And a time to every purpose under
the heaven. A time to spit on June 12 and a time to be an Abacha forever
zealot. A time to receive more than two hundred billion naira for road
construction and a time not to construct or repair a single road. A time to work
for Obasanjo’s third term agenda and a time to insist that Yar’Adua could rule
Nigeria forever as a ghost from a Saudi hospital bed. A time to abandon the
Turai-Cabal train when it became clear that Yar’Adua would die and a time to
work for Jonathan 2015. A time for your iyanga to go and disturb the sleep of
trouble and a time for trouble to respond by sending wahala your way in the
person of Sam Nda-Isaiah. A time to be reminded by Sam Nda-Isaiah that, at over
80 years-old, it is painful to watch you dance naked at the behest of your
latest master in Aso Rock and a time for you to know that it is time to leave
us alone and retire to your country home. Indeed, there is a time to every
purpose under the heaven.
Perhaps there is also a time of never? A time never to leave
us alone?
A time never to sever your umbilical cord from Aso Rock and, by
extension, the treasury of the Nigerian people? Perhaps you cannot and dare not
retire to your country home to drink palm wine surrounded by the love and care
of your children and grandchildren in the evening of your life? A time never to
ever quit that cycle of rent-collecting and patronage-dependent hangers-on in
Aso Rock? Perhaps you operate only on this time of never?
Most Nigerians who
wonder why a man four decades your junior still gets to summon you to Abuja in
the dead of night (even if he is President) to attend to all kinds of demeaning
domestic party issues; most Nigerians who wonder why it is still possible to summon
you to Aso Rock to settle a petty quarrel between the wives of two local
government chairmen; most Nigerians who shudder and grind their teeth painfully
in disgust whenever they see you in those Aso Rock photo-ops with your children
and grandchildren (what is papa still looking for at his age, they query) just
don’t understand that you operate on the time of never. You can never quit that
circle, no matter how demeaning the errands get. You dare not quit.
You are not alone in the time of never. You are in the
gracious company of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, who has
just accepted an appointment “tougher than the PDP”, to borrow the words of
President Jonathan. When I heard that the President had appointed a man in his
80s to run the Nigerian Railway Corporation, I told those who sought my opinion
that the appointment makes perfect sense. Those transformation trains doing
Lagos to Kano in three to four days in the 21st century are refurbished World
War II trains. You need an age mate of the trains to oversee things.
I have written before about an epidemic of old and expired
politicians who dare not retire to their country homes in the evening of their
lives and the spat between you and Sam Nda-Isaiah provides an opportunity for
me to revisit that issue. It’s a generational thing. In fact, it’s a
generational curse. In my reflection on the spat between Professor Ango
Abdullahi and Mujahid Dokubo Asari back in 2013, I described this curse on the
generation of Nigeria’s grandpas in politics as the fate of the door. Permit me
to reproduce in some detail what I had to say in that essay:
==============================================================
“And this is where I must come back to the question of
political grandpas who are rolling in the mud and fighting over the spoils of
Nigerian statehood with new actors on the stage barely older than their
grandchildren. Before Dokubo Asari and Ango Abdullahi, there were Olusegun
Obasanjo and Ayo Fayose trying to determine who was a bastard and who fathered
the said bastard. In essence, Ango Abdullahi is not the only grandpa in
politics. We have them in abundance. We have an epidemic of septuagenarians and
octogenarians who will not stop disturbing the peace of the country.
Week in, week out, they are giving orders, spitting fire on
the national stage, oozing smoke from the centre of their heads like D.O.
Fagunwa’s Anjonu Iberu (the ghomid of fear). For Ango Abdullahi, Olusegun
Obasanjo, Edwin Clark, Tony Anenih, Bamanga Tukur, and so many others in that
category, it is joro jara joro every week, fighting for the spoils of Nigerian
statehood with guys in their forties. So and so must be president, so and so
cannot be governor. Every statement they make is an arrow in the heart of
genuine democracy. One is even insisting that his son must be the next governor
of Adamawa state.
We must ask: who cursed the Nigerian grandpa in politics
with the fate of the door? In the developed world, these are people who, by
now, would be enjoying a dignified retirement from public life, perhaps in a
country cottage or on a ranch somewhere, surrounded by their children and
grandchildren, and only granting the occasional interview to guide the country
in the right direction. Instead of a peaceful countryside retirement, the
Nigerian grandpa in politics is fated, like the door in Yoruba philosophy,
never to know or find peace. “Wahala lon pa lekun” (It is wahala that kills the
door), goes the Yoruba proverb. Open, close, open, close, a door never finds
peace. Such is the terrible fate of the Nigerian grandpa in politics in the
evening of his life. In his advanced age, for instance, Tony Anenih is still
doing joro jara joro in the dead of night between Benin and Abuja. This is the
terrible fate of the door.
The Nigerian grandpa in politics is responsible for his own
fate of the door. In the morning and the afternoon of his life, he did not work
to create a Nigeria that would grant him a deserved rest in the evening of his
life. Where will they find rest and peace of mind in the Nigeria of today that
is the product of their fifty years of visionless and corrupt leadership? Even
if they built fortresses in their villages and hometowns, they must still
generate their own electricity and water and provide their own security. They
must fear Boko Haram, armed robbers, and kidnappers who now target the elderly.
Some, like Tony Anenih, didn’t even have enough vision to tar the road to his
own gate. Therefore, they must continue to patronize Aso Rock, Governors,
Ministers, and Senators their children’s age in order to enjoy military
helicopters and other resources of the Nigerian state. Given this state of
affairs, I’m afraid that there is no guarantee that Ango Abdullahi will not
still be rolling in the mud with boys his grandchildren’s age in the next
decade of his life.
=====================================================
This essay was published in May 2013. At the time, a member
of your generation, Professor Ango Abdullahi was in the gutter with Dokubo
Asari over the fate of President Jonathan. You can see that I mentioned you
generously in the essay. You can see how much of your future spat with Sam
Nda-Isaiah I foresaw. Sam Nda-Isaiah says that you have hung around government
for too long and have grown so used to the wrong way of running government that
all the wrong things now appear right and normal to you. He warns you not to
write letters defending President Jonathan again.
On that score he is wrong. You will write more letters and
invade the public sphere with more solicited and unsolicited actions on behalf
of the Jonathan presidency – and the presidency after Jonathan’s if God spares
your life that long. As usual, those actions will be beneath you but you will
carry them out anyway. I don’t think that Sam Nda-Isaiah understands the
predicament of your generation. You cannot quit. You dare not. By spending the
better part of the last fifty years ruining Nigeria, you and your generational
peers have created a Nigeria in which you cannot find peace, quiet, and rest.
You are not serving as an errand boy for Aso Rock in your 80s; Bamanga Tukur is
not hopping from appointment to appointment in his 80s because you both need
the money. You are both in serious money. What you need now is the protection
that closeness and chumminess with the presidency affords you in the evening of
your lives. You need presidential aura and power to protect you from the mess
and the nightmare that is Nigeria. You need protection from the Nigeria you
made, protection from the hell you made of Nigeria. For your generation, it
will forever be a time to stay put and a time to never quit. Until that time
that you have no control over arrives…
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