THE MACABRE SWINGS AND POLITICAL DANCE (PART 1)   By REV. FR. ANTHONY AGBALI

THE MACABRE SWINGS AND POLITICAL DANCE

(PART 1)

By REV. FR. ANTHONY AGBALI                          

 IGALA TEARS, POLITICAL FARCE, FADING RELEVANCE, AND FAIR-PLAY

Recent political events in Nigeria have been very interesting, as they are disturbing. From the agitation for a separatist Biafra nation-state, the internal political intrigues and struggles within the All Progressive Congress (APC) ruling party, fuel shortage, and a sliding public opinion regarding the APC ruling government critical and swift responses to urgent national challenges the news have been pealing and reeling enormously.  Kogi State have also been prominently in the news recently following poor governing performance indicators by the incumbent PDP-led government, the gubernatorial elections, the unexpected demise of a leading gubernatorial candidate, and eminent politician, the late Prince Abubakar Audu, and in its wake the ignominious political theatric displays it has awakened.

Prior to the election held on November 21^st, 2015, and ultimately concluded on December 5^th, Kogi State was rated the poorest state of the federation. Public workers were and are still owed months of their hard earned salaries. Wherever and whenever some get paid, they receive a slice of their hard-earned income, depending on the goodwill of the ruling political actors, and unconscionably wallowing in penury and abject poverty.  A Local Government chairperson can decide to pay at whims only 15 percent of workers remunerations and without hope that the render 85 percent will ever be paid.

Truculent leadership dominates and the populace are sweltering, hugely suffering while a clique of the ruling class state and local government officials are robustly swelling without conscience and feeling. It was this perilous situation that marked the electorates’ massive response to the just concluded gubernatorial election, hence out-voting the incumbent administration of Governor Idris Wada’s PDP-led government. This scenario elicits a critical review of the political environment and the cogent issues emanating from that clime.

The Macabre Swings: Audu’s Demise and The Kogi Political Dance

Prince Abubakar Audu death on the eve of his electoral victory, and reclaiming of the governor’s seat has left tongues wagging and has become a political albatross.  Some persons, including politicians, interprets a sinister motive indicating Audu’s death as suspicious.  The invocation of poisoning rends the air. The Imo State governor, Chief Rochas Okorocha was reported to have insinuated that the APC party leader, Chief Bola Tinubu had eliminated Audu for mischievous political reasons ().  Verifying the veracity of such claims can be thoroughly problematic. No one knows for sure the truth of this reality. Yet conspiracy theorists are having a field day, spinning and spurning their webs of justifiable rationalizations—at least to themselves and those whose attention they gain.

Some claimed Tinubu as imposing James Faleke, a Federal legislator and member representing Lagos State in the House of Representatives upon Audu as his running mate and candidate for deputy-governor.  Faleke is claimed to be Tinubu’s minion. Some disavow him as a non-indigene from Kogi State. After all, he is a serving federal legislator representing a constituency in Lagos State. Others claim Faleke is Okun Yoruba, but even some Okun Yoruba disclaims his aborigines emanating from Kogi State. In this garrulous terrain of rumors milling, one is leery as to what is the truth to believe, or the lies to discard.

According to their assumed theory, Audu’s death was orchestrated to pave way for Faleke to swiftly ease into power.  Tinubu has been linked to the crises in the national assembly, alleged to have tried to unsuccessfully impose his candidates as leaders of the house and senate. Thinking along this scenario, the proponents believe that Tinubu, stymied by the elected president Mohammed Buhari, is desirous of controlling different political machinery to foster his ambition and relevance in 2019. Audu it was alleged had met and dined with Tinubu days to the election, and was sacrificed on the altar of Tinubu’s seething political ambition. Ordinarily, such rumored spins arrange the puzzles neatly; for Audu having voted earlier in the election, in less than twenty-fours was cold-turkey dead.

The man of Audu’s exuberant stature and towering prominence, always bestriding any spatial landscape and ever in control, to die as he did, sounded baloney.  Love or hate him and his style—and maybe brand-of politics, to die as Audu did looks abysmally surreal. Even worst, the siren of death coming at the 11^th hour to his long yearned for election victory was both unfathomable and unpardonable.  For many Nigerians the concept of natural death is alien—supernatural and mysterious sources must induce the death of public figures. More than anything else, Audu’s death altered certain political calibrations. Politics can be hydra-monstrous and ravenous.  Decoding the many algebraic calculations that wraps politics as an art of intrigues, schematic equations, and scientific plotting involves hard imagination and rough paths.

