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damol66@yahoo.co.uk Berlin, Germany

THE IDEA OF NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

n Sophocles play, Oedipus, the author applied an effective use of irony to ridicule the principal character. In the play, Oedipus acting out of ignorance, kills his father and settles in the act of incest with his mother. He accuses the blind prophet of immorality, but by the end of the play, he learns (as the audience is already aware) that he himself is immoral. He understands finally that he has been mentally ignorant and becomes ashamed. As a result of complex, he wishes to remove his two eyes to become permanently blind in order to avoid seeing facial expressions of people over his dirty actions.

However one interesting thing about this type of irony is that, unlike a dramatic suspense, the audience already knows the contrast between what the dramatic characters are saying or doing and the true state of affairs. This is common in most of Shakespeare's plays. For instance, in The Winter's Tale, Autolycus, in physical disguise goes to describe himself as a rogue to another character (as though he is talking about somebody else). He says: "… Having flown over many knowish professions, he settled only in rogue. Some call him Autolycus." Though the addressee is not aware of the disguise, the audience knows already about it and so enjoys the funny drama of the rogue vigorously describing himself.

Such is the case of the PDP today after destroying the image of Nigeria's hard-earned democracy for four years and finally optimizing their shameless height of corruption and immorality through an unprecedented election fraud in which they involved the police, the army and the notorious INEC; creating a continuum of political banditry that is quite inconsistent with their verbal sermons of accountability and decency. For example, reacting to Buhari`s comment that the attitude of PDP in the past election was "a rape of democracy" and his appeal to the International community not to recognise the result of the election because it lacks credibility, Ojo Maduekwe representing the Federal Government was reported to have said:

"It is necessary for presidential candidates whose track records include aborting the last civilian administration to know that Nigerians are watching their attitude and utterances.

"Inciting statements will not be accepted by this administration because though we are a democratic government, but, it is not a weak government…"

In the first place, it is pertinent to recall that the attitude of PDP-led government for the past four years has everything similar to the NPN-led government of the second republic. Most of the major corrupt actors of NPN now find abode in PDP. The only difference lies in the fact that there are now more military and police "pensioners" in the latter than there were in the former. EVEN the charade carried out in the 1983 election was not as sophisticated as that of 2003. If there is any reasonable difference in the two dispensations, it is the maturity of the electorate who have this time chosen to bear everything with equanimity or some sort of indifference. However, the dramatic irony displayed in Ojo Maduekwe`s statement above is that the audience is aware of the contrast between what he has said and the true state of affairs. The condition under which Buhari and Idiagbon took over the government of the second republic called for it. Their action was a necessary evil that was meant to save Nigeria from perpetual degeneration. Even if they did not topple that government, the actions of the ruling party NPN to steal victories from the other parties to form a one-party system was as bad as a coup, and it was an action taken without the collective interests of the electorate. The fraudulent action of the NPN was born out of selfishness, greed and intimidation. And in my opinion, democracy without opposition is as good as dictatorship. So it was not democracy that Buhari truncated, but the diabolic intrigues of the then ruling party that tended towards "dictatorship."

Furthermore, Ojo Maduekwe`s government satirizes itself in the above statement by warning against incitement, with an art of incitement. By telling us that Buhari aborted a civilian administration reveals to us the hidden intention of the speaker. But I thank God that we all know the truth, he could have made a point. We all know that Buhari`s coup was only giving credibility to Newton's law of motion even in politics. That is to say, both in physical and in everyday life, action and reaction are equal and opposite, depending on how one wants to argue it. Actions of corrupt and greedy democrats necessitate military reactions that kick them out. That is the way it has always been since Independence. However, though we shouldn't pray that history repeats itself this time, but never say never again. If the evil that showed its face in the second republic continues to establish itself in this fourth republic, the recycled selfish and avaricious politicians should blame it on their negative posture, should the second colonial master in the name of the military strikes again. From all indications, it seems to me that Nigeria's misfortune does not lie in the military truncating the democratic process (as there seems not to be any such process in existence). Our problem is that no visionary and disciplined military regime with national consciousness has put a stop to the process of one party system and survived over a reasonable period of time to enable it set up the structures of a lasting decent democracy. If Buhari and Idiagbon had the opportunity to stay longer, they would have at least succeeded in instilling lasting discipline in the Nigerian citizens, which certainly, would have formed the basis for a decent democracy. If we were as lucky as Ghana, we would have been able to make progress in the democratic process.

It is very unfortunate that after fighting for freedom from the equally selfish and corrupt soldiers, we still have not learnt from our past. We still tactically intimidate and disenfranchise the electorate in our own version of democracy. We seem rather to have perfected in the art of rigging. And cheating has been interpreted to be our culture. Our democracy today is rather government of the PDP, by the PDP and for the PDP.

It should be good to note that the nature of the complaints about the PDP`s dirty deals during the elections has been consistent and even more widespread than the "Victory" itself which the PDP, Obasanjo and his surrogates have been celebrating. For instance, Peter Obi, the APGA gubernatorial candidate for Anambra State had this to say:

"In Aguata we had 17,000 votes and the PDP had 2, 000 votes, and it was changed to 59, 000 for the PDP. It could not have been possible because Aguata is a place I know I would make 90 per cent of the votes any day. You go to Njikoka constituency, we had about 15, 000 plus votes and the PDP had 2000 plus votes, and it was changed giving PDP 49,000 and APGA 2000 votes. Njikoka is place I know the PDP will not make 5% of the votes cast. Njikoka is a place we are in complete control of, even kids sing my name, the people know me very well and they believe in me. In Anambra east and west, we won and they changed the results, and we know those behind it. We know the nine local governments from where they completely altered all the results that came out." (THISDay, 1/5/2003).

