Political prostitution as ideology
Many years ago, I heard this story out of Kingston, Jamaica. A curious nine-year-old boy once asked his father:
“Dad, what is politics?”
Father broke it down, “Well, let me put it this way. I have to provide for you; so, I am a capitalist; you are the people. Your mother who keeps the money is the government. The babysitter is the working class, and your baby brother is the future. You understand?”.
The boy could not put the puzzles together.
“I think so, Dad,” he said and went to bed.
While he was trying to sleep, he heard his baby brother crying in the room, and he went in and saw his diaper full of mess. The young boy now went to report to his mother, who was asleep. He decided not to disturb her. He went to the father and saw him having an affair with the babysitter. He decided not to disturb them either. Quietly, the boy went to bed. In the morning at the breakfast table, he said to Daddy:
“Dad, I think I now know the meaning of politics.”
“What is it? Tell me in your own little way?”
“Okay, Dad. It is something like this: while the government (mum) is asleep; the capitalist (dad) messes with the working class (babysitter); the people (me) are ignored, while the future (my brother) is in a deep mess.”
This is the definition of politics from the perspective of a child.
But politics is more than the imagination of a child. There ought to be nothing wrong with politics. You may have heard in your faith palaces that politics is dirty. It may be true, but it is not ungodly. Politics must be embarked upon by those who are sincerely interested in making government work for the people. The government is one of God’s weapons used by Him through men of character and integrity to put out the fire of poverty, hunger, disease, and decrepitude in a society. The government must touch lives, not torch human souls with the unquenchable fire of fright about today and hopelessness about tomorrow. If the government works right, the people are happy. But if it is a frontier of waste and wickedness, the people groan. And the reason why people moan and groan is when politics is run without an ideology to lean on.
People without moral principles are largely people without ideologies. That is why I ask this week: What ideology do Nigerian political parties and politicians run on? The answer is simple: None! A few days ago, I read in the news that former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, finally dumped his old ruling party, the All Progressives Congress and enlisted as a war general in the platoon of Nigeria’s Social Democratic Party. I also read that embittered El-Rufai had also gone on peripatetic attempts to woo men and women he thought held animus against sitting President and Commander in Chief of the Armed forces, Bola Tinubu and his administration.
This treatise is not particularly about El-Rufai, or about who is recruiting who, or about who is being recruited into a movement that may or not go anywhere too far in Nigeria’s political process. El-Rufai, like many of the heavy hitters with some kind of political power today, are selfsame sorry story when asked what ideological belief they hold. They are like foxes and daring deer in their jumping, crisscrossing, and carpet-crossing odysseys. The rebarbative crisscrossing of Nigerian politicians between political camps is the crux of my literary thrust today. Why do Nigerian politicians jump party ships with so much reckless abandon and with no single respect for the people they seek to lead? On what ideological lampstand do they attempt to shine their lights on all that ails our country? Political prostitution is the ideology in our party system.
The differences in ideologies between America’s Republican and Democratic parties are like night and day. You need no eye goggles or Google to see clearly or know precisely the stark strains that pole the two apart. One party is consistently conservative; the other is distinctly liberal. A study of the parties’ agendas and policy frames convinces easily that the two major American parties are not conjoined identical twins. But in Nigeria, for example, the ideological stand is non-existent. Nigerian political parties are like assemblages of comingling, frivolous, frolicking, and fraudulent men and women with one daring purpose- to get rich, to be served, and never to serve the people who elect them and who are trapped in strangulating serfdom.
Ask a political party Kahuna what his ideology is. Watch as he swings into brazen braggadocio that he built one borehole that gives out scanty water, repainted a few schools and changed their furniture, asphalted a one-kilometre one-lane road, and gave away sewing machines to bricklayers who later pawned the equipment to buy food to feed his famished family members. To cap the ridiculous rendezvous, before the election, he gave away N500 raggedy notes out of the illicit windfall pilfered from the government coffers to buy the crowd hailing him. Suddenly, he becomes a hero before whom the defrauded followers genuflect. Is this an ideology? Political prostitution is the ideology.
In Nigerian political parties, the rhetoric does not match the actions. We recall in history that one party’s style of corruption was open and brazen, and the other one gives grace to a select few to be clandestinely corrupt as long you enlist as a foot soldier. They seem to be like the same team of eleven soccer players with different jerseys, and do you wonder why all of us are confused about what ideology drives them?
For example, in the last 26 years, the Peoples Democratic Party and APC have ruled largely. Both inherited low dollar rates and under both, rates have loosely spiked. As it was under one, so it is now under the other. So, what new wine is El-Rufai of SDP brewing that Nigerians have not tasted before? As I conclude this thought, watch out for the recruits El-Rufai is signing on to his team. I can assure you that there will be no single party official who has not hobnobbed with a ruling party in times past. They will be a recycled potpourri of men who have once made noise in the veranda of power in Nigeria or personalities who are still making bellows today. But I assure you that they will be men without an exemplary ideology. Do we have men and women with distinct and rock-solid ideologies in Nigeria? They are among us. And they are in their millions. But these ones will never smell the fragrance of power because they will not bow their heads to men who call themselves God.
