Today is another Friday. It is the end of another working week. If you have put in a good week’s work, it is time to put up your feet and relax. Such indeed is the nature of Friday. This is why folks are wont to say: Thank God it is Friday.
There is even an endearing acronym for this situation. It goes like this: TGIF! But hold it, before you lull yourself into this laid-back mode, you may as well sit back and think again. Such thinking cannot but revolve around our polity, which is in a sad state.
Dear reader, please note that I am no kill-joy. Rather, my take is on a realistic platform, after taking a long and hard look around. My observations naturally revolve around the election season and its airy and recurrent promises.
It is a time to hear nice sounding phrases as regards what the future holds, if and when Mr Jibit is allowed to take over the reins of power. It is so tantalising that if you are not careful, you are likely to fall for these recurrent promises.
What probably restrains the average voter from falling for these seductive promises centres on the fact that the same old faces, the architects of our present and past woes are the ones making these promises. Moreover, if you listen carefully, you will discover that the same old phrases are being mouthed.
Take the former governor in a North-Central state who brought in Zimbabwe farmers. This was in the hope that there would be a turnaround in the agricultural fortunes of that state. Today, such a roseate situation does not obtain.
Yet he is the same character, who is going all over the whole place, seeking to serve on a higher pedestal. Or if you like, coin a more realistic phrase: seeking to be served on a higher platform.
Apparently, such a politician may as well liken the rest of us to the Bourbon Kings who have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. The reader can be sure that this particular instance is not even an isolated feature.
We also have the case of a former vice-president, a serial contestant for the presidency, whose hands were heavily soiled in the light of his predatory and prebendal dispositions. Yet and despite the immediate foregoing, he had the temerity to tell us straight-faced that he would stop the looting of the commonwealth, if and when he is voted to power.
Again, how about a serving state governor who initiated scores of projects and many of them came to grief? And yet he is telling us that there will be a New Nigeria if and when he obtains power.
This particular situation and even the previous ones cited in this piece bring to mind the ageless wisdom of my folks who have pointedly advised: when a man in rags promises to clothe you in a fine suit, just take a look at his own non-sartorial profile.
Once this is done, it will be appreciated that someone surely is being deceived. It does not take too much to appreciate here that the person being deceived is indeed the hopeless and helpless voter. Even then, these flowering and vapour-like promises are consistent with the tenor of the times.
Remember this is election season. And in such a season, poetics and poetry can be found. In other words as one wise man has remarked: in the election season, campaigns are done in poetry, while in the post-election season, when the post-colonial masters begin to rule us, they rule us not in poetry, but largely and essentially in prosaic terms.
There are stark words for describing this kind of double-faced situation. Such words include: perfidy, betrayal, and summersault. In the light of the foregoing, what comes to mind and very painfully too has to do with earlier promises from the superstructure itself.
In 2015, in an earlier campaign season, the promise was that all our refineries will be functioning. Today, some seven years later, that positive goal remains elusive. The vanishing nature of the promise can be vividly seen in the fact that, from 2015 till date, the humongous sum of N1.14 trillion has been spent on the refineries.
And yet, the refineries remain comatose. One is naturally puzzled and baffled by this development, sorry underdevelopment. In the bid to resolve this puzzle, and in order not to lose one’s mind, Some refuge must be taken in some of Fela Anikulapo’s songs.
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The one which comes readily to mind here is: ‘Government Magic’. Another one is: ‘International Thief! Thief!’ Under the circumstances, the latter is particularly relevant. The relevance stems from the fact that comatose and non-functional refineries still continue to attract huge expenditures in areas like salaries for workers and maintenance.
This unsavoury situation must rest on a kind of alliance between the local forces and their global collaborators, hence the reference to international as depicted above. Even then, this case of dead refineries is only one in a long list of broken promises by the political class.
What lends credence to this assertion are these depositions from the internet. Here the reader may wish to note that that platform has been labelled as a contraption that never forgets. In terms of specifics, some other electoral promises can be found on this platform. Such promises remain unfulfilled till this day.
They include pledges that a national carrier will be brought on stream. This will be done according to our post-colonial masters by bringing all the aircraft in the presidential fleet into the Nigeria Airways, and within a year, increase the fleet to about 20. Indeed and almost piously, the question was asked: Why should the Nigerian president not fly with other members of the Nigerian public, the pledge went on to ask rhetorically.
Even then, we are not done with this spate of broken promises. For there are other rhetorical questions which go on to sear and tear the mind. These include: Why do I need to embark on foreign trips as a president with a huge crowd with public funds? Why do I need to go for foreign medical trips, if we cannot make our hospitals functional?
Why do we need to send our children abroad, if we cannot develop our universities to compete with the foreign ones? These pledges were made way back on February 21, 2015 in London in a speech to Nigeria.
What is notable here is the series of whys, in which each ‘why’ prefaced each question. Such a repetitive style is indeed very poetic, so poetic that it is something of a sharp contrast to the current and contrasting prose, which hallmarks the tenor of governance, some seven years later.
So evidently, we are back to square one. Another season of promises (poetry) only to be followed by yet another season of prose, or better still broken promises. However, the comfort in much of the foregoing is that no one is fooled any more. Still my dear reader, have a nice weekend.
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