A nation on standby, panic and hope

After a delay at O.R Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg, South Africa, I missed my connecting flight to Cape Town. It was in July 2005 and my first contact with South Africa. Interestingly, Cape Town is to South Africa what Port Harcourt is to Nigeria in terms of frequent flight, so I was not in an utter hopeless situation. After explaining to the airline officials the event that led to my delay, I was placed on standby for the next flight to Cape Town. For the airline officials, standby simply means the journey is not guaranteed, but there is a possibility. This is the current state of our country. Nigeria is on standby, panic button has been pressed and citizens are now living between fear and hope, thrusting their hearts to the God they’ve never seen.

In the week since Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lifted the ban on political stump speeches, the nation has been marinated in murky soup of wild misinformation, political opportunism, violence and panic served from the plate of poison.

And just when we all think that the meltdown that came with the contrived and controversial shift in the polls on a recent Saturday by the INEC helmsman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, would offer the respite badly needed for a suffocated country and citizens, the situation seems to be going from worse to worst.

On Tuesday in Rivers State, members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and journalists covering the party’s rally were attacked in Okrika, the country-home of the first lady, Mrs. Patience Jonathan. The sporadic shootings from yet to be identified gunmen that injured many and reportedly killed a police officer is something we cannot live with in this country. The violence is too much with us. It’s shameful that it happened in a community, where the first lady hails from and where she had spent the weekend before the incident happened.

The politics of intolerance such as this one has been the major reason for the backwardness we continue to experience in our polity as a nation. This is what is fuelling the violence that we have seen everywhere around the country that compelled the United States’ intervention in getting politicians to sign peace accord everywhere around the country as if we are just a nation given birth to yesterday.

According to reports, Mrs. Jonathan wouldn’t want a situation where a party in the opposition will take the shine off the party of Mr. President. But why would you block others from enjoying freedom of association that is guaranteed in our country’s constitution and believe you are deepening democracy?

Such act totally negates the principle of fairness that the first family professed to uphold.

So far, we have been told of 58 people who didn’t wish to die, but lost their lives to pre-election violence. The Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, captured it well, when he said that those who died didn’t drop dead, but were killed. The Okrika shootings may have added to that list.

The sad side of our national life is that we’ve not had a chance to elect a President that truly cares about people, selfless and sacrificial in approach to governance since we returned to democratic rule in 1999.

With Olusegun Obasanjo elected as first democratic President after decades of military rule out of which Obasanjo himself spent more than 3 years as a military head of state, a bad omen had become the lot of Nigeria.

With a few gains made during his administration, Obasanjo will later capitalise on his ‘little bride’ status after the deal he brokered with the Paris Club that got us a debt pardon to perpetuate himself in the office.

In the months before the 2007 election, Obasanjo who has suddenly assumed the status of a navigator in the current debacle placed our country on standby with his infamous and inglorious third term agenda. He pressed the panic button and turned the country into another kind of animal farm different from George Orwell’s.

The hard truth we must all come to accept is that it was Obasanjo who placed our country on the precipice politically. He sowed tares into our good garden like the enemy described by Jesus Christ in the parable of the weeds as contained in the book of Mathew.

With his third term agenda, Thanks to Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who blew the lid open, Obasanjo would have continued in power beyond his time against the tenet of democracy.

Unfortunately, his successor, the late President Musa Yar’Adua following in Obasanjo’s step also placed our country on standby with his cohort of cabals. The panic was everywhere such that the north and the south were polls apart in a country, where citizens in the north and south fought a hard battle against the military together to achieve democratic rule.

And while Yar’Adua could be exonerated from all that happened during his dying days, it would be hard to pardon Obasanjo, a man who continues to play the ostrich, without genuine interest to help Nigerians and Nigeria become greater than he is.

Now, we are in the third phase of that standby and panic situation with President Goodluck Jonathan. Interestingly, Jonathan is another Obasanjo’s offspring politically, so no one should be surprised about what we are experiencing today.

This is what best summed it up. In the beginning was Obasanjo, Obasanjo was with Yar’Adua and Yar’Adua was with Jonathan and the three of them dwell among us.

However, since it was impossible for Obasanjo to succeed with his third term agenda and the cabal of Yar’ Adua disappeared like vapour, I am confident that the Jonathan’s army too will never stand. But citizens everywhere must rise up to fight fear by voting.

Throughout the history of humankind there have always been challenging moments and fear will either cause you to flee or fight.

At the start of the political campaigns, we’ve heard of people who have left the country for fear of violence, but as a people we can’t allow ourselves to be conditioned, shaped and programmed by fear.

Clearly, politicians manipulate us more where they succeed in creating an atmosphere of fear. It is usually during those periods that they go unchallenged in their brazen act.

One clear example is Obasanjo, who during the 2007 elections declared a ‘do or die’ politics and just when you think he will be in a position of a statesman to help our nation achieve a free and fair election this time around where citizens will not be afraid to go to the polls, because his name is not on the ballot, Obasanjo continues to create fear in our minds with his utterances.

Someone once said his antics are kindergarten and I can’t agree more or else why will Obasanjo go into the public to tear his PDP membership card. He could have done that in his bedroom and spare us the unnecessary outburst of emotion.

In the coming elections, you must stand up to challenge these politicians with your vote. Choose to vote for those candidates that will turn the tide for our country. For those who have spent their entire campaigns invoking public fear, don’t waste your time in voting for them. They will not bring good leadership to our country.

Finally, we’re going into March in a few days and I want to sound a note of warning to these ‘do or die’ politicians to beware of the Ides of March.

*This article first appeared in THISDAY