On February 15, 2015, I posted a widely circulated comment on Facebook (40 followers shared the post and it generated huge commentary) directed at those Nigerians who suggest that once anyone holds a divergent view on politics, such person must have been paid, presumably by the opposing side. I offered myself as a case study which directly contradicts that stereotype providing full disclosure on all my economic interests in the public sector – the governments I have done business with are APC governments, principally Lagos and Rivers States, and some of their ministries and agencies, with commercially insignificant engagements with Ogun and Ekiti States. I mentioned in that statement that I have NEVER done any business with the PDP federal government or any other PDP state government and have no political relationship with that party. Yet I feel impelled to support the governorship candidacy of Jimi Agbaje (with whom I’m not related) in Lagos State and to oppose the candidacy of Muhammadu Buhari (my views on his qualification or lack of it for Nigeria’s presidency have been on public record since2007!) for Abuja.
In spite of personal preferences, however, I regard my role as a newspaper columnist as a personal trust (from which I chose to earn no remuneration whatsoever) and my occupation as a policy analyst as a professional and social responsibility, and I have NEVER put any statement on the public record EXCEPT it was accurate and true. Any views I advocate in my column are for posterity, and I stand prepared to defend them even in the afterlife! Unlike the stereotypical Nigerian, my choices are often IN SPITE of, not because of my pecuniary interests and in this season, I have LOST money as a result of those choices! I suspect that the perception that people who hold contrary opinions may have been induced to do so proceeds from a mindset in which an individual projects his values to another person and assumes that the other person must be acting on the basis of similar motivations as he may usually act! In other words, corrupt people are very likely to assume that others are similarly corrupt!
By the way, is there any justification for any side in Nigeria’s public and political space to pretend as though it has moral superiority, relative or absolute? Wouldn’t it be curious given what we know (or now know) if particular segments of Nigeria’s current politics regard themselves as paragons of integrity and virtue? Wouldn’t that amount to an overdose on one’s own propaganda? Any political partisans and supporters who believe such delusions are victims of acute brainwashing and in need of psychological counselling! Interestingly, I am told by some who should know that it is more probable that much of the contemporary corruption of the press and social media emanate from the more hypocritical and falsely self-righteous segments of our current politics! The other negative tendency is the seeming desire by some to create a feudal and fascist state in which all resources and information flow from one source; in which only one point of view, even though contrived, is tenable; and in which propaganda is deployed to convince the simple-minded that black may be white and red is yellow!
Nigeria is in a season of distemper in which politics turns friends and communities asunder and it is amazing (and amusing were it not so unfortunate!) that some regard our highly fickle partisan boundaries with any amount of seriousness. I have long arrived at a decision to evaluate Nigerian politics on the basis of candidates, issues, policies and context rather than a non-existent partisan divide. How can anyone listen as Kawu Baraje, Audu Ogbe and Barnabas Gemade criticize the PDP which they chaired in turn until recently? Should any PDP enthusiast be excited when my friend, Femi Fani-Kayode, rails against APC or when a certain Dino Melaye excoriates PDP? Attahiru Bafarawa, Modu Sherrif and Shekarau were pre-eminent amongst founders of APC but are now PDP leaders; and Bukola Saraki, Chibuike Amaechi, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Olagunsoye Oyinlola embodied the PDP spirit but now chant “change”! Has anything changed about them? Or perhaps the APC broom is the “blood of Jesus” that cleanses all sin and unrighteousness? And what happens when someone returns to PDP (ala Fani-Kayode) or does a “triple-decampment” from PDP to ACN; back to PDP; then back to APC like Atiku Abubakar? Does such person become saved, unsaved and then saved again? Is the PDP membership card a demon which can be exorcised by tearing it up in public or procuring some interlocutor to shred on your behalf? Are there any individuals in Nigeria who typify the PDP’s years in power more than Obasanjo and Atiku?
The result of the illogical, emotional and unfounded posturing in our public space is that we are now poised for Nigeria’s most delicate elections in history with the possible exception of the 1964/65 federal and western region elections and the 1983 general elections. We know how both of those exercises ended! It is possible, however, that after the elections in March and April, we may all wonder in bemusement what all the fuss was about? Or the elections may yet go horribly wrong. Will they hold? Who will conduct them? When? Will the exercise result in the worst case scenario, my fourth “C” – “crises”? Will we yet again step back from the brink?
Opeyemi Agbaje
