By Joni Akpederi
Fiddling! That is what Emperor Nero (AD 54 – 68) was said to be doing, at the high-up balcony of his exquisite castle, reclining lazily in his chaise lounge, surrounded by his courtiers, with choice wines and gourmet food while Rome burnt.
That really was the image that played itself out at the Presidential dinner President Muhammadu Buhari gave to honour the top brass of his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) last week. It was meant to be the forum for the leaders of Nigeria to do the horse-trading to resolve issues surrounding the choice of the ruling party’s flag bearer at next year’s general polls. But what political analysts saw was the brazen insensitivity of the nation’s leaders to the chronic and worsening security situation in the country: terrorists had just bombed and murdered scores of worshippers in Owo, Ondo State; more than 50 innocent citizens including children had been abducted from houses that were torched in Katsina State a few days earlier; the Prelate of a notable Christian Church had just narrated how he paid a whopping N100 million to terrorists/kidnappers in Abia State, while an apparently complicit nearby military security squad meant to deter such brazen criminality kept questionably aloof; all these without prejudice to the government’s shameful inability to rescue victims of the Abuja-Kaduna train bombing and kidnapping episode that has kept tongues wagging and citizens nonplussed for over to two months!
The question bothering the minds of serious political events watchers and analysts is: how could the country’s leaders at a time like this, be interested only in clinging unto power, even when they have shown themselves absolutely incapable of performing the most basic function of government, which the traumatized Prelate Samuel Kanu-Uche rightly identified as protecting the lives and property of its citizens?
Which set of voters does the underperforming Federal Government of Nigeria hope to return it to office? Is it the rising list of abandoned terror victims and abductees or the increasingly daring insurgents, bandits, religious fanatics and so- called unknown gun men this administration is being accused of accommodating and allowing to have a free rein?
Nigeria’s political clime is chockfull of political office aspirants willing and able to shell out bewildering sums of money just to participate in do-or-die contests for the power or opportunity to control the nation’s purse strings, but too selfish to help dig the country out of crushing debt and festering poverty. One aspirant in the camp of the main opposition party, who quit the race in disgust, dismissed the current political rough and tumble game as being “obscenely monetized”.
The insane cash-for-votes bazaar at the political party primary elections caused the Naira, the country’s embattled currency, to further depreciate in value at the nation’s confused foreign exchange market.The International Monetary Fund (IMF) last week warned that Nigeria may be spending 100 per cent of its government revenues on just debt servicing by 2026 if current odious, thoughtless, economic policies of the current administration are maintained!
While it may be true that the country has to keep its date with democracy at the 2023 general polls, preoccupation with preparations with the elections should not eclipse the existential problems of destructive insecurity and looming economic meltdown.
The leadership is putting all resources and attention on the coming elections when it is evident all is not well with the population and the country. Needless to say, the leadership cannot boast of any single accomplishment to convince not just its own citizens but also the international community that it is not leading Africa’s most populous and globally significant country to perdition.
Yet the goings-on in the political sphere in Nigeria amounts to an offensive, nauseating orgy of wanton opportunism among docile followers and crass, conspicuous consumption in the ranks of the ruling elite, reminiscent of the prelude to the destructive Deluge recorded in the two “Books” of Nigeria’s dominant faiths of Islam and Christianity.
Are those entrusted with Nigeria’s welfare fiddling even as the smoldering embers of an impending conflagration are already in evidence?