Ojo gbogbo ni t’ole; ojo kan ni t’olohun [On one single fateful day, the thief who thinks that all days and nights belong to him in perpetuity will be caught by the owner] A Yoruba anti-barawo, anti-looting adage
In almost any other country in the world, or perhaps in almost all the other democracies on the planet – bourgeois, social-democratic or popular-revolutionary – the predicament of Jonathan’s diehard supporters would very simply be the fact that in the President, they have a hopelessly uninspired and uninspiring candidate, a candidate so handicapped that Dr. Mimiko, one of his staunchest supporters, called him the “most abused and negatively profiled President in the history of Nigeria”. But not in Nigeria at the present time where to our politicians, nothing evil or shameful is an embarrassment or a disadvantage to a candidate, no matter how high the political office being contested. In other words, for those who might think that Mimiko’s declaration that the masses of Nigerians across space and time have no love or respect for Jonathan constitutes a dilemma or a predicament for the PDP, they are mistaken. Except for token gestures and acts that do very little to alleviate the great suffering, the acute insecurity of life for the majority of our peoples, doing things that could truly make life better for Nigerians, things that could genuinely win the hearts and minds of the people has never been a priority of the PDP in particular and, more generally, virtually all the other ruling class parties in our country. No, compatriots, Jonathan and the PDP are not losing sleep, they do not feel any predicament at all because their man is not liked or respected. What then is the source of their predicament?
The answer to this question is simple, but only deceptively so: in the innermost core, in the deepest recesses of their minds and imaginations, Jonathan and the PDP feel that APC and Buhari are no different from themselves and therefore are not morally and ideologically more deserving of electoral victory than themselves. That is their predicament: the thought that they might lose to people who are no different from them, people who deserve the same treatment as themselves. This is of course a delusion, a psychological displacement of the PDP’s obsession with power. After all, the campaign slogan of the party is “PDP? Power! Power? PDP! But it is not an entirely fanciful or unfounded delusion. At one time or another, virtually all the mainstream politicians now in PDP, APC, ANPP or APGA have belonged to the same party. This is because, with few exceptions, political prostitution is one of the hallmarks, one of the defining aspects of our present political order. For this reason, all our political elites know one another inside out and body and soul, with an intimacy born of mutual predatoriness and cynicism.
There is also the fact that there are no decisive issues of policy and vision that separate the two main contending parties and between them and the other ruling class parties. Indeed, to the contrary, there are big and important areas of collaboration in the shameless and relentless looting and despoliation of our country’s oil wealth by all the political parties and mainstream politicians. One of the most telling examples of this extensive cooperation among all the main parties in looting our resources dry is the cult of secrecy and silence that all members of the National Assembly rigorously maintain over the exact figure of the combined salaries, allowances and emoluments that they are paid. The Nigerian masses have been crying out; activists have been crying out; and foreign correspondents have been wondering why Nigerian parliamentarians are the highest paid on the planet in a country where 7 out of every 10 Nigerians live in dire poverty. But not one party, not one politician has broken ranks from the cult to reveal the figure and/or refuse it. Well, let me correct myself here: Hon Dino Melaye broke ranks with the rest and attempted to spill the beans but look what they did to him: they threw him out from their ranks and the secrecy, the silence was restored. All the same, it is delusional of the PDP to think that the coming elections will be won or lost solely or mainly on the claim that no party, no candidate has a moral and ideological advantage over the other.
This whole subject of the delusionary brinksmanship of the PDP/Jonathan ticket interests me because I believe that as the day of reckoning approaches, we must try to get into the collective mind, into the roiling psychosis of a very desperate ruling party which feels, not without some justification, that its opponent is not more deserving of electoral victory than itself. I cannot tell about Jonathan himself, but with the likes of some of the most militant chieftains of the PDP – in their actions and utterances – we see nothing but psychotic desperation. This includes Femi Fani-Kayode, Ayodele Fayose, Bode George, Segun Mimiko and the Minister of Police Affairs, Abduljelili Adesiyan. And of course, there is the collective group of some of the ex-militants of the Niger Delta that have been “settled” by Jonathan and Yar’ Adua before him; they are threatening Armageddon if Jonathan loses. In such circumstances, why do I indicate the possibility of capitulation by the PDP in the title of this piece?
