Politics is contact sport. When it is the season of political campaign, almost everything is fair game. Winning a seat becomes a zero-sum game. Victory is all that matters. Like sports, the only goal is to win. The winner takes all and when that is the case, “blood letting” is just another step on the way. Aneurin Bevan, the Welsh politician and statesman gave us, decades ago, the pithy observation that, “Politics is a blood sport.” Politics has never been a game for the meek. It is a sport for the steely. Given our peculiarities, it is a game with less respect, little or no honor and no loyalty.
Between 2014 and 2015, there was a consensus that the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan was bad for us. Collectively through our will and armed with our voters’ cards, we sacked an unpopular incumbent. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s umbrella became a tattered contraption under which Nigerians were unwilling to take shelter. Then, Buhari and Jonathan were like our favourite teams in the European league. Buhari is president, in no small part, because we were invested in the electoral sport of the winner takes all of 2015. We crushed Goodluck Jonathan because of his own failings and because the All Progressives Congress (APC) presented a candidate we thought could stop the rot.
Two years later, Nigerians were portioned into the cheerleading crowd of hailers and the opposition camp of wailers. An argument or policy is no longer right or wrong on its merits, it now depends on who makes it. In a sad turn, supporters of Buhari became automatically right and those who never liked Buhari or those who left his camp because they were disappointed, do not get the benefit of the doubt. They are now automatically wrong. They are branded as unpatriotic, seditious and impatient. Yes, there are haters who are incapable of seeing anything good in Buhari. But, every Nigerian deserves to be heard.
Nigerian politics has taken on “The Sporting Spirit”. That is the title of one of George Orwell’s powerful essays. There he wrote: “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play, it is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in violence…a heavily financed activity, capable of attracting vast crowds and rousing savage passions…the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige.”
Our politics mimics our love of soccer and religion. We turn to politics as one of the levers of our tribal identity. More like: You are Chelsea, I am Arsenal; you are Muslim, I am Christian. Politics is where we lose boundaries and take refuge from the anxieties of our unstable society and adult bothers. We spend more time consuming politics and dissecting the ills of Nigeria than the time we spend on community activism, volunteering and education combined. It is 2018, many of us who castigated Jonathan for every failure have exchanged the responsibilities of citizenship for the pleasures of ecumenical fandom. They now cheer Buhari’s failure by putting a spin on it. The ethos of Buhari’s fandom is win at all cost, only Buhari can save Nigeria, there is no alternative.
Political acquiescence, hero worship and ecumenical fandom of political actors do not advance democracy. Our quest for a greater Nigeria as related to our unquestioning attitude is antithetical to democracy. That realisation begs the question: Do we understand democracy? Is this brand of governance good for us? Are we too young in our democratic experience to understand the tenets of political leadership, the value of opposition and the responsibilities of followership?
In a democracy, no one wields the monopoly of political truth. The precepts of democracy is the concept of a patriotic opposition and the toleration of political dissent. Political truth is uncertain, pluralistic and often evasive. Because of these, we can, as citizens disagree with the president, a governor, or a senator without disparaging their persons and we must not be sanctioned for raising our disagreement. In a democracy, disagreement is natural and healthy. We move forward and advance the discourse when disagreements are aired in a civil manner. In a democracy, electoral loss is temporary; there is always the next election. With another chance, comes learning, compromise and conciliation. In a democracy, the Constitution is supreme but not frozen. The Constitution must be upheld at all times for the sake of political stability. It can be amended as necessary. In a democracy, an ordered, safe society where there is liberty, freedom and equal protection for life and property is the best guarantee of the happiness the people. We must have confidence that the political system could involve disagreements in a way that precludes violence. Underlining every democracy is the fundamental human rights under which individuals are free to believe anything, associate with anyone and give expression to their imaginations and creativity. This is why we elect candidates.
Nigeria is a nominal democracy because the tenets of democracy decscribed above, remain fragile, if not rare. To succeed and be on the path to greatness, we must socialise ourselves to absorb these tenets. The fate and success of a country cannot rest on an individual. Jonathan with all his faults, bore all we piled on him. Politics is sport, a winner can become a loser. It happens all the time.
Credit: Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, Premium Times