Of Nigeria’s politics of friendship

Nothing can be more difficult for anyone who wants to engage in something – or engages in something – he is not prepared for or does not want to do at a particular time. The reason for this may not be obviously obvious. Presently, on this day, at this moment, this is my lot. I am a happy man who is not a happy man.

I have been so really for quite some time especially since one almighty man called Godwin Emiefele did what he did to our currency. The man who played god while his time and season of almightiness lasted really tormented us with his almighty power of drunkenness that he swam in without qualms. But the man definitely over-estimated the power he had which he really did not have as events of now visibly manifest.

What gave the man the liver and heart he had when he was the officer-in-chief of the office where he was the officer-in-chief? Did he depend on his juju or vodoo that perhaps compelled him officially or unofficially to take up a hostile or super-hostile attitude towards us, but especially towards the poorest of the poor in the masses’ group?  And the man, to boot, was a master politician whose juju must have compelled to reveal himself as such even though he was in an establishment where he should have hidden his identity, real or unreal – no matter how his juju goaded him to do what even in his wrong senses he should not have done. But the financial expert did not know Nietzsche.

If he did he should have known that “He who knows no secret of himself excites anger in others;that is now much reason you have to fear nakedness. If you were gods you could then be ashamed of your clothes!” His friends who know philosophy a little should have schooled him a little if not properly on the shallow nature of power not from God.

The shallow nature of power not from God, what do I mean? What am I up to? The power not from God spurs every man to do that which he must not do. But perhaps it was the company the man was part of – or which was part of him that incited him vigorously to lock his ears, eyes and heart against the people even though everyone outside his circle of influencers knew and knows who his prime target was.

Now the table is no more the table that the man knew pre-the presidential election. Who will defend him vigorously and perfectly now against rightly his enemy-in-chief now in the saddle? Where are his friends of yore with whom he shared the ideology of jujuisticjujuism? Maybe I am posing an outrageous question. Yes, I may answer. But their anti-Tinubu ideology and posture may be turning Tinubu now into a vindictive president – rightly or wrongly. Yes, we expect the big man of yesterday’s friends to put on their thinking caps to plot his defence and rescue. Saying thus reminds me of Nietzsche again.

I must invoke his words for the benefit of all us, including President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Says the influential German Philosopher: “If you want a friend, you must also be willing to wage war for them: and to wage war, you must be capable of being an enemy.” I don’t need to spell this out boldly and bravely. Antagonists and protagonists who were in combat are now ready for combat. What else do you want me to spell out beautifully and un-beautifully?

Now I am near the meat of why I am not happy to embark on this column today. My chosen topic is meaty, very meaty. Yet I should not as you equally should not over-estimate my radicalism with respect to the matter at hand. I find it hard to believe that President Tinubu and the ignominiously kicked-out officer-in-chief of our bank of banks are not friends.

What came between them was envy – or the politics of envy that has exposed their vulnerability as friends who were actually not friends – even though they belonged, if I am correctly informed, to the same circle of influential big wigs socially, politically and economically. What an outrageous paradox am I uttering?

Take it how you will or may, the combat between both titans has transparently revealed that Nigeria’s democracy is the democracy of friendship that bursts when friends who belong, presumably, to the same ritual oven and haven become enemies. In other words, the politics of friendship which incites the politics of enmity is now, as never before, the vogue in the land – in your country my country our country.

Before anyone takes me on rudely, let me qualify my previous remark. In times past we had witnessed politics of friendship that turned into something really dreadful – and which impacted our civilian democracy andmilitocracynegatively in every way. But the present dramatis personae have taken things to a differently different level of abuse.

The ethical conflict we are witnessing now results from this. Let me make myself clear by way of a question: How possible is it to act rightly and yet unethically? The tenth Senate has just voted GodswillAkpabio as its President because he is the candidate President Ahmed Tinubuhas been brilliantly interested in for reasons that we cannot duly pinpoint convincingly. Democratically, our President and this tenth Senate are not in the wrong – or may not be in the wrong. Whether we give a nod or not to this, we cannot but have pity for our democracy even though our pity may end up as a conjecture eventually.

Senator GodswillAkpabio was AkwaIbom State’s governor, an erstwhile Senator before he became a full minister and now a second time Senator who has been elected President of the tenth Senate, as already indicated.

In a country of above two hundred people is it ethically and morally right for one man to be what the politics of friendship has been fetching this one man (and his ilk)? Is he the only person from Akwa Ibom State and the South-South geo-political region or zone? What is the true bond or the nature of the true bond between him and our new president and commander-in-chief of the great Federal Republic of Nigeria? What circle do they belong to, if I must to ask and ask and ask? What have they done for one another so far?

Or what has the new Senate President done for our new President and commander-in-chief to spur him to stick to the SP? And is Akpabio so competent and so brilliant a lawyer and statesman to the extent that Mr. President has gone the extent he has gone to so project his own obsessions as President of Nigeria onto him? Questions, questions, questions that cannot but bedazzle us with bedazzlement. No matter the profound argument the president and commander-in-chief and his circle of friends and rhetoricians may tender, what has just happened is dangerous for our democracy.

It is not late or too late for me to say what I have said. Those from the South-South who should have challenged Akpabiopublicly were extremely intimidated, I believe, from showing interest in the Senate Presidency even though the odds could not but be in their favour. (And as a matter of fact, the House of Reps is also under the tight and full grip of the Executive as well – with Honourable Abbas Tajudeen as the Speaker of that place). Clearly, the open ballot employed to elect the top officers of the National Assembly, as sound as it was, had its hiccup of intimidation as well.

What kind of democracy is our democracy? This question may not be significant, but it is significantly significant. President Tinubu should exorcise democracy of friendship which is democracy of nepotism from his country our country my country our country. He shouldn’t and mustn’t follow the absolutely wrong steps of his predecessor. And he should not suffer from a superiority complex or any voodoo complex. This should not enigmatize him before what will come that will come or may not come when it is expected to come. The yam, knife, oil, cooking pot, plate and fire belong to us – Nigerians who are Nigerians.
Afejuku can be reached via +2348055213059.