Audu was something of a political colossus stalking and bestriding the political landscape of Kogi State since late 1991 when he was elected as the first civilian governor, under the Babangida diarchy (with military suzerains and elected civilians political subordinates, running the affairs of state).  Audu was sacked by his military allies, but he courageously returned following the reemergence of democratic politics after the military abdicated power.  Unstoppable, with flapping arrogance and towering ego, he was reelected as governor in 1999, until his ousting by the electorates in April 2003. Ever, since, Audu relentlessly pursued unsuccessfully, though with gloves in hand throwing punches wanted to reclaim his lost grooves. Mindful of that goal he contested in all the gubernatorial elections in the intervening last twelve years, but all in vain. This time around, he was coasting to electoral victory when death knifed his opulent aspiration and clogged his anticipated political ruminations.

Death straddled him, and wittingly-unwittingly, the hopes and aspirations of the people that celebrated and trusted his governing skills and competence.  The current governor order led many into comparative analysis of the political and socioeconomic terrain, and ranked Audu higher, based upon his assumed past political performance record. In spite of the Economic F CC allegations against Audu, regarding milking Kogi State in the past, the millennial youths, heroically idolized Audu.  For them, Audu provided the imagined elixir from their demented existence and their bludgeoning foreclosed future.

Audu was considered as their uplifting antidote, hence voting en masse for his ticket. Many Indomies perceived in him the cleansing agent for their soot soiled faces and unsalted existence. These millennials weighed Audu against the specter of their worsening existential conditions, carefully placed at the door step of the adjudged misrule of the increasingly unpopular incumbent People’s Democratic Party (PDP) led government of Governor Idris Wada (another Igala). Unfortunately, adding insult to injury, the angel of death melted their dreams and hopes of Audu bringing them the transformations they seek and associate with his ability.

Worst of all, Audu’s demise threw his fellow Igala ethnic into political convulsion.  Their convoluted political calculations stalled. The Igala were stopped on their track unable to hilariously celebrate their demi-urge political mastery status, given their privileged demographic superior advantages.  The mystery of death and its timing crassly derailed the Igala ethnic group political aspirations and stronghold. Their strangling hold upon state power has come to an unexpected end.  The flapping wings of the death messenger slapped the Igala to their faces, promptly dismantling their grip upon Kogi State’s political power.

The Igala cozy and relaxed feelings of powerful and unperturbed controlled now punctured, left them confused, nagging, and dazzled.  Their imagined hegemon and created status quo had evaporated so swiftly leaving them stone-faced. Today, with the macabre swing, their political dance have become stunted, tempered, and sullenly solemn.  The feeling they can always leverage power, calling the shot regarding when and which loyal ethnic group to slowly relinquish their power-grip has turned misty. The Igala have become demystified courtesy of the angel of death and their skewed political logarithm. Trusting on a false sense of security until now, the Igala have arrogantly celebrate their assured and obtuse sense of political immunity that favored their perpetual arrogation and control of state patronages and resources. A feeling that almost accords them a divine patrimony and political right to domination in the state’s affairs against the other ethnic groups evaporated overnight—without any bargain. The Igala had too wisely played themselves to a shameful laughter of their foes.

Death is no good, it fiendish ways, can never make it a friend to the Igala—ever, and not at this time.  The rays of death played itself safely and smartly, outsmarting the Igala, jostling them from their farcical delusions when it came for their prominent kin. Audu did not die alone, the Igala died with him. Death thus dented the false illusions and the blatant utopia the Igala had long created toward holding sway and directing state power and patronages.

Audu’s sudden demise opened up reality the Igala long suppressed but have long stared them boldly in the face. They had been recalcitrant in steering their political capital in another direction, emphasizing sterling leadership aimed at responsible, accountable, and ethical governance. The tide rapidly changing, now many feels the political auguries do not augur well. Igala recent sonorous silence masks their deep emotional trauma and sore wounds. Sore and sour, their soaring clipped many Igalas become all too obviously reticent. However, they are inwardly weeping; sobbing woefully for their lost chance. They are indeed smarting about their smashed political trophy. Maybe, they will learn. But time is golden, for now power has slipped out of their grip. Sullen they need to recalibrate.

Political Tremor and Mischievous Calculus: Misfiring and Choking

This political tremor, has quaked the Igala political class to their marrow, and even more. It has also thrown up their lack of political intelligence and skewed calibrations as egocentric, narcissistic, and lacking in altruistic disposition.  In the light of these recent changes, many Igala millennials are not perturbed about the rumbles and retranslation of the Kogi political landscape.  The social media commentaries and posts attest to their state of mind.  Most believe the political class deserves their fate, reaping what they have longed sowed, smooth talkers and mavericks, that are pathetically greedy, arrogant, and self-centered. Such egregious perceptions of the Igala political class is troubling.

Nonetheless, any critical analysis of the current atmosphere lucidly points to a robustly narcissistic political class, talking at cross purpose and in circles, manifestly in disarray. In the wake of Audu’s death, some among the political class exhibited petulant imagination. Double-speaks and indolent actions, proved them as inchoate and devoid of smart strategies. In the world of the 21^st Century, many seemed not to understand the leitmotif of the democratic process.  In the negotiations regarding Audu’s successor, they threw up his unprepared son, Mohammed as his political successor.

