By Peter N. Peters
As Nigeria continues to sink deeper and deeper into the cesspit of hunger and poverty, resulting from the frighteningly low appetite for righteous leadership of our leaders, what we hear very often as a defense for this ugly trend is that “No One is a Saint.” It has become as popular a refrain among our political leaders as it is even in religious circles.
In the heat of the political campaigns for the 2023 general elections, the former Vice-Presidential Candidate of the All-Progressives Congress (APC) and now the nation’s Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima was quoted in an interview on Channels Television to have described the former Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo, (whom he claimed to be his friend) as a ‘nice man.’ But he quickly added, “Nice people do not make good leaders because they tend to be nasty.” “Nice men should be selling popcorn and ice cream.” As nice men are confined to selling popcorn and ice cream in Shettima’s Nigeria, what happens to our polity? It is reduced to a borderless playground for haters of righteous leadership like Shettima and all manner of characterless predators in the corridors of power, as we witness today.
As if in tacit support of this strange line of thought, Shettima’s principal, who is now the President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, later in a chat with his supporters in London, after his interview at the Chatham House, took the Nigerian politicians’ hatred for decency and rule of law a notch higher at the international arena. He promoted at the world stage what has turned out to be his template for election winning: “Political power is not served a la carte in a restaurant,” he said. “You grab it, snatch it, and run with it.” Meaning the Nigerian Constitution, the newly signed Electoral Laws 2022, and even the electorates themselves could pretty well go to hell as they don’t matter as far as winning elections is concerned in Nigeria.
To drive home his point that politics, rule of law, and morality are strange bedfellows for most Nigerian politicians, the best material he (now as President) found fit and literally handpicked among the eligible candidates for the office of National Chairman of his party was Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje. The fact that this man is heavily tainted with an unresolved bribery scandal as the immediate past governor of Kano State could not deter him. This, along with the new set of newly sworn in Federal Ministers, the majority of whom are grappling with huge unresolved corruption cases with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), is the calibre of people assembled to drive the President’s “Renewed Hope” Agenda. How can this be? The scripture says, ‘By their fruits you know them.’ These tainted men are in no position to give the highly dispirited citizens of Nigeria any “Renewed Hope.” They cannot give what they don’t have. And we are already seeing the early warning signals with the way huge sums of money are circulating among them so early in the day, not minding the increasing hunger and grinding poverty pervading the land.
Talking about the President’s election-winning template. Did the BATists execute this template to the letter? Of course, yes, in a most confounding and bizarre manner. Thugs in the creeks, in the markets and parks as well as thugs in politics were all fired up. They unleashed mayhem on defenseless citizens and pitched one tribe against the other all for political gain, especially in Lagos, and other APC-controlled states, while the security personnel looked the other way during the 2023 general elections. In the end, more than 50 Nigerian souls were reported to have been lost to election violence across the nation. Asiwaju Tinubu is sitting pretty and bestriding the Nigerian landscape with obscene swagger as Nigeria’s President today because his template of lawlessness and brigandage was executed to the letter.
In cahoots with the ‘Independent’ National Electoral Commission (INEC), they literally trampled upon the electoral rules that INEC hitherto promoted with relish and then presided over the most flawed general elections. And with no reservation, the INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, while announcing what he cooked as the results of the presidential election in that ungodly hour of 4 a.m. on March 1, 2023, charged those who felt robbed to go to court. Of course, the whole process has shifted to the courts, despite the obvious slur this careless remark cast on the integrity of the judiciary.
From the High Courts to the Appeal Courts right up to the Supreme Court, the judiciary is bursting with election petitions from the state assembly elections right up to the Presidential Election. Never in the history of elections in Nigeria have the courts been so inundated with election petitions. And to think that this was following on the heels of the much celebrated newly signed Electoral Laws 2022, as the proverbial electoral game changer, leaves much to be desired.
Perhaps it could still be condoned while keeping hope alive that things are bound to change for the better if this ugly narrative is restricted to the politicians alone. But when we hear the same singsong “No One is a Saint,” being re-echoed from religious circles, particularly the Church and some of our spiritual leaders, then there is a big problem. If no one is a saint in the political arena, should we not then turn to the religious centres, especially the Church, in search of saints? What are our spiritual leaders wired for? What is the business of the Church, if not to groom saints that would go into the world and show the light? If we can’t find saints even in the Church today, should it not become a source of worry and a challenge to the Church to brace up, change the narrative, and resolve to groom saints for tomorrow? Why do we succumb to joining them if we can’t beat them?
Dike Chukwumerije, a renowned writer, and poet, lamenting the charade that happened on February 25, 2023, as a presidential election, captured it succinctly in his recent interview with Arise Television: “What I did for my candidate on that election day was stand in line, from 8 am on Saturday to 8 am on Sunday. When the sun got too hot and I thought of going home, I remembered, ‘shot to death on the train to Kaduna’ and I stayed. When the heavens opened and poured down rain, I thought about running away to find safety, and I remembered: ‘stocked at home for months due to ASUU strike,’ I stayed. Through hunger and taste, through my worries about how the children I left at home were fairing, I stayed, because of what I wanted to give to my candidate and country.”
“What I ended up stuffing into the ballot box was not a piece of paper. It was my hope for my country, where young people would not be so disillusioned by the actions of their own leaders that they prefer to take the huge risk of traveling through the Sahara Desert on foot just to escape from hopelessness. That was what I put in that ballot box. And that was what my presiding officer refused to upload. Somewhere between the Polling Unit and Collation Centre, that hope; that future was waylaid by a politician. A politician who used his biro to cross out our destiny. A politician that canceled out where we wrote hope and wrote across it ‘hopeless.”
