By Lasisi Olagunju
The All Progressives Congress (APC) and its elder brother, the PDP, were formed for ambition, power, fame and riches. You've heard chants of 'Power to the People' for how many years now? Politicians are the only ones who have grown in power.
The 'people' have not left the park of hope.
They won't. Forget about Change or Progress or whatever else APC's slogan is. You are not likely to see any as promised. APC is a political party with very smart politicians. Smart politicians are conmen. That makes the APC a con party.
A conman builds his chest of gold by trick. He works hard to gain the trust of his mugu and persuades him to do business with him. Then he dispatches the dupe to the cold night of ejection.
The smart APC appropriated the revolt of 2015 against the PDP and hopped to power. It evoked so high hopes. So much was promised, but so much has been denied.
The crafty works hard and we saw it in the construction of the APC as a brand. But he can't build an enduring, successful brand whose goal is to cheat. He cannot manage any success. He is soon faced with the need to cheat and the consequences of greediness.
And greedy designs have life spans that are always very short. So far, the Nigerian voter who did business with the APC has not been able to pin it down to any of its promises.
The promise of security was delivered as cheap death to the 2015 voter in Zamfara, Benue, Plateau and Taraba. The one who is alive is destitute. But the voter never really matters after elections. He is useful only on the day of voting.
And he will always be available because he is simple. But, can you treat politicians who bought into a political enterprise as a dupe too? You can't dump an ally and eat the spoils of war in peace. That is the headache the ruling party is treating now.
In the build-up to the 2015 elections, the APC captured many mugus. It made a public offer of its shares, turning its wobbly, unsure brand into a blue chip overnight. It went for the soul of its competitor, the PDP, and seduced some of its most virile men.
It got so many worthy investors to buy into its project. It even signed MOUs of boardroom equality with them. One of these men was Bukola Saraki. Another was Rabiu Kwankwaso. There was Aminu Tambuwal.
There were very many more powerful ones across the country. Even the old, smart, foxy lion himself, Olusegun Obasanjo was corralled into the scheme. They called him their navigator - whatever that means.
Then the 2015 business turned out a huge, instant success for the APC. Harvest was huge. But what dividends have the investors got? Some got locked up; some got criminal trials and accusations; the lucky ones got mere threats.
Ihe business was apparently a well conceived, elaborate swindle-web. Even before the Public Offer, the original promoters too had schemes to undo one another after the war. And it happened.
The Lagos content, for three years (out of four), was a nobody who had no pass to the powerhouse. Now, months to elections, he is suddenly embraced and cuddled as the leader once again. But as it is turning out now, it seems each of the actors could play the con game - and very well. And they have individually given great accounts of themselves.
Politics is piracy. In that world of blood and rum, they hire allies to fight common enemies. They also cast allies overboard once victory is won. There is no fidelity to friendship or comradeship.
No esprit de corps. Fish eats fish to live is the code and the credo. Pirates are not just sea robbers, they are also deadly conmen. Politicians are too.
There are consequences for cheating, for use and dump.
You don't con the Mafia don and say you have succeeded. You will pay. Ask Goodluck Jonathan and his PDP that elbowed out the witches and wizards. APC has also done that to the power mafia of Nigeria and these rumbles in the jungle are just the early warnings of the hailstorm about to pour.
History guides here with a rich dish of cheats and how they ended. There was Victor Lustig, super-conman who sold the Eiffel Tower twice to some dumb moneybags. Lustig was clever enough to fleece even the super gangster, Al Capone, of $5,000. He died in prison.
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| Members of APC National Working Committee taking oath before the National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole (R), during the 2018 APC National Convention in Abuja on Sunday (24/6/18). 03374/24/6/2018/Hogan Bassey/NAN |
It is not only history that keeps accounts of cheats and the consequences of cheating. It is also in folklore, in legends and in myths.
You remember the three friends who found a bag of gold in the forest? You remember they decided to divide the gold equally among themselves? Did they remain true to that agreement? You remember they were hungry, tired and thirsty.
They had gold but there was no food and there was no water. The story teller says: "So they sat under a tree and sent one of them to fetch food from a neighbouring town. In his absence, the other two decided to kill him and divide the gold equally between them.
