This tragedy can be averted - By Sola Adeyeye July 15, 2008 | posted by Mobolaji Aluko (Archives)

 

This tragedy can be averted

 

By Sola Adeyeye

 

By the time this piece is being read, the saga of obscenity emanating from the electoral tribunal in Osun State might have moved Nigeria some furlongs closer to disaster. It is tragic that Nigerians have made a habit of wasting every golden opportunity to redeem our country and place it on the path of moral rectitude, ethical public conduct and good governance.

 

Year after year, Transparency International has placed Nigeria among the most corrupt countries in the world. I have never believed that Nigerians are intrinsically or culturally more corrupt than the citizens of other countries across the globe.  However, it is an undeniable fact that Nigerians have done a very dismal and pathetic job when public ethics are breached. Often, the culprits are treated with kid gloves. Indeed, they are treated with no gloves!

 

 Where else in the world would a public figure travel abroad using a passport with fake names, conduct dubious business, get photographed in the process, and subsequently get accused of criminality only for every law enforcement agency to go sleeping and snoring as if nothing had happened? Where else in the world will a reputable newspaper report the license plate number of a car parked in front of a particular branch of a particular bank where bags of money are loaded for the criminal business of subverting the constitution by elongating the term of an incompetent and corrupt president and yet there would be no follow-up from any law enforcement agency?  Where else in the world will a sitting governor be locked up in the toilet despite the guaranty of constitutional immunity and no one has ever been prosecuted for that treasonable assault on the constitution? Where else in the world will that Governor’s residence get invaded, and hoodlums shown on national television as they damage and destroy public property without a single person being arrested talk less of being prosecuted by the police? EFCC my foot! ICPC my foot!  Police my foot!

 

Let us recall another country. There was a man called Spiro Agnew.  He was the Vice President of the USA from 1969 to 1973. He was accused of extortion, bribery and tax evasion. The dust did not settle until he fell from grace to grass.  And there was President Richard Nixon.  He tried to cheat on the election process by invading the headquarters of the opposing political party.  He too fell from his exalted office. 

 

Americans often viewed the Agnew-Nixon embarrassment as a dark period of their history.  To be sure, Nixon and Agnew were the progenitors of the cynicism that pervades American politics till today. Even so, the episode only showed that like the rest of humanity, Americans too can be corrupt.   But it also gloriously revealed how a serious society should deal with exposed shortcomings. Alas! Not so in Nigeria.

 

Corruption in the judiciary has been reported from other parts of the world.  But where else in the world will judges who have been caught red-handed hide their heads in the sand of criminal silence? Where else will the offending lawyer resort to egregious campaigns of obfuscation and intimidation? Where else will such a criminal indulge in repeated hotchpotch of shameless inanity in a barren attempt to explain the inexplicable? Where else will arrant non sequiturs be elevated to an art form as if journalists must disclose their source to establish the veracity of a story? Where else will revered custodians of justice mutate into he-goats exuding odors that soil their colleagues and the polity with such we-don’t-care-and-you-can-go-to-hell bravado?

 

Truthfully, the Nigerian republic is not dead. But the approaching feet that pound so frighteningly belong to undertakers who are preparing to perform the final rite for our dying republic. Let there be no doubt about the fact that a nation dies in which there is no hope for justice. As justice is being suffocated in this clime, Nigeria has become so mortally ill that attending physicians have accepted the obvious; our nation-state is a living corpse! The physicians have closed their wards and clinics and advised that the mortuary doors be left open.

 

We need neither a prophet nor a soothsayer to decipher the handwriting on the wall of Nigeria’s fourth republic. For one thing, the handwriting is in no way cryptic. Celestial hieroglyphics necessitating the code-breaking genius of a biblical Daniel are not involved. Rather, the handwriting is in a very bold font of a very plain orthography. Moreover, the handwriting is not just on the wall; it is on the ceiling, floor, doors and windows of a wobbly castle on the verge of collapse from structural defect and operational ineptitude. The handwriting proclaims very simply but authoritatively: The end is in sight!

 

Fortunately, the looming tragedy can be averted. If only we so wish!

 

But sorry to say, the merchants of power whose preoccupation is the manipulation of the Nigerian state for selfish mercurial purposes have maintained studied silence while the broth of iniquity boils and froths. Their cadaverous unconcern, while tyranny sprawls like plague, portends nothing but danger. Quite eerily, the gathering cloud seems all too familiar.  As was the case in our inglorious past, the apparatus of state has again been used to disenfranchise and scorn the electorate. Painfully, some compromised members of the judiciary appear to be adding caustic salt to our injury.   We live but never learn from our past!

 

Once upon a time, during the visionary leadership of Obafemi Awolowo, the then Western Region was the only region of Nigeria where the Leader of opposition had an official residence and enjoyed facilities similar to those of regional cabinet members, a practice to which Bola Ige adhered as Governor of the then Oyo State that included the current Osun State. I have recalled these facts of history to underscore the canon of democratic liberalism as a veritable heritage of Osun people.  Alas, this heritage now stands dismantled on the altar of stolen power and its concomitant absolutism of tyranny!

 

Today, members of the opposition in Osun are harassed, intimidated, hounded, and subjected to wanton infringement of fundamental civil liberty. Osun is asphyxiating under the yoke of a regime that increasingly scorns the democratic aspirations of our people. Due process is perennially maimed by those who believe in power for its own sake rather than as an instrument to ennoble the lives of our citizenry. Charges are daily fabricated to stifle the voices of dissent; government has become a wicked engine of victimization. We have seen it before!

 

Those shouting themselves hoarse that the aggrieved should head to the tribunal or court for redress often forget to tell the world that they have instructed the police to terrorize known witnesses of the opposition! In any case, what magic can any lawyer perform in a court where judges are fraternizing with opposing attorneys? 

 

 Meanwhile, in the face of such profligate tyranny, the merchants of power mistake the silence of our people as acquiescence. They forget Obafemi Awolowo’s immortal words that there is something in man, an indefatigable spirit that makes him the image of his Creator. This spirit will always rise, resist and triumph over all forces of repression however omnipotent the forces may seem. It is only a matter of time.