Events in our country in recent months should worry anyone conversant with history. Countries don’t go down and finally burn out by bloody conflicts, rather they go down by internal convulsions provoked by leadership inertia and recklessness. Nobody attacked almighty Egypt at the height of its eminence, yet it fell and faded away. What happened? The king stayed on the path of rulership instead of leadership.
The King as ruler created a court of jesters whose main job assignment was to hail every move he made. Everything the king did good. Soon the king and his court jesters ended up creating another world far different from the one of reality in which they lived.
Then came the Greek Empire which was an improvement on what Egypt already established. It was also a big empire. Internal contradictions entinquished it and produced the Roman Empire. This empire was massive but how it fell should be a very useful lesson to all leaders in the world particularly to those of them in the black world. Why did Roman Empire collapse? Hedonism! Problems began to develop here and there but rather than bend low to find appropriate and timely solutions, the leaders, led by the king, chose to waste time on reveling.
Sexual perversion was the vogue. They played good music and danced while their subjects were dying of hunger and starvation, want and diseases. They fiddled while the empire burned. Remember Emperor Jean Bokasa of the Central African Republic and Seseko Mobutu of Zaire who used state funds to build small kingdoms for themselves where every good thing could be found while the entire country turned into ashes and hell on earth. Both countries eventually landed into avoidable internal bloody conflicts from which they are yet to recover.
The fall of the Roman empire brought up Great Britain, which fell too when their ruler, King Henry V became the state. His whims and caprices stood as state policy. He succeeded in creating two classes of people with his concept of “Republicans”, a group born to rule. He churned out draconian laws. We have enough examples now, the question would then be if there are similarities with what is happening in our country at present? Are there different worlds for the rulers and the people? Isn’t it becoming increasingly clear we have first and second class citizens?
We are more divided today than was the case 20 years ago. Religious and ethnic divides have grown far bigger. Political leaders give themselves millions of naira, houses, cars and medical allowances running into millions of naira as pension just for being elected to serve the people for a tenured term not exceeding eight years at most; but the civil servant puts in 35 years and is retired with virtually no hope for tomorrow. Yet we expect him to live long and happy. The other day our President sent in a supplementary budget request on emergency note, saying that he wanted to do «crucial» things before the year runs out.
Among the very important matters was the intention to purchase a yacht and SUVs for the office of the First Lady, a non-constitutional office for that matter. Remember this is a country that is borrowing so it could achieve a minimal level of balance of payments yet it finds it convenient to allocate huge sums for luxury items. Remember the economic squeeze has become terrific. It is excruciating yet the choice of leadership is to fiddle while citizens roast to death, daily. Return to the Roman hedonistic leadership tendency we referred to earlier and make your deductions.
Education, we have been told, is the easiest way to move a society from backwardness to First World status but besides total neglect of the sector in more recent times, our rulers have deliberately given the sector fatal blows. A comedian gave out what he thought was a joke but which for critical minds was definitely more than a joke. He said: «In Nigeria a university degree is only important when you don›t have it. When you get it, you hear Masters is more important, after getting it you again begin to hear PHD is extremely very necessary. But without all these an illiterate is elected as your leader and you begin to hear it is not about certificates.» This is no joke.
Our downward slip has been seen by different men of goodwill who had wished we trod a different path; if for nothing else, for the sake of black people all over the world. Late President Robert Mugabe, always full of humour, was aghast while alive at what we were making of what should be a leader nation. “Nigeria, a nation of 200 million people, 150,000 PhD holders, about 1 million Master’s degree holders with over 20 million Bachelors of degree holders and over 70 million secondary school certificate holders is proudly led in a digital age by men who can’t find their primary and secondary education certificates.” Countries that downplay education suffer stagnation and retrogression that must follow and end in bloody conflicts.
The off-season elections that took place in three states, Imo, Kogi and Bayelsa penultimate Saturday further opened us to the dangers ahead. Those were horrible elections. It was like might and subversion have become right. We saw «carry go». Karl Marx has told us that history when it repeats comes as tragedy. Our long stay on the path of perfidy has led us into tragedy. Economic collapse. Hunger, disease and death have become the lot of the people with social tension and conflict everywhere. Life has become very cheap. Marx went ahead to state that if history keeps repeating itself it comes as farce. We are evolving into that at the moment.
Political class is becoming something else. It will be difficult to convince us that demons have not relocated from hell and now dwell with us as politicians. Impunity is becoming installed as national policy. The people are being schemed out of the political equation. They are supposed to be the sovereignty but as it is they have become politically emasculated. The electoral commission and the judiciary now elect public officials. The off season election came out worse than the February and March general elections.
When contestants in polls throw up their arms in surrender amid widespread irregularities, it is a bad sign. We heard some of them say, «I won›t go to court, it is a waste of resources and time», it is a sign things are not exactly what they seem to be. The bonds are beginning to break without a sound. When the people begin to say “I won’t waste my time voting again” what it means is that anarchy looms large. One of the biggest challenges of our nationhood has to do with absence of a sense of good, responsibility and finally sanctions.
In sane places, if the electoral body ended up conducting controversial polls the key officials voluntarily resign or arrests are made for electoral misbehavior. Rather, here in Nigeria, people are talking of «lessons learnt». Some of us hope we know it is not about lessons learnt or new laws and introductions. It is more about the human element. If we fail to effect immediate corrections, horror lurks on the horizon.