Moving from party to party for lucre is militancy against Nigeria’s political stability

Freedom is a relish, the abuse of it is a rubble. Nigeria has well over 60 political parties. One would think it’s enough space for all, but not quite. Only about five can boast of being truly functional. The reason isn’t far-fetched. It is the ‘food is ready’ mentality of the Nigerian political enthusiast. Mark the word ‘enthusiast’, because we hardly can boast of true politicians. An enthusiast follows to serve his interest; once it’s not forthcoming, he decamps. He may not necessarily have ideals or the will to defend any. He loses nothing because the system permits it in the guise of freedom. Real politicians lay down all for the purpose of their calling. The purpose is beyond the person. It’s a message to humanity, a direction, a virtue, a conviction. The patience to build a cause to a political direction/conviction/pursuit is yet to bud. All we do is avoid pain, move to where it’s about to happen and there, hack a cut.

There’s urgent need to review what we understand as freedom to move from party to party and its effect on the stability of the polity. Many parties complain of ‘lack of internal democracy’. What’s that really? It’s straight injustice, unfairness, live-and-let-die, cat-eat-rat within the party. Why? It’s about persons within the party, the position they hold which can be of use to the enthusiast, not about the party, its convictions or practice. Once the person is seen as the storehouse, the rats cluster. He succeeds because the party itself has blurred ideals, no convictions, no direction, no people-check and a lot of power to use. He uses them and according to the popular dictum, ‘nothing will happen’. Those who can bear stay and become subservient, those who cannot wait till they see an opening and as rats, escape to a new party. Unfortunately, they don’t escape clean. What they run away from, they carry; the virus is in them. In their new party, they struggle to become storehouses; if they succeed, they let out the virus to contaminate it. In the end, it’s an endless movement with the same trouble. It’s this trouble that kills all political parties which first welcome those who decamp because they’re their enemy’s enemy but much sooner, they become the enemy.

That gives some insight. The insight is, no mechanisms in place within the parties to oversee fairness within the system or if there is, it’s weak because storehouses within the party can override/overrule them and, again, ‘nothing will happen’. In the end, it’s free-ride impunity, meaning, they do what they like and get away with it. It further means that checks and balances in the Nigerian political system are ceremonial. If excesses cannot be checked, the people turn to the enthusiast to connect them to someone who knows someone who then knows a storehouse so they can ‘eat’. It’s not just poverty, it’s greed and a me-disposition. You can be poor but with a mind but you can’t be greedy and rule your mind. In the process of meeting the demands of greed, too many unthinkable vile become active. Then on, murder, thuggery, theft become tolerable burdens.

Militancy isn’t just retiring to the creeks or doing the Boko. By the time the system to which we all cleave comes under the assault of treachery and feebleness to the point that stability is in question, there is militancy. It is this militancy in the polity that births militancy in the creeks. There’s therefore need to pay attention to the hatchery. Our polity is the hatchery of militancy. It’s not enough to win elections; more important are those actions or inactions that fuel alienation and its consequent resistance, those betrayals that kill trust and weaken the bond, those utterances that stoke hate, those mockeries that make others feel like not belonging. What’s done about them?

These misses have the capacity to void the content of any victory. They’re the militancy against the polity and, therefore, need a careful study. It’s not the kind of political study politicians run to Washington to learn something-nothing because of the attractions; it’s the study of concerned citizens by concerned citizens. A situation whereby citizens take up arms after elections like the case of Boko after Jonathan, and now the surging Ijaw question after Buhari, is a bad run of events.

Something isn’t going good with the way Nigerian political parties operate. Parties have to start with developing filtration mechanisms to prune run-ins from other political parties; the legislature should become more ingenuous with rules to neutralize vindictive and mindless crossovers and, above all, the society should generally show determined disapproval of it. It’s fun to the practitioners but death to the polity.

Onyebuchi ONYEGBULE