Nigeria: Before Darkness Falls

This probably will be my last article on the forthcoming Nigerian general elections that will start from February 14. It is an article that is specifically crafted to serve as my final warnings before darkness falls upon the nation. Much as I would have liked to register my imprint on the outcomes of the elections either way, fate has robbed me of my civic duty. I’m not in a position to cast a ballot and I’m therefore voting with my pen in the hope that this last ditch effort might somehow persuade someone out there, who may have completely misread the political situation to reevaluate his or her political choices.

Life is full of ironies, uncertainties, imponderables, and plain absurdities on the part of both individuals and nations acting against their best interests in moments of thoughtlessness and emotional hemorrhage. And sometimes pain is the best teacher of mankind, where wise counsel fails to instruct men as to right course of actions and who then believing in their unseasoned judgements allow their emotions rather than their reasoning to rule over them.
Experience has demonstrated throughout history that raw emotion has never been the best friend of man when deployed in matters requiring sobriety, thoughtfulness and careful evaluations of situations.
So when the reader asks: Why the warnings? It’s because of the portents that I see in the horizon that foreshadow doomsday scenarios not just in terms of what has become the traditional violence that usually marks elections in Nigeria generally, but in terms of the type of leadership that potentially will emerge from this ill-fated democratic ritual.
I don’t know about others, but it seems clear and unmistakable to me that with tears in their eyes Nigerians could thoughtlessly and recklessly walk into a ditch in plain sight. They should be reminded, however, while there is still time, that those who ride on the back of a tiger will soon end up in its stomach, however sweet the journey might be at the beginning. And on this history has been pretty consistent and unforgiving too even as man is forever doomed to repeating it.
When I read in the media that the two main presidential candidates are running neck and neck in the polls I shuddered not because I fear that Jonathan might lose but because Buhari might win the presidential election. And this is without prejudice to the fact that polls have got it wrong time and time again. With that said, there is no reason on earth why the public opinion polls of Nigerian electorate should be that close at all if Nigerians still have their memories intact and undiluted.
How could a nation have so short a memory about its recent political history? The military just got out of power barely 16 years ago and Buhari was part and parcel of those who aborted Nigeria’s democracy.
In fact, he was the first to do it after the return of power to civilians in 1979. Buhari could barely allow civilian rule for four years before he aborted Nigeria’s second attempt democratic rule after decades of military rule. How could a nation with a brain and a memory forget that so soon?
How could a people who cried their hearts out and prayed to be delivered from tyranny, which prayers were swiftly answered in a span of two short years now spit in the face of the gods and turn around to embrace the very author of that tyranny? Upon what human logic is such reasoning founded?
It’s like a dog going back to eat its vomit. And if the dog does eat the vomit its foregone conclusion that it will, at the very least, suffer serious constipation or other serious health maladies thereafter.
To whom would the dog run for help then when a certain evil it has brought upon itself strikes later?
Even the lowly dog knows better than bring such a curse upon itself, how much more thinking humans with working brains.
It may well be that the younger generation of Nigerians did not witness the atrocities of General Muhammadu Buhari and his lack of vision for the nation back in his military rule. But the older generations cannot be forgiven least of all the Yoruba in the South/West who bore the brunt of Buhari’s tyrannical dictatorship.
Why would a man thrice rejected at the polls for these very reasons be considered at all for the presidency as if he has suddenly changed?
And most tellingly, how can Nigerians reward a presidential candidate with a track record of violence and religious fanaticism?

*this article was published in Daily Times newspaper on Friday, February 6, 2015