The fact that this is a time of tragedy for Nigeria cannot be overemphasized. Every day, mother Nigeria mourns the lives of its sons and daughters lost to insecurity, poverty and decrepit infrastructure. Gloomy faces of its citizenry watch with sheer frustration as trillions of naira are siphoned off from the treasury by a greedy few. Nigerians gape in utter bewilderment as every day, 400,000 – 500,000 barrels of stolen crude escape our shores ‘undetected’ via oil tankers nearly the size of a tennis pitch. It is a tragedy on a daily basis.
It is a tragedy for our democracy as well, as the PDP is indisputably the biggest beneficiary of our peoples’ long and arduous struggle for democracy and justice. There is a sense of tragedy also, about how the PDP single-handedly championed the betrayal of our collective hopes and aspirations by the political class. If the availability of resources, vastness of means, and plurality of goodwill are enough indicators for political performance, then the PDP is the luckiest in the history of this country. Because, never in the history of this country has so much been accrued to a government over so short a span of time.
On ascension to power in 1999, the PDP owes it to the Nigerian people a benefit of doubt to exploit, and to the global community; an African leadership conundrum to trounce. Had the PDP chosen this path; the path of fulfilling our destiny and the destiny of Africa, the story would have altogether been different. Who knows if this tragedy would have been avoided had the APP fielded Olusola Saraki as its presidential candidate, had the Yoruba leaders acceded to the AD’s choice of Bola Ige and not Falae, or had the APP/AD alliance floated a Bola Ige/ Saraki ticket? Coming at the turn of the millennium, instead of guiding Nigeria to its ordained global role, Nigeria under the PDP continues to play truant to its internal and international responsibilities. Fourteen years later, the PDP is still running on excuses and fails to neither create nor sustain an indigenous system that is compatible with our present realities and future hopes.
The PDP perfects the art of rigging, fraud and divide-and-rule with unrivalled dexterity. That over the fourteen years of its misrule, Nigeria has earned as revenue, more than what it had cumulatively earned for the remainder of our post-independence years is enough testimony to the vast amount of resources at its disposal. And true to character, it has squandered as much with nothing to show for. The fact that under the PDP, the thieving elites graduate from stealing millions to billions and to trillions is no mean feat; and the equal fact that we oscillate from being the most corrupt nation (or second most corrupt) to the most dangerous place to be born on earth attests to the ‘astounding vision’ of its founding fathers. Its sham anti-corruption campaign has equally wavered from serving billionaire thieves petty six month sentences to convicting them with paltry fines.
Over those fourteen years, the PDP boasts of creating only 3 Forbes listed billionaires while Nigerians living in poverty increased from 69 million in 2004 to 112.5 million in 2012 even as actual population increased only by 35 million. That for every billion dollar boasted by Dangote, Adenuga or Otedola or any other PDP-made-and-sustained billionaire; more than 50 million Nigerians drifted into poverty and complete deprivation. These are those who are lucky to remain alive and share in our misfortune, among them 10 million of our children that are presently out of school, thrown and abandoned to the streets to battle with poverty and hunger instead of mathematics and science, and about 33 million of our able youth without gainful employment, a demographic group that traditionally serves as the catalyst for societal transformation is now condemned to the lowest social mess, and they impudently look around to blame others for Boko Haram.
But nothing speaks more of the party than the array of politicians under its shade. The party parades a list of all that is wrong with/about Nigeria. From the Babangidas, the Atikus, Anenihs, Obasanjos, Bode Georges, Iboris, Ubas to the Jonathans. It is an assorted mix of political jobbers, saboteurs and criminals who devour on our collective wealth with vicious intent. It is, according to Abati of yesterday: a centrist collection of former soldiers, gun-runners, contractors and certificate forgers. But what would one expect of accountability and transparency from a party that fails to bring to justice the murderers of its Justice Minister?
This is in a way, a tragedy for the opposition; whose attitudes toward PDP misrule is complicit at worst and nonchalant at best. The opposition has hitherto failed to harness our collective national anger and frustration at the PDP and convert it into a formidable democratic bulwark against political and economic fraud. While the PDP revels in the proceeds of its misrule and on inflicting untold hardship on the citizenry, the opposition rots in the illusion that the PDP will submissively give up its privileges. But, freedom and accountability anywhere in the world are earned and not given, and the struggle for freedom and justice is often accompanied with heroic sacrifices. The PDP does as it suits (of democratic abuse and maladministration) not because the ammunitions in its arsenal can overwhelm our collective strength, but because we are unable to remember things afresh, to respond with the cumulative fury of our past grievances.
There is no doubt that we live in a time of terrible crisis and frightening reality. Our future, one seventy million of us; will be decided by the choices we make and the sacrifices offered to makeNigeria a better place for the coming generations and a model to the rest of the world. What will be left of Nigeria tomorrow depends on the decisions we make today. And that is where the APC comes in, as the cheapest alternative to avoid a catastrophic outcome that continued PDP misrule will inevitably result.
It was Karl Marx who said that history repeats itself twice, the first as tragedy, the second as farce. But in the case of the PDP and Nigeria, history repeated itself thrice – 2003, 2007, and 2011. The question is; will it repeat itself the fourth time, and will we allow it?
Ahmed Musa Husaini wrote from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, and can be reached on ahmedfuengo@facebook.com
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