“Inú olósèlú kì í dùn d’ále´”(a politician’s joy does not endure till evening). An observer of our politics told me this yesterday. I heard it, and something skipped in my heart. It got me quiet throughout the day. The result is this long thought on politics and the profiles of Nigerian politicians.
Politics has the sneaky betrayal of the adder plus its lethal poison. And because a snake’s offspring must be long, this long thing you are reading is about the impermanence of political happiness, the insecurity of power, the endless pursuit of tomorrow and, ultimately, the loneliness of becoming ‘former.’
First, as you read this, take your time to pick whom it fits in your country, your state, your local government, your ward, your town and even your compound.
A politician’s happiness is fleeting. His joy has a short lifespan. Let’s imagine he wins his election.
Wonderful.
But has he really won?
There is the Election Petition Tribunal.
Then the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, depending on the office in contention. The music may stop before the dancer has properly warmed up.
He wins the election and begins another election against uncertainty.
He appoints commissioners and begins wondering who among them is plotting against him.
He sleeps in Government House but sometimes wakes up fighting enemies who exist only in his imagination.
Everybody is suspicious.
The security report says somebody is meeting somebody.
The party chairman has not called.
The deputy governor smiled strangely.
A commissioner spent too long on the telephone.
A former ally posted a cryptic message on Facebook.
Trouble!
Political power comes with a strange mattress.
It looks soft.
But there are nails underneath.
Fear, suspicion, treachery, pressure and the constant knowledge that somebody wants what you have.
That is a four-volume book.
If you want to understand the Nigerian politician, do not begin with his manifesto. Please. You may finish reading it and still not know the man.
Study his ways instead.
Watch what he does three years before an election. Watch who he visits at midnight. Watch the sudden affection for traditional rulers, market women, pastors, imams, youth leaders and everybody who controls ten human beings and a WhatsApp group. Watch the man who has not yet won an election already distributing ministries, committees and political appointments in his head.
The Nigerian politician is a special breed.
He is an incurable optimist, a professional dreamer and a man who can see 2033 with the clarity with which the rest of us struggle to see tomorrow morning.
He has permutations.
Oh, he has permutations!
He knows who will win the presidential election seven years from now, which governor will defect, which senator will become minister, which minister will become governor and which godfather will become too old to be useful. He can predict the political future of a state while eating pounded yam. And if you tell him his mathematics is impossible, he will smile.
“You don’t understand politics.”
Only he and his ilk know what they think they know.
A Nigerian politician is a man who believes he knows and owns tomorrow.
While the ordinary Nigerian says, ‘By God’s grace, tomorrow will be better’, the politician says, ‘2030 is a done deal. Senate is sure banker.’ And before his party even decides how much it will sell senatorial form, Oga is already parading himself as ‘Distinguished’. Yes, all his correspondences, all event comperes will bear me witness.
He does not merely hope for tomorrow. He has occupied it.
Ask a politician what he wants after becoming councillor and he will tell you the House of Representatives is his next stop. Ask him about the House and he is already discussing the Senate. Ask him about the Senate and he is eyeing the governor’s chair. Once he becomes governor, the presidency begins to look strangely familiar
Oh no, he does not want to back to what his parents sent him to schoolto study, he just wants to be known and addressedas ‘Honourable Kinnikan” forever.
His ambition has no retirement age.
Even when a Nigerian politician loses an election, he doesn’t close his eyes. He says he is ‘repositioning ‘ or ‘restrategising’
Translation: I am coming back.
Tomorrow belongs to him.
He will do almost anything to get to tomorrow.
The Nigerian politician is a deeply religious man. Very religious.
He can spend Sunday morning in church, Friday afternoon at the mosque and Saturday night consulting somebody whose office is located behind a mysterious red curtain. He believes in God and all the other gods too.
He also believes in insurance.
And political insurance has many forms.
Prayer. Fasting. Prophecy. Strategic alliances. “Spiritual consultation.” A visit to the native doctor. A mysterious sacrifice somebody insists must be performed at three road junctions for three nights three days before the election.
He will publicly laugh at juju and privately ask somebody to ‘do something’ about his opponent.
Politics, for him, is a strange marriage of democracy and desperation. The ballot box and his oracle don’t always agree and he listens to both.
He will trade almost anybody to get what he wants. That makes him scary because not even his mother is sacred.
The benefactor who discovered him can suddenly become ‘an old friend with whom we have irreconcilable differences.’
The mentor who paid his school fees can become ‘an enemy of progress.’
The political father who made him commissioner or Special Adviser may wake up one morning to discover that his political son has joined forces with the opposition. All is fair in this game.
Not even marriage is spared in the horse-trading. Friendship is not spared.
Loyalty is negotiable.
In Nigerian politics, yesterday’s ‘my leader’ can become today’s ‘agbaaya’, the good-for-nothing old man.
And tomorrow’s ‘that man’ may become next year’s ‘my father and mentor.’
The politician’s dictionary has only one particularly flexible word: interest.
