Someone once defined politics as the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. The unpredictability of politics, and the cruelty of many politicians are factors that make the terrain of the game very slippery and slimy. But I still love the art and science of politics. I love discussing and breaking it all down in intellectual debates. Politics is like an ever-fresh and ever sweet-smelling river that flows through all living beings. Politics is both the fallopian tubes and uterus of the government. We were all created for politics.
Politics drives everything on the face of the earth. Only the dead do not directly or indirectly engage in politics. The most pious clergy plays the game. The most royal king and queen in their palaces have a persistent penchant for it. Politics runs banking institutions, drives businesses in oil corporations, trudges big financial markets run by the lettered, and bolsters small road-side markets run by analphabets. The entirety of life comes alive as a result of the fuel and fire of politics.
In Nigeria, active, elective, and boots-on-the-ground kinds of aspects of politics are, however, sworn no-go areas for many. Good people are turned off by the deliberately deceptive lies politicians have to tell to grab power. The dying wants power. The sick salivate after it. The dead in ideas want the gavel of authority. The fool fights to grab the gavel from the wise. When he does, the wise takes his place in the congregation of fools. Men with cutting-edge endowment, who can run the economy with ease, are on the sidelines of active politics. Connoisseurs with a gritty grasp of the nuts and bolts of good governance are daily eloping the sick and sickening terrain. What sane mind has the strength for the deliberately deceptive antics and maddening manoeuvring orchestrated by politicians? Not me. Politics makes it possible to hang petty thieves and elect ravenous robbers to public office.
All over the globe, politics is rough. The ‘bring-him-down’ syndrome is thorny. Your past in the last 40 years may be dug up for scrutiny. Your private sojourn becomes public knowledge. And your academic foray or lack of it is thrown in your face to whittle down your wits. Bare-knuckles physical fights and staccato of gunshot games are part of the territorial temerity of the world of politics. Your friends will stand with you at sunrise and stand against you at sunset. Who really is your friend in the hallways of politics? You may never know.
The walls of your home must be fortified, otherwise, some night crawling visitors will come knocking down your doors even if they are made of steel. If they gain entry into your palace, your soul prematurely departs from your charred or mutilated body as a result of meted meanness unleashed by hired assassins. Then you either end up gnashing your teeth before the devil in Gehenna, or singing a lullaby with angels of God in Elysium. In Nigeria, precious lives have been wasted because of politics. Blood has been shed because of power. A politician was just beheaded in Imo State and the gruesome video capture of the savagery shared on social media can make a fluffy heart slide into an eternal unconsciousness.
I am not a prophet of doom and gloom. Far from it. Watch what’s going to happen between now and the end of February before Nigeria’s presidential election. Souls bubbling with life today may not live to see the election held. The push for power is driving many political gladiators to seek elective offices by every means necessary. Any potential stopper of their ambition is stopped. There is no messiah in Nigerian politics, my friends. Every politician is culpable.
About 10 years ago, a pharmacist friend in Atlanta dumped his 401K retirement funds running into a couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nigerian politics. His governor promised him heaven and earth. And typical of politicians, the governor reneged when he won the election. My friend almost made an unscheduled visit to heaven as a result of heart illness that came from the disappointment from the governor. He has since refused to visit Nigeria after the incident that almost killed him.
Politicians will torpedo your ship and laugh at you while you sink and stink. What you gained in 10 years you lose in one day. If you work for the cruel ones, and you toe the path of truth in government, they’ll report you to their evil enchanters. Your closest friend can become your harshest adversary because of power. Politicians can offer you as a sacrifice on the altar of manipulation to grab authority. Your blood is the gold and silver they seek. You think you know them and that’s why you’re trusting? You believe they’ll do right is why you endorsed them? When they get power, you’ll find out their true colours.
With them, you’re doing business among people who don’t care about anybody but themselves. They are not in power for you. They are for themselves. The promises politicians make are useless until fulfilled. And 98 per cent of their promises are not kept. The game of politics is a dog-eat-dog battlefield. And you’re not sure of the dog that’ll eat you up and spit you out. I know you love active and elective politics. I do too. But wise up and make your brains work. What you like will not kill you. What you salivate after will not snuff life out your last breath.
I am watching many young people in Nigeria get into food fights over who will become president. I am observing these kids as they lay their necks all on the line, and their all in the public domain for politicians. They are already fighting their friends and making them enemies. As I write this piece, I am mediating between a young man and his mother enmeshed in a big brawl because they disagree on who will be Nigeria’s next president. The love of a stranger that will make you fight your mother is false love. Before you lay your life on the line for politicians, think it through if it’s worth the risk. Politicians will kick you to the curbs. You need a home to come back to and a mother’s comforting cuddle to lean on for true love. No politician should replace a mother’s love in the heart of her son. Anyone who draws up the plans of his life around politicians’ promises may have his life ultimately messed up into pebbles of smithereens. This is a sermon on the mount for those fanatical fellas holding on to the helm of the garments of politicians who by design are as unstable as water. Politicians are not who they say they are. They are the vulpine. They are vultures. They are venoms. When they become king; your Israel will find out you have Saul as king.
Credit: Fola Ojo