It does not require special intelligence to recognize that the public ruckus between the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the main opposition All Progressive Congress (APC) over the Boko Haram insurgency is a sad commentary on the character of Nigerian politics and politicians; which does little credit to the image of Nigeria’s democracy. Needless and distracting, the rancorous verbal castigation is deafening; getting volatile by the day; and overheating and threatening the fabric of Nigeria. This should stop immediately. It is a sad commentary on the decorum and conduct of the two parties, that while the country is embroiled in one of the most grotesque campaigns of human savagery and barbarism; outside the civil war, they and their supporters are engaged in silly power-plays to score cheap political points, instead of concerting to end the insurgency. This is unfortunate, disheartening, and despicable. All Nigerians can and should do is ask the PDP and APC leaders to grow up!
The PDP fired the first salvo when it said the actions, utterances and body language of the APC give it away as the face behind the ugly mask of the Boko Haram insurgency that has reduced northern Nigeria into a killing field, insisting it was an orchestrated effort to discredit and distract President Goodluck Jonathan from effectively delivering on his transformation agenda. The APC fired back, accusing Jonathan of inept leadership and cluelessness, saying he was the most incompetent president ever to rule Nigeria. The APC in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed accused Jonathan of escalating the crisis from a low-intensity conflict to a full-blown insurgency. “Even then, the insurgency that could have been quickly curtailed has worsened under President Jonathan because of his ineffectual leadership. Instead of tackling the insurgency decisively as a well-honed leader would have done, the clueless President and his equally feckless party have resorted to blaming the opposition and everyone but themselves for the worsening of the crisis”, it said.
Unapologetically, another statement by PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, insisted an unholy alliance existed between the APC and Boko Haram; dismissing APC’s denial of complicity as an ill articulated afterthought. “When we accused the APC of being behind insurgency, we did not speak in vain and when we summarised the manifesto of the party as a product of Janjaweed ideology, we had verifiable reasons,” the PDP said, arguing that it was not a coincidence that after General Muhammadu Buhari beckoned on his supporters to go on a lynching spree should he lose the 2011 presidential election, an unprecedented violence broke out, claiming the lives of hundreds of innocent Nigerians. The APC dared the PDP to make public any evidence of its alleged involvement in the insurgency or shut up.
Expectedly, the fracas has excited intense public debate and recriminations. However, in timing and manner, the unedifying exchanges advertises a certain pettiness at the highest level of Nigeria’s leadership, which reflects the abysmal level of understanding of Nigerian politicians when it comes to the majesty of democracy. Hence, no one should be surprised, at their lack of sophistication in its practice. This realization should, therefore, compel pity instead of condemnation over their current needless altercation over Boko Haram. It probably has not occurred to these politicians that, the predicament of the people is a time to present a common front against the terrorists. The PDP and the APC should not lose sight of the fact that the victims and casualties of the Boko Haram carnage are no mere collateral damage of some power tussle, but Nigerians, whom the Constitution mandates the President, state governors and all those aspiring to high public office to protect.
While the conventional wisdom is that disagreements are an integral part of democracy, the rash PDP-APC exchanges, full of bile and vitriol, is hardly conventional and should therefore, be correctly viewed as a threat to the stability and survival of Nigeria’s democracy. The public space has been irreverently smeared by a constant barrage of indecorous verbiage coming from all kinds of government officials, political chieftains and ethnic jingoists. Nigerians easily recall the altercation involving the President’s office and the interim APC chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, whence the latter was quoted to have said President Jonathan “has reduced governance to a kindergarten level”. To this, the Presidency derisively advised Akande to respect his age. The former minister and currently APC deputy Secretary, Nasir el-Rufai, was called a “serial liar”, after el-Rufai castigated the President, in equally unkind words, for reveling in ethnicity and religious politics. In both submissions, the language was absolutely indecorous and stripped the messages of any significance.
Serving state officials have been on record spewing provocative and debasing comments that offend the sensibilities of the Nigerian people. Party chiefs, legislators and ministers have been known to be so over-bearing and needlessly violently voluble in delivering their reactions, that they ornate their comments with harmful grandiloquence where courtesy would do. Opposition politicians often make casual statements about profound matters of governance requiring constructive thoughtfulness while government officials have been willfully unscrupulous and vainglorious in their subservient desire to propagate lies in the service of their paymasters. This petulance and foul temperament, is unbecoming of leaders who think seriously about their country. By their perfunctory action, they cheapen their exalted positions as leading lights of the people. It is a denigration of the collective spirit and a negation of the inviolability of the Nigerian people, for both the ruling PDP and opposition APC to conduct themselves in an impudent and supercilious manner.
One of the values of democracy remains its support of and respect for a free, fair, and open decision-making process. This process is verily endowed by the dignified propriety of behavior and speech called decorum, which entails appropriate use of language in the public space. It is also a social barometer of the tolerance level of the political class. The PDP-APC casts fundamental doubts on the degree of institutionalization of party politics in general as well as the decency and democratic credentials of politicians in particular. This deterioration also questions the temperamental capabilities of Nigerian political parties, thereby portending grave danger to the future of democracy.
If the whole hue and cry about Boko Haram will ever transcend the realm of political propaganda and public grandstanding, one of the surest ways of doing that is to find a sustainable way of saving Nigeria and Nigerians from terrorism. The starting point will be dealing decisively with the root causes of the insurgency and the conditions that continue to fuel it. On their part, Nigerians should be fully prepared to hold politicians accountable for their actions. They must raise vital questions at critical moments regarding their conduct and utterances. After bearing the burden of the struggles that gave birth to the current democratic experiment, Nigerians cannot afford to fold their arms while a few self-serving politicians wittingly or unwittingly work towards pulling down the edifice. Time is fast running out and Nigeria cannot afford to continue along this path of self-destruction.