Anything can be justified under that one word. That is why there is a political warning that when you a digging a hole for your political opponent, don’t dig too deep, so that your opponent does not break any bone if and when he falls in that hole. And the interesting part? An opponent who did not break an arm or his leg is easier to persuade to cross the carpet. See? The shallow pit is dug with interest and tomorrow in mind.
Now, that does not mean this logic works all the time. Paralysis and death have been known to take place in politically dug holes.
It is remarkably easy to swindle a politician.
Just wrap a box.
Tell him there is a political position inside.
He will pay to open it.
Tell a politician his name is being considered for a position and his heart starts beating like a campaign drum.
“Some people at the top are interested in you.”
He orders new clothes.
“You may be appointed.”
He begins to call people “my brother.”
“You are being considered for the Senate.”
He starts calculating constituency projects.
This is how powerful men become vulnerable.
A politician who cannot be fooled by ordinary lies can be defeated by one sentence whispered by a supposed insider:
“You are the man they are looking at.”
Suddenly, everybody becomes important.
He is buying drinks.
Paying school fees.
Settling hospital bills.
Donating to associations.
Sponsoring weddings.
Because somewhere inside a wrapped box, he has been promised a political office.
Sometimes the box contains nothing.
A Nigerian politician thinks being a Senator or Governor is the same as being Ooni of Ife or Sultan of Sokoto.
This is perhaps the funniest part.
A political office is temporary.
The Nigerian politician often behaves as though his name has been carved into the walls of eternity.
He fights for a four-year term as if he is defending an ancestral throne.
Everybody becomes an enemy.
The opponent is not merely a contestant. He is an existential threat.
A rival wants the office?
War!
The constitution says four years?
Never mind.
The politician behaves as though the office will be buried with him.
He forgets that somebody held it before him.
Somebody will hold it after him.
And one day, people who used to stand up when he entered a room may not even notice when he enters the same room.
That is the cruelty of political power.
It has a very short memory.
The politician thinks he is rich.
He isn’t.
This is where the laughter should slowly stop.
A politician can spend money like a drunken sailor when he is in office; luxury cars, palatial homes, loud political meetings, parties and endless donations.
People constantly asking.
People constantly receiving.
He begins to mistake access to money for ownership of wealth.
Then comes retirement.
“Former Governor.”
“Ex-Senator.”
“Former Minister.”
“Ex-Chairman.”
The titles remain, but the convoy disappears.
The phone becomes quieter.
The people who used to say “Sir!” now have urgent meetings elsewhere.
And suddenly, the politician discovers something terrifying:
Political power was not an inheritance.
It was a rented apartment.
The rent has expired.
The politician who had no profession, no business, no craft, no serious investment and no life outside politics begins the subtle hustle again.
The clever ones prepared.
They are lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers, businessmen, academics, farmers and professionals who can return to something when politics returns them to ordinary life.
The others discover that “former” is a very expensive word.
The politician is addicted to relevance.
This one is his almost incurable disease.
He cannot doesn’t know when to stop.
He must be seen.
He must be consulted.
He must be invited.
He must be photographed.
He must be quoted.
He wants his telephone number circulating among the powerful.
The former governor wants to see the new governor’s commissioners list. He wants his boys in the new government.
The former minister wants to know who the president will appoint.
The retired godfather still wants to determine who becomes chairman of the local government.
Nobody has told him that politics has moved on.
He knows.
He simply refuses to move with it.
He believes power will make him happy.
This is the saddest one.
The politician spends years chasing the office.
He tells himself:
“When I become governor, I will be fulfilled.”
Then he becomes governor.
And discovers that the chair is not a magic carpet.
There are still enemies.
Still family problems.
Still illness.
Still betrayal.
Still loneliness.
Still death.
Still the ordinary human fear of losing what one has.
He has everything and may still lie awake at 3 a.m., wondering who is plotting to remove him.
He has a convoy but may not know who genuinely loves him.
He has hundreds of people around him but may not know who he can trust.
He has money but may not know whether people love him or his money.
And one day, the sirens stop.
The cars leave.
The aides disappear.
The office is handed to another man.
The nameplate comes down.
The man who once controlled thousands of lives discovers that he is once again simply Mr. Somebody.
And that is when the joke becomes painful.
Because perhaps the tragedy of the Nigerian politician is not that he wants too much.
It is that he spends so much of his life pursuing power that he forgets to build a life that can survive without it.
He conquers tomorrow.
He captures today.
He defeats yesterday.
And then, suddenly, tomorrow arrives without asking his permission.
He is no longer governor.
No longer senator.
No longer minister.
No longer chairman.
Just an old man sitting somewhere, looking at photographs of the days when people stood whenever he entered a room.
The photographer may still be alive.
The people in the photographs may still be alive.
But the power is dead.
And perhaps that is the final profile of the Nigerian politician:
A man who spends his whole life trying to become somebody, only to discover at the end that the greatest somebody he could have become was his ungreedy, contented self.
