Nigerian politics is pure madness.
This is the declaration of a strategic source of mine, a grand old man in his eighties who has seen it all in the game of politics in Nigeria.
I was in the great manโs Lagos home over the weekend when he came up with his idea on Nigerian politics and madness.
The man had a throaty laugh when he said to me that the demands of madness are beyond the ken of the children who are masquerading as present-day Nigerian politicians.
For instance, a young lad gets high after smoking a joint of marijuana and so mistakenly thinks he is mad.
No way. Madness is made of sterner stuff.
The hard work, or walking, that proper madness demands is beyond the powers of the young wannabes of lunacy.
The correct madman can walk from Lagos to Maiduguri and back again without making any noise whatsoever about it because that is the nature of his trade.
This is quite unlike that publicity-hunting young pretender who deigned to walk from Lagos to Abuja in celebration of Muhammadu Buhariโs first-term presidential victory.
Any bloke sane enough to announce to the whole wide world that he is undertaking a long walk for political purposes eminently lacks the qualification for madness!
If that cranky fellow truly had the proper oomph of madness, he ought to have undertaken another long walk from Abuja back to Lagos to congratulate Buhari for winning the second term. ย
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) can be likened to the old past masters of madness while the All Progressives Congress (APC) remains a gang-up of children not up to scratch in the power game of madness.ย
The ancient party of madness boasted of devil-may-care godfathers who undertook swearing-in oaths for governors in the dreaded Okija shrine.
The party had garrison commanders that superintended over state governors and their security-votes with military jackboots.
The impeachment of party chairmen and senate presidents became one-week-one-madness.
It was such that a man unfit to win a ward election became a presidential candidate and won the national elections but was only savagely stopped from life presidency by a third term!
The old party had everything going for it that its stalwarts croaked that they would rule the country for all of 60 years.
But as Greek tragedy teaches us, overweening pride becomes the downfall of all super tragic heroes who believe they have achieved it all.
The ancient party was so full of hubris that it even believed that it could make a president out of a dead man!
It was in line with the madness of the calling that the owner of the party actually asked its then presidential candidate a crazy question: โUmoru, are you dead?โ
The dead-man-walking that was shot to the presidency through the charade could not ally with the madness of it all, and he told all willing to listen that the election that brought him to power was maddeningly flawed, in short, a madmanโs arrangement.
Then the man died.
The void left by
his death could well have equally killed the country until the so-called doctrine of necessity had to be called forth to save the day.
And thus the young shoeless one was shooed into the madness of power without taking cognizance of the fact that madness is not a matter for children.ย ย
What can be more bonkers than the new kid on the turf appointing the referee for the power contest from the home of his opponent? ย
Of course the starry-eyed one and his old party ended up being worsted in the presidential contest.
The party that advertised itself as the agent of change took over the mantle of madness.
Old age, they say, is a second childhood.
Now the old mad dogs of the old party have plunged wholesale into the new party.
It is not a pretty sight watching mutants in second childhood playing at madness.
Power intoxication can be very psychotic for the new tyro in power.
This led the neophytes to fix a meeting on the morning of the inauguration of the National Assembly.
Before they could wake from euphoric madness the deed was done, leading to the anointed figureheads of the new party playing second fiddle to the old masters.
Everything was all so confusing for these new tots of madness.
In order not to be caught napping for a second time in the second term, a rubber stamp had to be put in place as the legislature.
To call the judiciary a rubber stamp would amount to an insult to the rubber stamp.
Democracy has given place to Demonarchy, to wit, a government of demons using the instruments of monarchy to administer democracy. ย
The madness in a second childhood is 97 percent psychosis and 5 percent neuroses.
If the arithmetic does not add up, please bear with me at โYaba Leftโ for I too have gone mad! ย ย ย