“I tell you; it is not Nigeria; it is not North nor South, Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, or Yoruba. It is not the Muslim nor the Christian that has its legs on our neck. None of these is our enemy. Our enemy is that politician who is willing to steal, who is willing to kill to stay in power. He is indeed our enemy. We have been so serially abused that we now seem to have fallen in love with our kidnappers. We now hail the swagger of our kidnappers. We admire the confidence of those who kill the future of the Almajiri in order to stay in power. It is more honourable to lose in a contest that is fair. No one who steals political power will use it for good.”
If an ‘ordinary’ folk like Chukwumerije could think this deeply about the grave implication of the obvious theft of our mandate that happened on February 25, 2023, how come our spiritual fathers appear unperturbed? No matter whose ox is gored; despite our differences in tribe, tongue, religion and politics, the Church should be seen standing strong and united on the side of truth, justice, and fairness. That’s the stuff genuine followers of Christ are made of. It is said that evil thrives in the land when good men refuse to speak up. The deafening silence from the Church, especially the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) even in the face of criminal gangs masquerading as politicians and their cronies, trampling upon all that is right and virtuous sends the wrong message to the people.
Spiritually speaking, Tinubu’s presidency is a metaphor of how terribly low Nigeria has sunk in immorality and wickedness. It is God’s undisguised expression of disgust over the state of things in Nigeria. And it is utterly perplexing that most of our spiritual fathers are not getting this message. Even if there’s any iota of truth in the statement that no one is a saint, is it to this extent that a man with question marks on virtually everything he holds dear is the one we have found fit to lead us? Is there no modicum of honour left with us anymore?
As I write, another case bordering on certificate forgery, age falsification, identity theft, etc, involving our President is building up in faraway United States of America. It is completely different from the one at the home front, right now undergoing adjudication by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT). Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Presidential Candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is asking the US court to compel the authorities of the Chicago State University (CSU), where our President said he obtained his accounting degree to make available to him Tinubu’s academic records. And guess what? Rather than encourage the school to cooperate with Alhaji Atiku and the court and release his academic records if only to clear every doubt about his degree certificate (which by the way, is the only academic certificate attached to the forms submitted by the President to INEC to prove that he is academically qualified for the office of President in accordance with the constitutional provisions), just as Peter Obi did with the authorities of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, (UNN), when the authenticity of his degree certificate was also questioned. Our President (Bola Tinubu) strangely assembled and dispatched to the USA, five lawyers to stop the school from releasing his academic records. What does this suggest? So, our local dance of shame has now been shifted to the international arena? What a shame!
Here in Nigeria, there are multiple question marks on virtually everything about our President – his real name, real parents, birthplace, state of origin, real age, schools attended, academic qualifications, sources of his stupendous wealth, etc. And no serious attempt is made from any of his quarters to answer them. Even with all these, some of us who should know better still make bold to support him.
Assuming by any stroke of ill luck (and baring an imminent divine intervention, it is most likely to happen) that the courts decide to flow with the President, and give him a clean bill to continue in office, through some ‘technical’ abracadabra, as we have seen happen in the recent past, are we not bordered about its implication on the psyche of the coming generation of leaders and our children? That all the values for righteous living may have been trampled underfoot? That in Nigeria, only people of shady character succeed in leadership? Will there still be hope for any credible elections in Nigeria in the future? Will our children feel any obligation to work hard in school, and earn their certificates without cheating? Will parents still have the moral fibre to correct their children involved in stealing, forgery, lying, cheating, cultism, diversion of public funds, election violence, and all forms of malpractice?
In all of these, however, there is still hope! Those of us who are believers still have faith that God, who rules in the affairs of man, has the final say. And He will speak in clear language soon. God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. The signs are ominous and compelling to the spiritually discerning that a revolution is brewing, not only in Nigeria but across the West African sub-region. And it won’t be because the Church is praying or not praying, but because of the relentless distress cry of the dehumanized, oppressed, beating, and battered citizens.
In all biblical history, it takes the distress cry of the oppressed people to move God into action. In Exodus 3: 7-8, God spoke to Moses saying: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I am concerned about their suffering. So, I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians.”
The military coup imbroglio in neighbouring Niger Republic may probably serve as one of the triggers. To add to our local headache, the President unconscionably got the nation in the crossfire of the Niger military coup. A government beset with a raging battle of legitimacy at home has no business accepting the chairmanship of the ECOWAS sub-regional body and now spearheading a war to push out an equally illegitimate military regime of a sister country, even against the advice of the National Assembly and all well-meaning citizens of Nigeria. Talk about a man whose house is on fire busy chasing rats. That is exactly what President Tinubu is doing threatening to go to war with NIger Republic, supported and urged on by the imperialist Western powers, and not minding our close affinity with Niger Republic, and the impact it may have on our fragile economy and security.
Beginning from day one of this new administration, they have continued to falter with every single policy pronouncement. By so doing, they are increasing the suffering and misery as well as the anger of the people. The people’s patience is racing dangerously close to a breaking point. Pray that there will be no push-back very soon. Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable. God will certainly speak soon. I don’t know how, but He will! The oppressed people of Nigeria will eventually heave a sigh of relief because they will be the beneficiaries.
Peters is an FCT-based media practitioner and the Executive Secretary of Concern for Ethics & Values in Nigeria (CoEViN). All responses and inquiries (text messages only) may be posted to 09054355959 or pnpeters22@gmail.com.