The man, who had gone to fetch food, was very greedy too. He dropped some deadly poison in the food and said to himself, 'I will have the whole gold when they eat this meal. I’ll go to town and start my own business with the gold I get.' When he came back to his companions, they killed him. Then both of them ate the poisoned food - and both of them died."
Cheats and swindlers always lose. You find them in politics. They contest and fail repeated times like Abiku. Then fortune smiles on them and then, they claim to be Spider-man of politics who could spring surprises.
They forget their years of toil and the wind that aided their sail. They fling away ladders with which they climbed to victory. They fly using other people's wings without appreciation. There are other examples in mythology which tell cheats how they always end.
The Greeks have one in which Zeus summoned all the birds in a parade of beauty. Zeus wanted to choose a king among birds. “I want to choose the best looking to be the king over the birds,” he said. The myth goes further that "each bird then started preening his feathers, fanning his tail and spreading his wings out wide to show off his beautiful feathers.
The sparrow looked at his drab feathers and decided he would have to make a plan. He quietly hopped around the assembled birds, picking up one beautiful feather here and another there.
Then he stuck them in between his feathers until he became a rainbow of a bird, the brightest bird thereof. At the appointed time, all the birds gathered around Zeus to hear what he would say. He passed in front of each bird.
Then he stopped in front of the sparrow and was just thinking of naming him the king. Suddenly there was a flurry of wings and great twittering among the birds as they realised that that rainbow bird had in fact stolen their feathers.
All the birds plunged down on him, each bird pecking off his own feathers. This left nothing but a little brown sparrow who had tried to win by cheating!" Does this sparrow tell you something about the PDP of 2015 and its neglect of the people who vested it with power?
You remember Tortoise too in folklore? In a season of famine, Tortoise begged birds to save him from starvation. They gave him feathers and he flew with the birds to the skies where free food was in abundance.
He got there and proceeded to swindle his helpers. How did he do it? He renamed and introduced himself to their host as Mr. All of You. And so, when food and drinks were delivered by hostesses they were for 'all of you.'
Smart Tortoise appropriated all because, he argued, they were for him, Mr. All of You. So what happened to the greedy? The birds, one by one, collected back their feathers. He was stranded in the skies.
His disastrous jump back home is the reason the Tortoise has scars all over his shell today. He cannot recover from the repercussions of his duplicity. He won't, ever.
The birds who gave the APC the colours that won it the 2015 contest are collecting back their feathers. Even the re-befriended Lagos knows it is being feted this moment only because of the contest ahead.
The wily bird understands the game and will collect back his beauty. And the wing owners are not just the political class. They include the mass on the street whose next meal is unsure; the ones whose name became 'Nobody' so soon after the last polls.
Meltdown is what you get when you swindle your investors. That is what you feel when divestment wrecks an entity.
The APC faces a meltdown. You saw it last week. You may feel more this week and the next. It isn't only its allies that the APC has lost. Millions on the street bought its promise of security and positive change.
The unfortunate ones in the Middle Belt are in mass graves. Those who are not dead are in camps for the displaced. In other places, jobs have been lost and are being lost while the lords in APC's powerhouse fight over the commonwealth.
The meltdown is real for this brand. Power hawks and doves who were used and dumped are playing the old game once again. They are witches and wizards of power and its appurtenances who don't take prisoners.
You can't rape them twice; they have sense. They have formed a 'reformed' faction of the APC. The aboriginal APC too are using the old trick of deception to try and hold them down. But no two wars are the same. Same with problems. What solves one is rejected by another.
But where are the Nigerian people in all this? They always lose. They know the political class always fails them. But because they must do something, they always end up in the house of swindlers.
Simple solutions as espoused by the smart APC couldn't have worked for Nigeria's complex problems. I hope the people open their eyes and use their brains this time. Money doublers can't help the needy.
They always complicate further the complicated. The APC did that to the poor and for that it faces a future willed to termites. I am sorry if I sound rather morbid in my pessimism.
But I know that a divided ruling house that has lost the street and has lost the kingmakers can neither endure in power nor get the crown.
The ravening clouds have possessed the skies of our politics.
We watch as the Ping-Pong game of wits and wile moves to the climax. But, whatever happens to the purpose-built APC craft, the crew will bail out to safety - if the need arises. They always escape crashes. The Nigerian people have been the only identifiable losers. They have always been.
First published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday 9 July, 2018
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