The Concourse
By Soney Antai, serial awards-winning columnist
2027: Of endorsements and inducements
The Holy Scripture teaches that there are times and seasons for everything. It would be illogical to gainsay that truth, as it stands irrefragable. Yet, for the “hardnosed” Nigerian professional politician, politicking is eternal. Its beat goes on, nonstop—a cycle that defies common sense.
From their initiation into the political fold, time evaporates for those who have turned politicking into an obsessive career. These actors are not only habitually over-optimistic about winning, but are ruthless about securing their offices “from all alarm” once they have snatched power.
As we approach next year’s polls, the political tempo has risen tremendously. It will continue to climb until the charade we misname “elections” is either paused or concluded. For these careerists, inauguration does not signal the start of governance, but the continuation of politics. Experts in doublespeak, manipulation, prevarication, and blackmail, most Career Politicians (CPs) possess well-practised strategies for self-preservation. Among these, you will find one “silver bullet” in their arsenal that requires no introduction.
Their tactics include weaponizing poverty, aggravating ethnicism, deploying religion, and purchasing loyalty. All these coalesce to keep the political toolbox oiled, ensuring they remain either in charge of the community purse or close enough to claim a share of it.
You may have encountered the allegory of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet manipulator. As the story goes, he slowly and steadily de-feathered a live fowl, then proceeded to drop grains of maize. Despite its pain and “de-fowlization,” the unfortunate creature followed him around the room without resistance. This is an archetypal case of Stockholm Syndrome. The very man who showed the hen such cruelty was able to control it because the bird was gasping for breath and desperate to survive. After all, who survives without food? Not humans, not fowls, not fish.
Without resorting to sweeping generalizations, the current spate of endorsements in our political space can be understood through this Stalin’s fowl prism. The Nigerian power elite has so unconscionably and systematically impoverished the populace that inducing them with grains of rice—rebranded as “palliatives” or “empowerment”—is all it takes for the benighted masses to offer their endorsements.
The mechanics are simple: the people, left with little choice, collect the handouts thrown by the elite and mouth endorsements for their purported benefactors. These “impoverished of the earth” do not question how they reached such a nadir of desperation. They are too hungry to argue, too weak to fight back, and too dehumanized to reason.
The situation has become increasingly nuanced. Two or more groups from the same constituency will often rise to endorse—and then counter-endorse rival aspirants. These folks use the “tools of endorsement” to gain access to the aspirant’s previously inaccessible trove. It is a symbiotic dysfunction: the CPs need endorsements to manipulate public opinion, and the masses offer them—but never for free. The CPs instigate the process to gain leverage over rivals, while the masses instigate it to catch “monetary droplets” and outposition their peers.
While this game of “cash-for-endorsements” continues, the polity suffers and the future is threatened. This inducement blinds the masses, preventing them from calling for accountability from incumbents or demanding manifestos from challengers. It is a death knell for responsibility—the flip side of accountability. The primary losers are the masses themselves; the cycle revolves, and the unborn are delivered into a world of aggravated poverty and underdevelopment.
We often hear that history repeats itself, but this column views that as a misreading of reality. History does not repeat itself; people repeat history. Sadly, Nigerians—blinded by ethnicism, religious sentiment, regionalism, and the “anesthesia of hope”—refuse to learn. When you take money to vote, you not only devalue yourself in the manner of Jacob and his pottage, but you also nullify your right to hold leaders accountable. You mortgage the next generation. When the masses fail to demand written developmental blueprints from political gladiators, they lose the ability to monitor their representatives. Worse still, many seeking power have nothing to offer but a desire to capture the state treasury. Yet, because they can induce the ordinary folk, they receive their “blessings.”
This cycle shows no sign of breaking. Politics has become a closet with a narrow gate leading into an open sea of opportunity: money, fame, power, and debauchery. Once inside, you do everything to stay and keep others out. Community advancement is irrelevant. When the next election cycle arrives, you simply reach for the “Stalin-hen” tool and coast home.
But history is a stubborn bookkeeper. We would do well to watch it.
●corrigendum: the printer’s devil has shown up with its bad job. The title of this piece begins with 2027, but the date in the print copy reads, 2007. This is regretted, please.