Such prebendal and patrimonial displays portrayed the naivety of this class.  It portends the shallowness of the Igala political class. They displayed their full range of perilous political thinking, unmasking their true calculative purposes and narcissistic mindset and purpose. Instructively, they proved that their search for democratic relevance was to create a class of feudal overlords; tended to mirror monarchical forms of political domination.  In so doing, the Igala political class damaged their own legitimacy; and redundantly mortgaging their public appeal. They nailed themselves by sacrificing the wider Igala political interests to their narrow purview self-interests; acting inanely and speaking naively. Seeking convenient soft-landing pads and anchors they erupted further popular angsts and caused themselves further risks. This unfortunately seemed to be at the root of the recent assassination attempts on two distinguished Igala political actors: Senators Ahmadu Adah Ali and Nicholas Ugbane, both assaulted in Ogbonicha, Audu’s hometown, during the 8^th days Islamic prayers for his repose.

As the parlous petulancy of some of these Igala political class woefully failed them, some have refused to learn valuable lessons, and are playing mavericks, broadening their self-centered but tristful theatrics. However, the old music–the drumming and rhythmic intonation of ethnic mantras, so much overplayed in the past, seemingly is fast wearing out, and changing

The Indomie Generation: New Political Pathways and Mapping Igala Future:

A new generation of Igala youths are frolicking and energetically bursting out into the open with novel messages, dreams, and aspirations. These are casting aside any hint or appellation that perceives them as the “beaten generation” (call them  “indomie generation” or millennials if you like). These are stubbornly breaking new grounds and mapping new arena for political engagements. They are essentially rejecting old norms of blind obedience and unflavored obeisance to any power monger. They want their future redeemed rather than sabotages, and aspires to salvage themselves from all forms of savage existence.  Most are very reactive to the previous generations before them and their “fossilized” and “deadbeat” modes that have enabled past political subjugation. Many are obviously angered by the generations ahead of them, and are no longer playing the games of political correctness that bonded and burdened the generations ahead of them. Yet their stance is not merely reactionary but cogently solidified within their intent to see real changes in their lifetime.

The “indomie generation” are refusing to masquerade and tame their anger without lamely acceding to overt gerontocratic control. These seek their own meaning and relevance, often leery of unbridled and insolent power display.  Despite enduring festering and unlimited misrule, they are a better generation more educated than their forebears, and more exposed and open to the world. New forms of interactive and communicative technologies connect them globally.  Empaneled and elevated by social media—facebook, twitter, etc., they are sounding their drumbeat and raising the rhythm.

Many are tied of old schemes and political games deploying ethnic maneuvers in plotting dominance. They mistrust divisive ethnic mantras and certain forms of political correctness.  A vast majority avidly perceive limitless opportunities ahead, in spite of the face of daring limiting circumstances, as they explore the hourglasses of change; cogent transformations favoring their goals of meaningful existence. Tired of old mantras and clichés, carpe diem, they seize their fate in their hands. This is predictably a good omen toward engendering participatory and integrative politics that will positively enlarge the spheres of interethnic and interreligious engagement and dialogue.

These are the new arrowheads of political change in Igala, and Kogi State. Many were born into a democratic Nigeria, without the direct experience of military dictatorships. In spite of the disfigured face of Nigerian bloated democratic formation, they have the positive advantages of adopting and integrating democratic languages, processes, and tools to ensure social transformation, no matter its burdens and manifest efforts. Devoid of codeswitching forth and back between the Janus-faced experiences marking democratic and demented military governance, their focused efforts can deploy and ensure meaningful translations of dreams into realities.

We now see the imprints of this generation; that when they mean business they get things done. It is this generation in their forward march that now constitutes a huge voting bloc. They are the focal actors in creating the ambience of change—even if do not fully grasp their logics and their ways may sound irrational and insensible, they are motivated toward creating the features of their dreamed universe. A universe of hope. Thus, in spite of the EFCC albatross around Audu, and their incessant harassment the Indomie generation refused to be deterred. Their readings was our misreading, therefore they massively supported and voted his APC ticket.  Powerful in their voting indignation protesting the incumbent governance of Idris Wada, they unmasked his power of incumbency.

Audu’s death created a political vacuum. As it is well known, the election of November 21^st, 2005 was declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as inconclusive.  The APC ticket, consisting of Audu and his running mate, James Faleke, an Okun Yoruba, resident and representing Lagos state in the Federal legislative, were leading. Then Audu suddenly dropped dead. The equation changed. Since the election was not conclusive, Faleke could not step to Audu’s place.  There was no political antecedents to squarely address the issue.  But INEC went ahead and requested the APC to produce a replacement for the late Audu, and setting the election date for December 5^th, 2015. Then all hell broke loose, and daring intrigues set-in.

