It is not only Nigeria. Our whole wide world is undergoing a crisis. It is not just about the wars and the bitterness they bring about for generations. It is also about indices of poverty and insecurity, human rights violation, and scarcity of justice. It is a crisis of poor judgement on the part of many leaders of nations, a preponderance of egotism. It is a crisis of morality rooted in a crisis of spiritual life.

We live in a world where it is increasingly difficult to differentiate right from wrong. What is wrong is taken as right, and what is right is taken as wrong. Words no longer mean what they used to mean. A man says yes but he means no, and he says no when he means yes. So, we are not sure where he stands. It is not just the politicians. It is a crisis affecting every sphere of human existence. And that includes religion.

The crisis is perceived in science and technology which, despite the much-vaunted accuracy attributed to them by their practitioners, now deceive us. Think deep about the appellation “artificial intelligence,” and it becomes easy to see what a deceptive appellation it is. For that which is intelligent is self-conscious and self-determined. But “artificial intelligence” lacks self-consciousness and lacks self-determination.

That which is bereft of self-consciousness and self-determination is anything but intelligent. It is an instrumental agent in the hands of a human being who programmes it. Remove the principal agent, and the instrumental agent will cease to be.

It is artificial. That which is artificial is not intelligent, and that which is intelligent is not artificial. It may be called a digital agent, not an intelligent agent. For intelligence is real and will never be artificial.

“Artificial intelligence” is a misnomer. It has been used for noble objectives. Nonetheless, it has also been used, and it is being used to misinform, to make people believe that they are seeing reality. It is used to distort videos, voices, and speeches. It is used to launder images of dictators, used to make their demagoguery sound like oratory.

There is a moral crisis where there is deceit. There is deceit in business when fake and substandard products are put up for sale by vendors. There is deceit in the arena of religion where and when the name of God is used to defraud, where fake miracles and false prophecies are presented as real to a traumatised and manipulated audience, where religion has become a most lucrative venture for some.

Just as it would be futile to deny it in the religious sphere, it would be futile to deny that this crisis of morality is acute in the arena of Nigerian politics, an arena from which morality has been banished to the point where, even though there is a difference between the two, it is increasingly difficult to differentiate between politics and brigandage. Even if it is often denied or overlooked, politics has an ethical intent. Rightly understood and rightly practiced, its goal is the common good.

But we witness monstrous misconception and massive malpractice in politics whenever some in the arena of politics work for selfish interests and not for the common good. Such misconception and malpractice constitute the deformation of politics into brigandage.

Neither the Nigerian Constitution nor her electoral laws permit independent candidacy. A Nigerian who presents himself for election into public office is compelled by law to do so on the platform of a political party. In casting their votes, voters consider not only the suitability of the candidate but also the acceptability of the party on whose platform the candidate is running.

A vote for that candidate is ipso facto a vote for his political party. We would be dishonest to deny this. That is why the spate of change of party affiliation by persons elected to public office on the platform of political parties is symptomatic of the crisis of morality into which we have allowed ourselves to be plunged.

A politician whose party affiliation at sunrise changes at midday, and whose party affiliation at midday changes at sunset, with a possibility of changing in the middle of the night, indulges in chameleonic misconduct. Between bedtime and the time you wake up, party affiliation is so fluid that you may wake up to find your senator is in a different party. Young people may begin to see them as role models, and that will make our future bleak.

There is something called freedom of association. It is a right guaranteed by the Nigerian Constitution. Political office holders enjoy that right, and their right must be respected. But voters also have a right to demand of those for whom they cast their votes that they remain faithful to the party on whose platform voters cast their votes for them.

The alternative would be a breach of agreement. If one’s party affiliation is a factor taken into consideration when Nigerians cast their vote, a politician who decides to exercise his freedom of association by changing his party affiliation should do the honourable thing, and that is, resign.

Voters are being deceived and taken for a bumpy ride when they send a politician into public office because of the party affiliation he professes only for him to change that same party affiliation while serving his term. It confirms what is known already: that campaign seasons are seasons to make promises, that the post-campaign season is a season to break promises, and the two seasons overlap.

Ours is a country where the way we drive on our roads, the way we practice religion, and the way we practice politics have a common denominator. And that common denominator is inconsistency. On our highways we change lanes at will, often by way of dangerous driving. We change our places of worship at a dizzying frequency. And, just as we constantly change our lanes on our roads, and constantly change our places of worship, we frequently change our political stances and affiliations. These instances of inconsistency symptomise our moral crisis.

But we cannot continue to lament. If we ought to bring morality into politics, which we ought, we must move beyond lamentation into legislation. Nigeria is in dire need of a legislative framework that sanctions unprincipled politics and makes it very costly for the politician to deceive the electorate.

On the long and ultimate term, this country needs a political and electoral process whose outcome reflects the will of the people and not the will of the political elite. On the short and immediate term, there is urgent need for a law that does not forbid change of political affiliation, but makes it mandatory for politicians who change party affiliation to be member of a political party for a minimum of four years before that party can present you for public office. But who is to make those laws?
Father Akinwale, OP is of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, Lagos State.