While in Anambra State, I learnt something which explains what All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftains are currently doing to Nigerians and to Nigeria. It was common to hear them say ‘a man who has the approval of his father to rob a house will break the door with his foot.’ The Chairman of Ohaukwu Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, Eze Paul Ituma, who spoke like a brute after he, along with others, was sworn-in by Governor Francis Nwifuru, just proved that. He has the approval of his principal to openly threatened citizens if their choices in the coming elections are not the APC. He simply spoke like a man whose father sent to burgle a house.
This new chairman of Ohaukwu LGA spoke like someone who has been loaded like a gun. Ituma has been sent by his father, Governor Nwifuru and the fathers of Nwifuru himself, to go and rob the people of Nigeria. Nwifuru himself threatened the chairmen. He warned them to deliver their local government areas for APC or be removed from office.
These elected council chairmen, who have a constitutional mandate; and whose autonomy the Supreme Court affirmed in a judgment, were threatened with removal. It is an APC thing. Now, the chairmen have carried the message of deliver or be damned – something like the famous ‘do or die’ of yore, to the people at their domains.
Are we then surprised that Reverend Father Hyacinth Alia of Benue State has jettisoned the provisions of the Canon Law to take an office which is smearing his white cassock and the Catholic Church? Are we surprised that the APC is showing the priest what it practically means to avoid dining with the devil?
But, what is at the core of the recurring threats by prominent members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) around the country? It is now an offence in Nigeria to support a political party of your choice. Is that what these APC leaders are saying, and passing the message around? So, now, it is no longer the right of an individual to choose and belong to an association of his choice. They have to be cowed into doing the bidding of APC! I thought that was the prescription of the 1999 Constitution. So, it is safe to assume that the governing APC in Nigeria has resorted to threats and intimidation of Nigerians who might not vote for the party in the general election.
The APC is known to have been doing this and has been getting away with it. So, the party has now decided to expand its message of intimidation, coercion, bullying, possible expulsion of opponents, and violence. They have promised Nigerians these if the coming elections go south for the party. So, if Nigerians decide to vote against the APC in the coming general election, the country should cease to exist. Is that what it is now? Through the utterances of its leaders in various parts of the country, the party is giving glimpses of what it might do should the people decide to vote against them in the impending general election.
First of these threats came from somewhere in the inner orifices of Edo State. The man who made that threat isn’t enjoying the kind of prominence what he started has gained. That Edo aggressor – that is how I choose to describe anyone who threatens people, might have been in one obscure community in Edo State, but what he did was representative of the general thinking among the leadership of the party in the state. He lit the fire when it appeared that the people were not convinced by what they were saying.
The victims squealed and posted the video of the aggressor. The matter boiled like that popular effervescent antacid that goes by the name of one of the 12 Apostles of Jesus. Then, like that mixture too, it calmed and quickly receded to the inner conclaves of Nigerians’ political, social and security conversation.
Then, a similar matter cropped up again a few weeks after. This time, it was a prominent citizen of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. His name is Shekwolo Danjuma, and he is the chairman of one of the Area Councils in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT). He could not hide his own tinge of the gruesome thoughts he harboured for Nigerians who don’t belong to the same political association as him. So, he expressed his thoughts by telling Nigerians that anyone who ate from the table of the APC and refuses to vote for the party when the elections come, would be banished from the Area Council.
By extension, he will banish Nigerians from Nigeria’s capital city because they do not support his political party! The fact that the cosmopolitan FCT belongs to all Nigerians does not matter. He is also blind to the fact that all Nigerians cannot sleep facing the same direction. More importantly, this frivolous chairman also ditched the constitution which he swore to protect.
The third example of the same kind of dangerous talk came on Monday. A member of the State Executive Council of Borno State, made the threat. His name is Sainna Buba, and he is the Borno State Commissioner for Youth, Sports and Poverty Alleviation. He said anyone who fails to vote for the APC in 2027, would be flogged. He added that if such people showed their fingers, such fingers would be cut.
Now, the threats have gone round all the cardinal points of the country. We have received threats of violence in the North, in the South, in the East and in the West. Nigeria’s cardinal points are more than the usual four we were taught in the primary school. We have six, instead of four, yet the threats have been given everywhere in the country.
It started from Edo State like an innocuous joke. Now it has assumed a life of its own, and the leadership of the party has been acting like it has nothing to do with it.
The concerned political party will deny these graduating threats and intimidation. There is no doubt about that. It is obviously very easy and convenient to dismiss the contention that the APC is the entity dishing out these threats. It will not be surprising to hear the party come gun-blazing against the complaints that the party is dishing out threats, in small dollops. APC can never own up to the copyright of such situations.
Having ruled Nigeria before, the only other party that can come under comparison with APC in this political dispensation is Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But look deeply. Reflect on what is in our hands today. Think back. As bad as PDP was believed to have been, its elected or appointed officials exercised more remarkable levels of public restraint. PDP was given to us as one prime example of the egregious. Its members were wrapped in the same leaves with the Devil itself. Nigerians ran with that thought. But open threats of banishment or internal deportation, or of violence against Nigerians through its officials was not a common phenomenon. Not many times did an elected or appointed official of PDP say that people would receive negative individual physical consequences for voting against the party.
I think government should be defined as the outcome of the concatenation of both licit and illicit ideas. It is fair, because President Tinubu has said all is fair in politics, as some people believe that all is fair in war. Whatever government that results from the politics that brought it about, is indeed an admixture of good, bad and ugly maneuverings by the players of the game. More than once, Nigerians have heard the rumbling of our APC gods in small shrines. They seem to be echoing the threats by the APC against those who choose to support another political party. Nigerians must all be herded in one direction… by the force and coercion of a brutal lord; we must all live like in a manor belonging to the one Viking with enormous yet insatiable power.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s famous book, The People’s Republic, is one source of reference in today’s bumbling Nigeria. The book has a chapter he called ‘Why They Came’. That chapter, apart from rubbishing the arguments that Britain came to Nigeria – nay West Africa, for altruistic reasons, it also establishes his argument earlier in the book that Capitalism is just a euphemism for malevolent criminality. He says it is ‘a system which legalises stealing and thieving by cunning and tradition, and also permits recovery by the same methods. It is a system which puts a premium on the worst vices of man, and discriminates against the best virtues. It is a system which encourages war, rumours of war, and preparations for war, thus diverting to destructive purposes enormous resources which are more than enough to abolish ignorance, disease, and want in all parts of the world.’
That book, a very deep reflection on power, politics, governance, socialism and capitalism, was published in 1968. Fifty-eight years after Chief Awolowo crafted that masterpiece, it still feels like the sweaty brow of that genius is still dripping the sweat from the work. That is how fresh his thoughts appear. Or, do you think Nigeria is anything different from what Awolowo said in 1968?
Apologists of the party are welcome, but they must acknowledge that their leaders are threatening Nigerians and thereby creating panic among the voting populace. Could this be requited by doubling down on the assertion that ‘all is fair in politics’? The sedulous effort to give us another story about obvious, visible and inherent threats notwithstanding, Nigeria must be wary of the threats by APC. This deleterious strategy by APC could harm our country, and it must stop forthwith.