By Asiayei Enaibo
With different manifestos, with different promises to even the ancestors, the living are always anxious about what gain they could get, shared among their two jaws, bring it, let’s share it and chop it, who democracy help?
Both the illiterate and literate candidates speak their words; some eloquently express a great hope for tomorrow, and the party members hail their candidates, saying he is the most qualified; the oppositions care not about his eloquence, “na English we wan chop?”
Share the money, anything beyond that; he is a bad leader. Yes, some of us have shared and eaten their future and then have been in pain for long. Yes, many are willing to decamp to another political canoe after they have eaten their shares.
We must gain two things, pains of bad governance, yes, gain the shares for our temporary survival, those with good game plans as decampees are sometimes lucky to gain appointments.
When your candidates fail at that material time, you gain pain for losing your mental political appointments to be in convoy, and then, your plan to be the big man becomes a silent pain. So, no one is willing no lose his opportunity, and that is where we lose integrity.
The professors too who taught in the universities of bad government and corruption introduced a new paradigm shift in their curriculum to rig to be appointed as Chairman of Governing Council and VCs, what gain is to democracy?
Politics, pains and gains, those who are in a position sometimes are aware that they are not doing well. So, who is the Saviour in this Ekoriko?
We can’t sell our palm oil in Bobougbene because there is no money; my grand-mother returned from fishing in the Ayakoromo River, there is no buying to buy her fish to enable her to buy garri to eat, then we in the cities use money to buy money at a very high rate, yes we are in a democracy, what is actually democracy?
Suffering of the people by the suffering and smiling people because people are coming into power?
We must rig pain to gain the pleasure of power, the failed people weep, and those who win sing their party slogan, and after the man has won, in four years, he was still paying the debt he incurred over the years and those who were happy then, decamped to other parties to castigate him of being selfish.
If he is not economical to pay his political debt, where you trick to rig for him, where will he have money to pay his debt? So, he has no business with your community’s progress, yes, he will give himself all the contracts and empowerments to help him have more money to sustain his power.
Nigeria, the weeping nation, as the predicted flood will come again for our sins in Democracy as it is the bane of our uncivilized plans for the future, the pains and gains in politics.
But one thing we must acknowledge is that we also have good leaders who are poor and refuse to risk themselves into power to do what is good for the common people.
Down seat and condemn the bad, but you decided to be the philosopher follower to be the tail, not the head, 2023 election is at the peak of the nation’s decision-making process, but those who believe life is about risk-taking will continue to enjoy the gain, while we groan in pains of the hardship we fail to embark upon the risk.
Yes, farmers see their products rotten as no buyer is coming to buy the farm produce, and there is an unusual increase in living; yes, I have stopped my children from going to school in recent times because we could not afford to pay keke transportation fees on a daily basis, yes, is this the country of our heroes past?
I, in one way or the other, contributed to this suffering we are in. You, in one way or the other, contributed to this suffering we are in, so who do we blame?
Weep not Oh Nigeria!
Weep not as we do not follow what is right but what we could gain temporarily and pains to all.
This is the unbalanced situation of the pleasures of politics and the unpleasant gain of a dying nation.
Weep not, oh Nigeria, it is what you planted you reap!
Hardship, economic strangulation, and impoverishment rigs bell to all the doorposts to Nigerians; no one is at peace in one challenge or the other, the clock ticks with uncertainties, and many are jubilating when all grandmothers dug out their old savings to the banks, and their money sold to them again against voting buying policies, is this the democracy they brought to us?
In every town hall meeting, we celebrate failed leaders with trumpets as praise singers to get one new naira note; yes, light estimated bills are posted to us at the end of every month; what is even democracy? Pains and groaning suffering become the gains of the masses.
The political oracles we hail at all times without development, yes renovated schools without chairs in the rural coastal communities that flood-ravaged annually without master plans.
Yes, insecurity is waxing stronger, protests, fire outbreaks, herdsmen attacks, and unknown gunmen are the changes we see in a democracy. Politics, pains and gains, those in power gain the temporary accumulated wealth to buy votes when elections come, what is actually the plans of Nigeria’s democracy?
Tomorrow, China will call us loan citizens awaiting to work in their factories like in the slavery era of new freedom.
Yes, the hardship is telling on us; those whose parents are late in the coastal areas of the Niger Delta region are testifying that my testimony goes like this if supposing in this hardship, “if say my papa and mama still dey alive, how could I feed them? Yes, we can’t take care of ourselves anymore; the country’s social responsibility is now a personal affair, yes, the danger in democracy is getting more dangerous.
We all are at the edge of dying in democracy as we borrow democracy for more borrowing and loans to gain positions and pain we gain.
A thick cloud hovering around us, an economic crisis with political protest, then climate change to engulf our roofs again if we fail to plan in Nigeria; yes leaders should be accountable, and transparent to those they represent.
Asiayei Enaibo, The Talking Drum, writes from GbaramatuVoice media organization