Least expectations, By Odi Ikpeazu

I am convinced that no matter which individual emerges as President, nothing much will positively be altered about the fortunes of our Republic. That is why the whole Presidential horse race leaves me infinitely colder than I would honestly have wished to be. In fact, I find it all very sad seeing that the entire exercise amounts to the proverbial ‘much ado about nothing’.

The problems that we face in the country are monumental but I daresay they are more philosophical than structural. It is way more problematic, I think, to fix a philosophical insufficiency than rectify a structural deficiency and I cannot see any of the Presidential candidates having the inclination or wherewithal to address the dilemma. And this, I must add, is not due to any particular fault of theirs since they are indeed all products of the National Philosophical Predicament (NPP)

By the way, I am unapologetically contemptuous of the considerably popular hogwash, which holds that our national difficulties originated from Lugard and the Amalgamation. I cannot see at all why it is impossible for people of different persuasions to co exist, whether voluntarily or coercively, in order to establish a functional nation. I absolutely reject that defeatist and cowardly diagnosis that our ailments are the result of our tribes being strange bedfellows. Strange bedfellows are a good reason why beds exist in the first place, so that they may lay down and resolve their strangeness.

I am more persuaded instead that our national difficulties were instigated by a horribly premature attainment of independence.

Since colonialism proved inevitable, we might well have rolled with its punches and got to grips with the received civilization of the colonialist. Rome had similarly colonized much of the ancient world, giving it the Pax Romana. The far flung territories of the great empire imbibed Roman culture and civic habits and became the better for it, arguably to this very day.

In our own case however, we have ended up with a monstrous hybrid, a social Jekyll and Hyde, being neither here nor there, drifting between and betwixt, having not only lost our ancient culture but being grossly incompetent at grasping the basic concepts of the received Western civics.

Our pre-Independence population had looked up agape in hope to a handful of the native Western-trained intelligentsia like Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ahmadu Bello, charismatic leaders, who could engage ceremonially at dinner with the Queen and drink tea with their pinkies up. The majority of this populace however comprised the most vacuous of folks, fellows so simple as almost to be simpletons and with little clue as to the workings of the new civilization.

We were introduced to democracy, that so called government by the people, notwithstanding that our political character lacked the relative sophistication, with which to operate it. The extensively rustic natives were urged to practice this considerably sophisticated arrangement and so today, we have two hundred million voices speaking all at once, talking loud, saying nothing but labouring under the illusion of practicing the best form of government!

The best you can do for a herd of sheep is to hand them a shepherd. The worst thing is let them herd themselves out. Unfortunately, our military frittered away a golden opportunity to herd the sheep. They failed to install the perfect system for our stage of underdevelopment, which is a benevolent but undisputed dictatorship, something akin to the United Arab Emirates, for instance. Having misused their chance, they sheepishly herded us back to the delusion of democracy, the final nail driven into the coffin of any meaningful
political system we might have adopted going forward.

I feel sorrow and pity for everyone, not the least myself while I watch the people seeking to lead us as they hit the campaign trails, knowing that it is all an exercise in futility. The more the aspirants proclaim their ability to channel us towards salvation, the more glaring their inability to achieve anything of that description appears.

The lamentable truth is that there is nothing these men and women can do to effect much meaningful shift in our destiny. Instead of callous sarcasm or heartless cynicism, what one finds is pity. Pity for them, pity for me, pity for everyone of us.

A few roads may be built of course, a few rich cronies made, an airport here, a railroad there, a meal or two on the table served, some wine and dance to deaden the pain, orgies of frustrated sex to fuel population explosion and so on. The truth is that no matter how far you look in the horizon or how long I stare in the crystal ball, it is hard to see anything but the most mediocre existence for us all because the damage was long ago done.

Predictably, the citizenry is adequately distracted by the cardinal point where the President was born, preoccupied if his presidential ambition is declared in an amphitheatre or a tunnel, obsessed with whether the would-be leader genuflects in prayer towards Rome or Mecca. And that is likely as it should be since we cannot reinvent the wheel, remake the world, reverse history or create new humans. We can only take flight from reality, at which we are threatening to be past masters.