We no longer have a sick democracy. We have a counterfeit one.
Osun lays it bare. Every pathology is on open display. The capture of institutions. Tthe hunting of opposition. The casual slaughter of ordinary people. And the near-total resignation of the public to the farce. We have lost the capacity for shame.
In Osun, the opposition governor had begged to defect to the ruling party. He knew he was cornered. Dreading the prospects of going into a contest against the carnivorous political machine of the president and his men, he chose self-degradation for survival. He was willing, like many others, to submit to utter self-abasement, to trade dignity for another term. But he underestimated their greed. In the past , opposition governors didn’t need to be chickens and squirrels to survive.
A democracy in which the opposition must be broken or bought. That’s the democracy Tinubu has conceived after masquerading as a pro-democracy activist all those NADECO years. Under him, opposition governors are now endangered species. Harried from all sides by thugs, police, and judges. All governors have to join Tinubu’s party by hook or by crook. They have to join other conscripts and clowns in the grand orchestra of surround-sycophancy that Tinubu has cultivated for himself.
Osun has laid bare the reason all governors fled the opposition, and those who didn’t dump their parties for the unholy matrimony behave like Tinubu’s closet political concubines. Tinubu is the first democratic president in this country whom no governor is willing to dare. When they gather around him , they behave like North Koreans.
The Osun governor read the handwriting on the wall well. But his attempt to crawl under Tinubu’s agbada for protection was frustrated. He couldn’t come to the godfather because Tinubu’s cousin didn’t want him in the fold. And since Tinubu now prioritises nepotism, his cousin, who is also his cabinet minister, has kept the effervescent governor away in the cold, dancing surugede with subterfuge and suspicion , and very vulnerable.
As the election approached, the governor’s nightmares started to materialise in daylight. All he dreaded beset him. His aides became bedraggled chicks and the police, ravenous hawks. The governor said the police have been combing the state like an APC brush, arresting his men to sequester them in dungeons in Abuja till the election is over. That playbook belongs to Minister Wike. Senator Abe, who now shines Wike’s shoes with great enthusiasm, can attest to that if he has any courage left in him. But the police can’t be singled out. Other institutions and persons have gone outright rogue in the same mode.
Only a few days ago, the EFCC cast off the mask of neutrality and froze Osun accounts. It said it had observed monies moving promiscuously from the state treasury and wanted to prevent a total dissipation of the public purse. But the timing and selectivity should have pricked the conscience of a trained institution. The public outrage against the EFCC’s misuse by politicians was remarkable and encouraging. It took the president to stop the EFCC from self-mutilation. On its own, the EFCC has become too coarse , too crude to see that the timing was evidence of corrupt partisanship by an institution established to restore moral probity. Apart from the issue of ethical disorientation and servility, there was the issue of mental caoacity . The EFCC hould be capable of educated lies. The EFCC might say the president was played to the gallery. After there are quieter ways of calling an attack dog back . But he decided to treat them like they were professional pickpockets without suspect upbringing. Perhaps the president felt embarrassed by the EFCC’s lack of guile. With a bit of thoughtfulness, the EFCC could have conducted a smokescreen operation on one APC state before detouring to Osun. The EFCC deserves the embarrassment. It takes little to create a necessary façade of neutrality. Perhaps the president’s public disgrace of the EFCC was also a message to the governor. If he survives the election, then he must owe it to the president and requite the love in 2027.
In Osun, over 40 people have been killed in over 80 violent incidents connected to this election. Nothing sounds alarming any more. The election has turned into a silent and steady massacre of ordinary folks. People have been slaughtered because the politicians want to win by all means. Rather than teach and espouse ethics, the president promotes the cynical idea that all is fair in politics.
A senator in Osun publicly called for the killing of political opponents. Senator Fadahunsi, looking into cameras, told his thugs to kill his opponents. As the public backlash grew, the police invited him. He left the police to tell the public he had clarified his comments. He blamed the misunderstanding on the Igbo and Hausa who have poor understanding of Yoruba idioms. The police let him go. He belongs to the president’s party. So he wasn’t taken to Abuja for prolonged interrogations and kept away for the duration of the elections.
Now that Fadahunsi has issued his fatwa and gone unscathed, his thugs will be emboldened and his opponents will hide under their beds till the election is over. When MC Oluomo issued similar threats against the Igbo in 2023, the police invited him for cover-up clarifications and promptly released him. Then on election day, his thugs went to the field to bruise and batter the Igbo and chase them away from polling booths.
So Osun was foreseeable. Violence has spiralled. The body count is mounting. Death threats have been disseminated. The thugs have been mobilised and primed. Vote buying is in full swing. We have managed to bastardise this democracy beyond recognition. On and on, the country bumbles on without unity, without vision, without stopping.
Shouldnt we pause to ponder: Which way Nigeria?
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