Politicians As Prostitutes: The Gain In Shagarism

Former late American “cowboy” President Ronald Wilson Reagan was a great man during his active years both as an actor and a politician. He climbed to the very top of American strong-willed high-wire politics getting elected in two terms as President of the most powerful nation in this planet we know better and live as special species created in God’s own image. May his soul continue resting in peace!

During his eventful presidency Reagan gave a good account of himself discharging his presidential duties to the best of his human capacity. In one of his famous quotes exhorting Americans to rise above self-defeatist tendencies in an era of depression he had told them: “We are too big a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We are not as others would have us believe doomed to an inevitable decline”. And continuing the fortieth President (1981-1989) declared: “I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do but I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing”.

But the quotation by him that fits the piece under focus better is this: “Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first”. (The first profession widely acknowledged to be prostitution the late Reagan whose life was eclipsed in 2004 by pneumonia arising from complications of Alzheimer disease did his very best for America). That was a cynical characterization of a politician in general terms but Mr Reagan did not reckon with Nigerian politicians when he made the statement comparing politicians to prostitutes; he was probably not even thinking about the African brand of politics in which murder, perfidy, corruption and mischief are constant characteristics of success.

Few months back I had written an article entitled “When Rimi Hits the Bull’s Eye” which got published by NigeriansInAmerica.com and a couple of other e-publishing outfits. In that piece I had reacted to what Alhaji Abubakar Rimi said about former President Olusegun Obasanjo describing him as an undemocratic dictatorial entity capable of corrupting good manners. An OBJ-fan in Germany had taken me on disagreeing with my point of view and another had been sceptical about Rimi and his politics.

Abubakar Rimi’s political prostitution could be seen from the critical lenses of a frustrated politician groping in the dark of irrelevance and declining fortunes. In politics it’s often said that there’re no permanent enemies but interests, the Kano-born handsome stormy petrel may have decided to go back to his ‘vomit’ now that ‘the father of modern Nigeria’ has been permanently dislodged from Aso Villa. Rimi has demonstrated, once more, by his re-admission into the “PDP family” that politicians cannot be trusted with their rhetoric especially when they are outside the power umbrella. Those who know them better are getting wiser whenever they somersault towards self-demystification.

In Nigeria politics has no deep meaning or import outside helping known crooks and criminals seize control of instruments of power and authority from where they organize robbery forays into the public treasuries. Politics in Nigeria has no human face but that of a monster; it is played without any modicum of scruples. What matters to the majority engaged in this otherwise game of numbers is how to get into power by hook or crook; the rest thereafter is history.

That is why after the April widely-rigged PDP-organized ‘do-or-die’ polls the Supreme Court and the States’ election petition tribunals are still undoing the electoral injustices done to the electorates by a combined team of Obasanjo, Maurice Iwu and the PDP rigging machinery. The question on many lips after the nullification by the Tribunal of Murtala Nyako’s Adamawa guber “victory”, then, is: who’s next on line? We expect positive results from Benin City, Ekiti, Ibadan, Osogbo and a host of other state capitals where the “Governors” are holding sway against the people’s choices.

Politicians as prostitutes? Well, let’s analyse the two a little bit, the prostitute and the politician. Whereas the former is a woman of easy virtue whose world revolves around lies, dirtiness, pettiness, shamelessness and immorality the average prostitute hides behind the dark facade to ply her trade — for her morality, shame, truth and honour could go to blazes. And the politician? Well, during the election campaign promises are imported from heaven with some even promising to put air-conditioners in the open streets and turn the hinterland (without power, water and good roads) into Las Vegas in four years! Liars and shameless elements in their majority the Nigerian politician sees no evil and hears none as far his interest is served.

That is why, courtesy of the UN, our military rulers had salted away mind-boggling 400 billion dollars of our commonwealth in the last three decades! The quartet of Ibrahim Babangida, Abdusalami Abubakar, late Sani Abacha and Olusegun Obasanjo must be given national awards for kleptocratic excellence! All hail their thieving excellencies!! Long live the remaining Ferdinand Marcos of Nigeria!!!

That is why Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu has been playing politics with impunity as the Lord of the Manor in Oyo State hiring and firing Governors at his discretion. Sometimes I tend to conclude that the friendship between Baba Iyabo and Baba ‘Agbaya’ in Ibadan goes beyond what ordinary Nigerians could ever see. Pray, Adedibu may have ‘initiated’ Obasanjo somewhere in the occultic world where the former is highly revered as the “spiritual garrison commander”!

That is why Madam Speaker, the former obdurate Speaker of the lower house Patricia ‘beautician’ Etteh could dump the AD and embrace the PDP where her interest would better be served and not on the strength of any principle. Having safely decamped she had sought to woo others to do same from the AD. Such political prostitution led to the political decapitation of the AD party.

Today if not for the vibrant opposition vigorously mounted against the PDP by the AC Nigeria would have since embraced a one party state. With the ANPP joining the bandwagon of so-called Government of National Unity Obasanjo’s eforts to kill opposition parties would have come to fruition. With political prostitutes like Ume-Ezeoke General Buhari must have seen clearly now that in Nigeria the ideals he hold dear do not count for those he had wrongly thought to be men enough.

While the world awaits the Tribunal verdict on the flawed presidential poll of April (being contested by Gen. Buhari and Atiku) one can safely say without equivocation that whilst President Yar’Adua does not lay any claim to being Jerry Rawlings one sees him leaving Nigeria much better that he met it.

Far from being a politica

l prostitute the Katsina-born reluctant President’s popular policies of due process, rule of law and “servant-leader” accountability are studies in political re-engineering. His may well be a silent undercover revolution which only time will vindicate. That, in the end, may well turn out historically to be the gain in “Shagarism”.