he above title, 'NOT A LAUGHING MATTER', is a typically Nigerian one, albeit with evident grammatical blotches. The average Nigerian is warm, friendly and loves a good laugh. He can go out of his way to render the sort of help that leaves the beneficiary speechless, charmed and enchanted.
However, if even while trading banters, the Nigerian proclaims, and says; 'This Is Not a Laughing Matter', please beat a retreat, back off and don't push any further. For he has just expressed angst, switched to a defiant mode and has moved from being jovial to ill tempered, from being genial to unfriendly.
The situation in this country today is not a laughing matter. The sorts of things that happen in this clime are unthinkable and the caliber of persons who rule us, mind boggling. I have lived in this country for a long time but I still find some of the things we are capable of, unfathomable and bewildering. Honestly. And it is not a laughing matter.
The latest of course is the Ekiti imbroglio. Elections in a tiny part of the country which I thought would avail us the opportunity to cloud ourselves in a long searched for glory has been bungled once again in a spectacularly unimaginable fashion. And this is not a laughing matter!
I have carefully read all sorts of comments, remarks and observations of a lot of people on the Ekiti elections. For me, the elections in Ekiti call for no condemnation or an attack of personalities. It does not even call for protests. What it calls for is a sober reflection and deep thinking. If the ruling party is all that we say that they are. If they are a party of perpetual subverters and riggers. If they rigged the elections in 1999, 2003 and 2007. If they successfully rigged all the rerun elections, these reveal to us two things; the malevolence and the daredevilry of the ruling party but also the frailty and obtuseness of the opposition parties.
A crucial fact that the Ekiti elections made visible is that behind every lucrative portion of this country and all its vital institutions is a money bag. Every portion of our system seems to have been hijacked by moneybags and politicians. The most critical portion which has been hijacked is the media, our most revered fourth estate of the realm. And this is not a laughing matter. There is nothing wrong with politicians and moneybags owning print or electronic media outfits. Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy is known to directly or indirectly own a greater percentage of the media in his country. It only becomes dangerous when such media outfits become very noticeably partisan or mega phones of falsehood as we saw during the elections in Ekiti, as we see today. Our media, particularly the print has been taken over by politicians some with little or no credibility. I hardly know what report to believe anymore or which journalist still practices his or her profession creditably. And it is not a laughing matter. Nothing wrong in owning media outfits but does the tune in the reports and articles of these 'journalistic pipers' have to be dictated by the 'payers' of these 'pipers'?
There is deep rot and putrefaction in the Nigeria Police force. The sort of rot that makes a doctor decide to amputate the leg of his patient. When the history of elections in Nigeria is written, when the story of how the Ekiti rerun election was immersed in an ocean of infamy is told, the police will be found heavily culpable. If indeed 10 000 policemen were deployed to Ekiti state and they still could not keep the peace, it is either the majority of them were compromised or grossly incompetent. Either way, people at the top of the Police Force should take responsibility.
Unfortunately, ours is a Nation whose leaders abhor responsibility. I watched in horror some weeks ago, a former President Obasanjo on Hard Talk on BBC. I was stunned when he refused to take responsibility for the conduct of ministers that he appointed on our behalf! Were we to be a Nation that holds dear the logical sanctity of bearing responsibility, politicians, both conservative and progressive would long have taken responsibility for the despicable acts of thuggery, arson, and even murder committed on their behalf or in their supposed interest by their misguided supporters.
President Yar'adua should and must take ultimate responsibility for whatever failures were evident in the Ekiti elections. He said recently that the fact that he is president does not mean that he would not support his party in an election. Well spoken. However, there is an over-riding interest which supersedes his political interests; the interests of the people he swore to protect. If indeed the police a la the Inspector General Of Police, the INEC (even though it is said to be an independent body) a la the INEC chairman failed so miserably in the discharge of their duties, then the president should hands up and say, 'I haven't done well'. If all the intolerable acts of sickening incompetence, nauseating ineptitude and loathsome gaucheness that we all saw during the Ekiti elections happened under the president's nose like it did, then the President simply needs to sit up. And it is not a laughing matter.
It is abundantly clear and lavishly evident that INEC as presently constituted cannot lay claim to any form of acceptability. INEC is clearly unserious and falls below the needed tolerability index to convince even itself that it can conduct any election with little rancor and which can be reasonably accepted by the majority of Nigerians as well as the international community. Professor Iwu should wipe off the smug look on his face and be told very sternly that this is not a laughing matter!
It was Albert Einstein who said in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ' Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it'. When he uttered those words, he probably did not know how immortal those words would become. He also probably did not know how aptly it would fit into a situation millions of miles away. But it does fit into the Ekiti matter, thanks to Mrs. Adebayo Ayoka who has made the word, 'Conscience' the commonest in the Nigerian lexicon. I will not be quick to condemn the old woman, even though I felt thoroughly embarrassed by her resignation. She resigned the way James Thurber in, The Years with Ross, said other men went home to dinner. Very casually. Too routinely. As if resigning would confer any legitimacy on any of her actions or inactions. At her ripe age, if what she really needs and craves for is genuine happiness, not money or dubious favors, she would do well to harken to the wise words of Ogden Nash who prescribed a sure way to enduring happiness. He said, 'There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, And that is to either have a clear conscience or none at all'.
The bottom line in all of these is that as a people, we need a fix. Our society will never grow with the sorts of people who run things. How can serving senators be associated with thuggery, corruption, rigging and all kinds? How can serving governors be connected with sundry criminalities including the recruitment of fake police officers? How can ex- governors be associated with drugs, bribery and coercion? How can leading politicians be linked to the forgery of a police report? How can judges be accused of being partisan? How can leading politicians and political appointees, otherwise elected men and women, even government officials make wild, false and unproven allegations and pronouncements, and then still expect to be taken seriously? How can an Inspector General of police be accused of taking sides? How can a president be accused of incompetence? In other climes, these developments are seen as severe aberrations, an exception rather than the rule. Not here.
We need to go back to the drawing board. We need to admit that we are in a very dire situation. That bad people have become so entrenched in the system, it is becoming near impossible to uproot them without uprooting the system. That things have gone so terribly wrong. That we seem not to have replacements for the Awolowos, the Ahmadu bellos, the Azikwes and Okparas, the Fawehinmis, the Soyinkas, Tai Solarins and the balarabe musas. That we just might keep sliding down the ladder of sanity, of order and development. Except things change. And we need a miracle for things to change.
You and I are the custodians of this miracle. It is critical that we do not lose hope even in the face of the seeming hopelessness. We need to believe and start from the seeming little things. We need to be brave and strong. We must start to genuinely love this country. We must together grab this country by the scruff of the neck into the comity of responsible Nations. By any means necessary.
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