“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the good people of this great country, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to advanced complications of ill-health, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of my presidential mandate. For this reason, and well aware of my the seriousness of this act, with full freedom and greater interest of the country at heart, I declare that I renounce the presidency of this great and blessed nation entrusted to me by the Nigerian electorate in such a way that as from the last day of the month of truth, the year of our Lord at 20.00 hours, the executive seat at the Villa will be vacant and a plenary to confirm a new President will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.”
The sitting President of the Giant of Africa had just had this emotional message broadcast on national media. Informed citizens erupted in a mixed emotion of sadness and excitement – sad about a performing President bowing out of office at half time, but excited about the reality of the craving for service finally taking over from mere power-mongering as primary motivation for seeking public office. A new dawn had just birthed on the horizon.
A few weeks later, a state governor in similar circumstances, called a press conference to make a similar announcement. Journalists, social critics, public affairs commentators and analysts in company with curious citizens, converged, in anticipatory anxiety, on the venue to witness, live, a replay of the historic birth. In the wild struggle for vantage position, one exuberant newspaper correspondent hit my nose with his free-swinging elbow. Yeah, I screamed, and found myself crashing to the concrete walkway, writhing in pain. You want to kill me? You want to kill me? And regaining consciousness, I continued: you want to kill me? You want to … as I came back to real life, fidgeting on the Taraba-made mat on which I had fallen asleep some two hours earlier. I had been dreaming!
Perhaps, everyone, indeed every nation, prays for a dream come true. My dream would have come true for Nigeria between 2009 and 2010. Unfortunately, the occupant of the country’s highest office was no Pope. AlhajiUmaru Yar’Adua probably was imbued with the natural disposition towards the papal path of honour and selflessness. But the kitchen cabal would have none of that, as they must cling to power at all costs, either directly or by proxy, that being their only profession, pastime, means of livelihood and decisively the only thing they knew how to do. They just could not imagine existence without power, being in power, fooling around in power and roaring in power. For them, it was a matter of no retreat, no surrender and, without compromise, a rule-or-die affair!
Their fellow country men and women aboard the Dana aircraft cruising from Abuja to Lagos on Sunday, June 3, 2012 flew, crashed and died. None of the over 150 of them was as lucky as the governor of Taraba State, Dambaba Suntai, who flew, crashed and lived! Had any of them lived, he, perhaps, would have been more concerned with making the survival endure. But not so for Suntai! What is life without power, even if he had to dramatise the terrorist, addressing his people via video pre-recorded at unknown hide-outs? For him and his first ladies and gentlemen, it is another rule-or-die affair!
That is not surprising, though, considering the background from which most holders of elective offices in the country are coming. There, the quest for power just for the sake of it and for reasons that are less than noble poses as primary motivation for seeking political office. Kill-to-rule ideology beclouds the country’s political firmament, manifesting in intriguing political assassinations in the build-up to general elections. Arming of political thugs and deadly cult groups, the consequences of which qualify the country as a security calamity today, is programmed alongside occultist rituals, even in human blood, and demonic covenants at evil shrines for the sole purpose of capturing power! If service is genuinely the prompting for seeking office, why should any sane creation of God be so dangerously and callously desperate?
Prof. Jubril Aminu, one who had seen it all at close quarters, proffered a clue in a recent newspaper interview. According to the former ambassador, senator and minister of Nigeria’s money-spinner, the basic reason for the prevailing it-is-our-turn and it-is-still-our-turn maddening crossfire is that “people want power, money without any accountability. So if it is somebody, why can’t I say it is my turn when I am going to get all the money in the country without accountability?”
He has professorial corroboration from Prof. Chukwuma Soludo.
“There are no political parties with ideologies like in the Second Republic. Most of them are mere platforms for grabbing power,” the former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, who has also performed along the corridor and on the platform, submitted.
And so, a public office-holder who claims to have his people’s mandate is, in 2013 when his subjects are hungry and unemployed, much more interested in, and focused on the 2015 general elections than on service and governance? Yet, according to His Eminence, Anthony Cardinal Ollubunmi Okogie, “2015 is two years away; see how they are killing themselves! Who even knows who will get to 2015? What do you think they are looking for? Money! Nothing else!”
In the circumstance, it would amount to pure intellectual idiocy to imagine the possibility, in the near future, of a Nigerian Pope Benedict XVI. The no-retreat-no-surrender 2015 family showdown in Ekiti State stands close to what a national newspaper described as ‘bloody quest for power in Nasarawa’. The bloody 2015-induced political Armageddon in Rivers State and the on-going civil war in the ruling party have been described as being potentially capable of igniting political instability in the entire nation. Yet the gladiators appear to have no qualms about these. How would anyone who captures power in such circumstances be willing to give it up, even at the point of death?
Pope Benedict XVI was called to service – service to God and mankind. He did his best! And when he could no longer proceed on account of ill-health, he bowed out honourably as there were many other servants of God capable of keeping the flame aglow. The retired Pope is not a Nigerian. But when he replicates himself in this clime and service topples power on the motivation terrain, the nation will surely begin to reap the full benefits of national independence and have all the genuine reasons to celebrate the anniversary.