Nigeria—the attainment of political power by all means, without a guiding philosophy on how to use power to the advantage of the people. Nigerians must wake up to this reality and put an end to political brigandage.

Niran Adedokun can be reached on Twitter @niranadedokun