It is also on record that many International Observers condemned the widespread irregularities in the elections. They deplored among other things, the stuffing of ballot boxes and intimidation of the voters by servicemen.

Rather than attempting to refute the allegation of the malpractices that attended the electoral process, Obasanjo and his bottom-licking sycophants and surrogates chose to incite the masses against Buhari, rejecting the reports of the EU observers and the international community. According to Obasanjo, the international observers "are ignorant of Nigerian culture and environment" and should not judge Nigeria by European and American standards. Which Nigerian culture and environment do the foreign observers not know? Is it the notorious 419 culture, or the violence and the armed robbery ravaged environment? In fact the PDP and INEC have just re-enacted and re-established what the international community knows about Nigeria through their attitude to the elections. And no one should blame the foreigners if they continue to have a negative view about Nigeria - A country which has everything at her disposal to make her one of the richest countries in the world. A common man only hears of the billions of dollars we lose on the daily basis in the wake of any crisis in any oil producing area. What do we do with the revenue we receive in the absence of crises?

One annoying thing is that those who discourage democracy in Nigeria are mainly the people who have described the past elections as "free and fair" in spite of its egregious shortcomings. It does not matter to them if more than 30 citizens lost their lives while making efforts to exercise their constitutional rights. (And neither Obasanjo nor GUOBADIA has deemed it necessary to comment over the sad news or to sympathize with the bereaved. They are only intoxicated with their "stolen" victory). It does not matter to them if the security agents used guns to harass the electorate. It does not matter to them that some voters were tactically disenfranchised in many ways. They are only interested in the fact that their candidates were declared winners. It does not occur to them that the majority of Nigerians yearn for a decent democracy and not this crude one as we know it so far. Even the PDP and INEC with their sickening arrogance do not know they are simply setting up a dirty precedence with these irregularities. Today they seem to be cleverer with fraud; tomorrow another party may be much more clever. I hope, that time, PDP will not shout against irregularities. I wish they will remember their dirty precedence.

So many writers have so far commented on the quality of the last elections. Some of them have tried to approve of the fraudulent tendencies because according to them, even the American presidential election of the year 2000 was fraught with irregularities. They seem to be short of reason to understand that America's was a case of an electronic failure that resulted in some of the votes not being identified by the automatic sensor. Even at that, the American judiciary attempted to bring justice to the unprecedented situation, but was weakened by the silence of the constitution. In Nigeria, we have a manual approach. Ours has always been a case of intentional omission or commission. Ours has always been an image of man's inhumanity to man. Ours has always been a display of excessive animal instinct. Even though our laws are vocal in most of the situations, the judiciary sometimes chooses either to silence the law, or render it useless. For instance, prior to the elections, NDP had taken INEC to court to contend that INEC had not been working in accordance with the Electoral Law 2002 as regards the dates of the elections. The intention of the NDP was to give the court the opportunity to instil decency in the conduct of not only the 2003 elections, but all the elections in the Nigeria's democratic process. Unfortunately, instead of promoting decent democracy, the judiciary rendered a section of the Electoral Act 2002 invalid through its judgement that will for ever take precedence. I predict that time shall come when a Northern Moslem shall win the presidential election, and the Southern Christians detesting the outcome of the result shall head to court only to be faced by all these items of judicial precedence. While we rejoice today, it is good to forecast the future. Based on the legal ethics, it is wrong for a judge to deliver judgement based on his subjective feeling or sentiment, except where the Law is silent or ambiguous. To be able to develop the country, we must first develop the Law; and to be able to develop the Law, we must first develop our minds; to be able to develop our minds, we must have national consciousness; to have national consciousness, we must jettison corruption, as well as financial, political and even judicial fraud.

This issue of national consciousness brings us to the recent case of 12.5% salary increase for workers. Since Obasanjo came to power, Nigeria has witnessed successive series of workers` industrial actions. Most of these actions were the results of the efforts of the workers to prevail on the president to increase wages. Since Obasanjo`s regime, the president has been faced with horrendous threats from the Labour Union. Most of the time, workers engage in strike to press forward for a salary increase even when they know that the government has many other onerous tasks which are all pecuniary. From the economic point of view, one would expect the Labour Union to first of all weigh their demands in relation to their productivity. They should be able to weigh their demands in relation to the country's gross domestic product. They should be able to understand that abnormal increase in wages without a corresponding increase in the gross domestic product is counter-productive to the economic goals of any nation. The logical result of this could be a situation where too much money is chasing too few goods. To this end, I ask myself: Is there no reason why the Labour Union as a pressure group exists, other than to "terrorize" the government with strikes or threats of strikes? Has the Labour Union ever advised the government on current lucrative areas to diversify production? Has the Labour Union ever advised the government on the possible ways of increasing our yields from export? Has the Labour Union ever conducted a research on her own to discover new market possibilities for the country so as to enable the government work out strategies for a healthy economy? If the duty of the Labour Union is only to press for a continuous increase in wages, then the Union should be likened to a baby whose duty is only to cry whenever she feels hungry. It's high time the Union behaved maturely and responsibly, otherwise her attitude should be considered as economic terrorism that obnoxiously tortures and strangulates our national economy.