Scarce Political Commodity: Level Playing Ground

                                                        
 While her husband and other nationalists were cracking their brains at a round table on how the area, Niger Area, Nigeria for short, as knocked together by Flora Shaw, could be freed from the clutches of imperialism, she was busy sourcing food from her kitchen for the nationalists to ensure the democracy of the stomach, and forwarding same to the round table. Who was she? Chief Awolowo’s jewel of inestimable value, Hannah Idowu Dedeolu Awolowo is gone. Died at the age of 99 years, after a meeting with her children and other family members on the preparations for her centenary birthday just in November there! Oh! No! She failed to hit the net to collect the prize. But take it or leave it, H I D is a centenarian. The last of the titans, perhaps, has gone the way of all mortals OBJ, Aso-Rock, APC, PDP among others have been condoling the Awolowo family. What do we say? Adieu Mama! Did I hear that the Olu of Warri has also joined his ancestors? Oh! No! It is all time to go. May their great souls rest in peace.
The predicted flood is rolling down gradually and the ordinary people of this country, people at the receiving end, the flood channel people are asking, ‘where is Noah’s Ark’ so they can jump in. Well, we will show them where the Ark is berthed when they must have relocated from the flood planes or when our lazy ones in government must have built the dam to counter the floods from Lago Dam in Cameroon. Chei! Executive laziness!
What’s on? Our clergymen both of the Pentecostal and the traditional orthodox Christian churches seem to be crying more than the bereaved. They seem not to like the probes and loots recovery from those who swallowed us whole. Rather, they are asking PMB to plunge into the business of governance. You may wish to ask; what business? Yes, they latched on the previous administrations and acquired private jets. And folks are saying, ‘some religious leaders who kind of relocated their operational headquarters to Aso Rock and undertook certain missions for the presidency should be probed. Behind every great wealth there is a crime, so said the Radical Rambler, Mokwugo Okoye. Few months before the present dispensation $ 9.3 million dollars was found in the private jet of CAN president and government said it was for the purchase of weapons to counter Boko Haram insurgency. Sufficient dust was raised and was later swept under the carpet. Chei! South African connection! Our poking investigation lenses should also be directed at non-state actors. Every person feels that the state system is where to make it. In the name of God some of our men of God are taking more than the owner will know.
Did you or did you not? Are you guilty or not guilty? Yes, I did. Oh no, I did not. These are likely questions one gets when one is put in the dock. And that’s the beginning of finding or digging out the truth about an allegation. It is a kind of inquiry, a research in which all the arsenal of research methodology are employed and deployed to establish the truth. Whether or not one is guilty would be combed out to the surface when necessary questions must have been asked and answered; when the lawyers must have cross-examined the parties concerned and must have addressed the court on the whys and wherefores of the atani getting a black a eye. But when one goes to court to obtain an order, ‘I do not want to be tried. Allegations against me should not be discussed’, it all means that there are some skeletons dancing in the cupboard which you don’t want us to see. But the skeletons in a macabre dance are knocking seriously on the door of the cupboard, itching to be seen and seem to be saying, ‘we are hidden here. Please, open the cupboard and see us. We are beautiful. You must open the cupboard and appreciate us’. And here you begin to ask; who killed History as a core subject of study, so much so that we can no longer remember the Societe Generale bank story and how some of its customers perished in an economic misadventure. The banking system is being used for all kinds of crimes by all those who do not add any value to the economy. Sail you on!
 Yet we continue to ask; who killed History? And someone brings in an analogy. History is like an old man in our immediate environment. We rely on the old, if not the oldest man, to tell us about our past so we can project into the future.’ The death of an old man is like burning down the Library of Congress’. Hei! I’m lost!
 Frontal attack on corruption is the only way democracy can grow in Nigeria, says Ebonyi state governor, Dave Umahi. And we say, tell it to those who refuse to pay staff salaries even with bailout funds. Corruption is a debilitating disease worse than most terminal diseases. To the state system, corruption is more than debilitating. However, in some houses in Abakaliki, Ebonyi state, toilet is still the bucket system and Umahi bemoans and warns, ‘some landlords are only interested in their rents, not the welfare of their tenants, caring less about the condition of their seemingly  un-rentable property’. ‘Such landlords, Umahi warns, will see red pepper’. In Ebonyi, cholera is in ambush position, reminds commissioner for environment, Moses-Ogodo Ali. Ask the Abakaliki landlords, they will tell you they are on top of the cholera challenge.
 How did we get to where we are, the situation of never expect power always? Some non-power players got involved in the power sector because they felt that there was some money to be made. Most of the DISCOS are peopled by non-power players, the unbundling of NEPA, PHCN or whatever acronym notwithstanding. And so, we remain mired in the swamp.
‘Iyom is a new face of representative democracy’ says Gburugburu Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, governor of Enugu State. Yes, from the House of Representation to the Senate, Iyom is on the move and says, ‘It is morning yet on creation day’, her destination is not the Senate. The Senate is but a repeater station of a major station. Everything is on her side including age and malleability. She knows when to go and how far to go in going too far. According to her, ‘you board a vehicle that moves, not the one which tyres are wobbling, deflated or the one that needs to be pushed out of a quagmire’.
 But Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean president is stuck in the mud, in the quagmire. When he read his state of the nation address on August 25, that contained his 10-point programme for the transformation of the Zimbabwean economy, the opposition jeered at him. When the 91-year old president, clutching on to the power, turned up to read a new address there was a mix up. Mugabe read exactly his state of the nation address thinking he was reading a new one. Chei!  You should blame diminishing returns, not Mugabe who should be in the village breaking kola nuts and playing with school children, if it is the culture of Zimbabwe and asking the ancestors for forgiveness for many transgressions. Robert Mugabe , one of the sit-tight kings of Africa begging to be given state burials. I hear you!
Yes, the goal post changed when the striker was coming dangerously with the ball. It would have been a tear-net of a shot. The striker shot wild, so to speak. This is exactly what has happened in Bayelsa State. PDP aspirants for the governorship of the state prepared for the party’s primary that would have seen Siriake Dickson gasping for air. Lo and behold, they were all disqualified by the screening committee set by the party, leaving Siriake Dickson, the incumbent Governor coasting home with victory. Unchallenged! Unrepentant PDP and its imposition of candidates have done it again.
The picture appears the same in Kogi State, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state, its relations with one another complicated by its confluence status. When will political parties give room for internal democracy? Difficult to come by, and this is fertilizing the ground for the ruling APC! In Bayelsa and other PDP states it is a bumpy, not a level playing ground. Level playing ground, a scarce commodity!
Did I hear you say that Victor Ndioma- Egba has resigned membership of PDP? He is perhaps, eyeing APC. Chei! Party fence-jumping! Before now Victor Ndioma Egbo (SAN) and son of a justice of the supreme court was Senate  Majority Leader, or  Senate leader for short, one of those who sang the chorus of PDP being the biggest party in Africa or on the planet earth, and which would rule Nigeria for the next sixty years. Now, things have fallen apart. And by the ways, where is Prince Eze Vincent Ogbulafor, erstwhile PDP National chairman whose star gazing capabilities enabled him to telescope into the future and see PDP sixty-year rule before any other party would smell Aso-Rock?
Ekenem Un