The Igala wanted to maintain their place. Throwing caution to the wind, and sidelining Faleke, some Igala political dim-wit suggested Audu’s name substitution by his oldest son, Mohammed. The APC leader, Bola Tinubu and Audu’s running mate Faleke insisted that Faleke be declared governor-elect, and/or his name be entered for the remaining elections. Later, Igala APC stalwarts buckled, reversing their earlier stance and anti-clockwise endorsing Faleke as governor and APC candidate, with Audu’s son as deputy.  But the APC national party had alternative plans.

The national party leadership endorsed Yahaya Bello as Audu’s replacement, while Faleke remains as he was as running mate. Faleke refused and stonewalled, going to court to claim what he considers his mandate.  Many litigations arouse. Nonetheless, the national APC leadership refused to demure regarding Bello’s eligibility. Bello, it was rationalized was the next highest voted candidate in the APC’s primaries, after Audu. The APC logic was that he was the natural “democratic” choice to represent the party’s platform, while Faleke was Audu’s personal choice. The Igala APC establishment went sonorous and their deafening reticence was troubling.

The elections held according on December 5^th, 2015 and INEC declared Yahaya Bello, the governor-elect.  There remain strained relations within the APC as Faleke refused to be associated and claimed as Bello’s running mate. He has gone to court to seek relief, and has gone back to his work at the National Assembly. Governor Wada too, had indicated that given numerous constitutional issues and allegations of electoral malpractices that he will go to court.

As I interpreted these events, I sensed that many among the “Indomie generation” are not encumbered by issues of ethnicity and religion. Many celebrated Yahaya Bello, regardless of the circumstances of his political emergence, as a mark of generational change and a role model. Many among these wants to believe that Bello will excel and do better than the displaced army of political gerontocrats. Where their dreams will match the reality on the future will tell.  Bello, it seems will be beset with many litigations, and whether he will secure his “acquired” mandate is left to anyone’s imagination. But one thing is clear. He has the goodwill of the young citizens of Kogi State. These youngsters are ready to throw overboard the ghosts of ethnicity in ensuring the transformation of Kogi State. Bello has large shoes to wear, as the expectations are not only messianic but daunting. In spite of my personal stance for justice and fairplay–and Bello is even nicknamed “fairplus,” and therefore, I believe he would abhor becoming “fairminus”-he has in this short time acquired some goodwill and political capital.

Fairplus is probably very mindful of this. Recent indicators, from the political grapevine, alleges that Yahaya Bello is seemingly trying to pacify the Audu political family. He is noted to have extended the olive branch to the Audu’s direct family, by stretching the carrot stick to Audu’s estranged wife, Aisha Audu. Whether, this is a wise move remains unclear. But such motions whether placation or affront is heavily loaded and its backfiring capabilities is immense. It is uncertain, regarding how the rest of the Audu family will perceive this.  For good or ill, for now there is predictable answer, except as a matter of subjective conjectures.

Aisha and Prince Audu were formally divorced, and their heated spousal altercations was publicly chronicled.  Aisha also had been politically proactive on her own merits, outside of been Audu’s first lady prior to Audu’s ousting in 2003. In the 2011 Aisha independently canvassed for votes as an electoral gubernatorial candidate, and contested that election against her ex-spouse. Aisha has also worked, in recent years, in furthering the interests of the PDP eliciting support for erstwhile President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) reelection in the March 2015 presidential elections.

Some Kogi political pundits insinuate that such master-strokes, and tongue-in-cheek moves are not utterly surprising. These boldly accused Bello as working in the November 21^st, 2015 elections direct against the APC and Audu’s interests, furthering the PDP’s interest. They allude to Bello loss of his ward and local government to the PDP as evidentiary solid.  Therefore, they sensed this “robbing Peter to pay Paul” within the current round-robin political gaming dynamics as a convenient ploy between two birds of the same quill.

However, Bello seems to have some goodwill and political capital. However, he utilizes these positively will be telling about his political Even after Audu’s demise and in the midst of all of these political misgivings, it is breathtaking to know that Bello’s APC won the majority vote of the elections conducted in Dekina Local Government on December 5^th, 2015. One would have wondered that given Igala’s sense of loss, that the elections will ineluctably favor, Wada, son of the soil, and Igala. But this was not the case. Is there something that the auguries are revealing? I don’t know, and I cannot say for sure. But it is vitally and symbolic in its breath. To whom much is given, much is demanded, though.

In spite of all, I have not failed to ask myself this question: how does a generation that wants change condone any similitude of injustice, and lack of fair play? Ethically, can any group of people who want to effect cogent social change afford profound transformation?