Capitulation is possible, perhaps even probable if somehow it finally percolates to the collective mind of Jonathan and the PDP that the forthcoming elections do not, in the first instance, rest on whether or not the APC and Buhari are more worthy than themselves. Jonathan and the PDP happen to be the incumbents, the hegemons of a rotten, wasteful and oppressive system and they must pay the price. If a mature, developed, legitimate and nationwide popular revolutionary movement existed in the country, all the ruling class parties would have been swept away – and good riddance! But that is not the case, alas. Regular elections to sustain a quasi-bourgeois democracy will be held and for the first time since 1999, the appearance, if not the robust reality, of a choice is being presented to the Nigerian people. So it matters little whether or not APC/Buhari is more morally and politically deserving of electoral victory than PDP/Jonathan; what matters is that the people perceive a choice. As a matter of fact, the possibility of the PDP’s capitulating to the force of historical necessity rather than resorting to Armageddon rests precisely on a recognition and acceptance by them of how this principle of choice has emerged this time around and not before, from 1999 to 2014. What does this mean?
I will try to respond to this question as simply and as concretely as possible. To put it mildly, the PDP that contested the 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011 general elections is not the PDP that is contesting the 2015 elections. In number, size and electoral plurality, it has been vastly and fatally downsized. And internally, it has imploded. There are the mass defections from the party. There is the loss of status as the majority party in the House of Representatives. But for the neo-fascist tactics of the Senate President, David Mark, the same thing would have happened in that upper house of the National Assembly. There is also the fact that the PDP no longer nominally controls the largest number of states in the federation. Perhaps most significant of all in terms of electoral politics, the loss of nationwide advantage in plurality over the other parties took place because the North, or the most populous and ideologically driven parts of it, departed en masse from the PDP, leaving a gaping hole where that pivot of the party’s hegemony rested. Thus, on the eve of the 2015 elections, we are looking at a greatly hobbled, some would even say permanently crippled party. Most Nigerians know these facts; and all well-informed and interested foreign commentators, governments and organizations are also conversant with these facts. But not the PDP. Or at least, the party pretends not to recognize this fundamental fact that everyone else recognizes: it is no longer, as it used to brag and still brags, “the largest ruling party in Africa”. Perhaps if the saner and more realistic minds within the PDP come to the sober realization that the centre of its once real nationwide plurality has vanished for now and perhaps forever, the party will bow to the inevitable and not resort to the lure of Armageddon.
On one single fateful day, the thief who thinks that all days and nights belong to him in perpetuity will be caught by the owner, so goes the anti-barawo, anti-looting adage that serves as the epigraph to this essay. Permit the sardonic bent with which I will try to apply this adage to my observations and reflections in this essay. On the one fateful day of reckoning when owners finally catch thieves who have been plaguing them, not all the thieves are caught; indeed, the owners are pleased to catch the biggest thieves and leave the capture of other members of the gang to another day. Days of reckoning are not singular, they are multiple; they may occur in cycles that are few and far between one another, but they surely always come. This electoral cycle, things have come full circle for the PDP. I wish to end on the hopeful note that thieves and brigands that escape on one particular day of reckoning will thank their stars and mend their ways. But this “miracle” must not be left to the voluntary exercise of the will of the escaped thieves; only the popular will of a mobilized people can instigate such a change of heart, mind and practice in our endlessly predatory ruling class. For believe me, this predatoriness will not end, will not simply go away on its own after February 14, 2015.
Biodun Jeyifo
bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
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