Bitter Pills
By Des Wilson
Does morality have any place in our electoral process·?
The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it, but there it is.
– Sir Winston Churchhill
I could expand the above question to read thus: will we vote for a visibly morally upright man or woman in spite of our ethnic, religious, affiliations and persuasions, or party, if he or she is better than the alternative before us? Or is it spiritually good to deny a candidate your vote because he does not belong to your ethnicity? What does the still, silent voice do to us when we ignore it and go on to do something that hurts us eventually? Or why do we vote for someone we clearly know does not have the capacity to do anything good for us? For example, there are Nigerians who say they don’t like the Igbo. They think they will outsmart everyone and take up all the critical political positions in the country. They don’t mind if they serve us, or do the thinking for us, or play football for us. Yet we think, they don’t deserve to lead us.
In many situations, we say that they are not good enough to lead us because we are afraid of what they can do to us. Are we not laying the foundation for this now? They quote the January 15, 1966 coup and the civil war as reasons they don’t trust the Igbo.
In Akwa Ibom, some are critical of them that they have bought up almost every piece of land in the urban and rural areas. But I have not read any report anywhere where the Igbo have put a gun around the neck of a family head or land owner in order to acquire a piece of land.
The truth is that many of us are so greedy, and we have passed on this greed to our children, that we sell any available plot to them so that we can use the funds to celebrate some useless marriage or funeral. We even sell our ancestors’ graves to go with it. After such noxious sale, we see the buyer put up a magnificent structure on the land we have separated ourselves from.
Many a time we demonstrate that we love money more than the Igbo who use money to confuse some of us. When you say that you don’t want the Igbo to lead, and when the people feel marginalised, and try to seek a place for themselves, you say they cannot go because you think they are selfish. Even though they say losers in civil wars don’t always turn out as top dogs in the salvaged nation, this attitude justifies why the South Easterners must seek their own country.
The option Nigerians threw away in 1967, after the Aburi Accord, seems to be staring us in the face now, as the country stumbles from one unforced error and level of injustice to another. It is often depressing that groups that have no hope in this confused nation are among those fighting against the Igbo. A confederation might be a salutary cooling off platform for this country which is veering towards anarchy and political irrelevance in Africa.
So I ask again, what drives a Christian in politics to abandon the truth and align with falsehood? I think forthright pastors should begin to interrogate their congregants to find out why their congregations are running with the hare while hunting with the hounds. Clearly, the ruling party is running scared because of what people like Nyesom Wike said could happen to them if his ‘party’ loses next year’s presidential elections.
I am aware that some politicians have averred that all is fair in politics, and this means you can assassinate people’s character, kill, rig elections, burn houses, carry out illegal arrests and ensure that election results are altered, and that the judiciary is bribed to give wrong judgment. But the question to ask again is: Is all fair in politics? The Catholic bishops raised the question a few weeks back and it raised an uproar in our confused polity struggling to recognise truth.
Then finally, if you are a Christian and you believe in goodness, truth, fairness, equality of all human beings under the constitution and you truly know that certain persons will contribute to the ruination of the country, will you still go ahead to vote for a bad candidate on account of your relationship with them? And if you are a Muslim what does Islam say about the foundational principles of truth, fairness, equality and integrity? These are moral responsibilities which govern a believer’s private life, public dealings and spiritual practice.
Truth, in particular, means that a Muslim must match their inner beliefs, words, and outer actions. In addition to justice (‘adi’) and equitable distribution (‘qish’) these moral values should serve us when we go out there next January to cast our votes for candidates. It shouldn’t be politics (or politrics) alone.