The coalition, Wike and political drama

By SUNNY IKHIOYA

Politics and drama are related. All politics is drama. The only difference is that while one is entertaining, informing and educating, the other is happening in real life, with the ordinary citizens bearing the brunt of it all. To the politicians, it is all a game that they play every election cycle. That is why you see the shameless jumping from one party to the other. That is why an Aregbesola, a self-confessed socialist, is now in bed with Atiku, El-Rufai, Amaechi, and the rest of them. That is why a Peter Obi will be in strange romance with reactionaries of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, he parted ways with  in the past. 

So, politicians have managed to build a reputation of untrustworthiness as a critical aspect of their credentials. In Ask and the Answer, Patrick Ness said: “Never trust a politician… They have no fixed centre, so you can never believe them.” 

For Nikita Khrushchev, former leader of the Soviet Union: “Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers.” The politician has become so unreliable that even comedians are rated higher than them. According to Will Rogers: “Everything is changing, people are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.” For Jarod Kintz: “Every politician has a promising career. Unfortunately, most of them do not keep those promises.” 

If this was a serious country, people would have sorted out the shenanigans of our politicians by now. Without drama, politics will not be exciting. The politics of drama or the drama of politics has been part of us since the early days of party politics. The likes of Ladoke Akintola, Adegoke Adelabu, Fani Kayode, K. O. Mbadiwe and others did play their part. In recent times, you have the likes of Patrick Obayagbon and, of course, Nyesom Wike. 

You can’t rule out the razzmatazz. Should we take them seriously? I believe we should. Because, what we are witnessing today is more than a game. In the real world, people are suffering and dying everywhere and everyday because of the consequences of the actions and inactions of politicians, and unless we make them realise the consequences of these, they will continue to delude themselves in the dream world of drama. These past weeks, we have seen the opposition coalesce into the ADC- African Democratic Congress. And despite pockets of scepticism here and there, they are trudging on. 

This development has brought a new dimension into the political dynamics going into the elections of 2027, hitherto foreshadowed by the fear of a one-party domination, as a result of the waves of decampees into the ruling APC- All Progressives Congress. to the one-sided whitewash hitherto. 

Is that the best that the opposition can offer? A marriage of strange bed fellows and contending interests, united on only one goal: to remove Bola Tinubu as president? Will this work? Are there no better options? Let us take Peter Obi, for instance. You can never appease the Obi supporters. They are always right in their self-belief. The other day, we talked about structure, and they shut us down. They went into the elections and did absolutely well but had no structure to protect their votes in areas outside their South-East stronghold. That gap was glaring except for people living in self-denial, and that shortcoming was what any serious politician should be working on immediately after the election. 

Obi has spent considerable time and resources building bridges across the country. The focus should have been strengthening of his structure to avert future reoccurrence instead of the distraction of aligning with strange bedfellows. Unseating a president cannot be the main focus of serious politicians who have the interests of the people. What are they bringing to the table that will be different from the past? 

In England, we saw an extremist Nigel Farage, UK’s reform party, breakaway from the ruling Conservative party. A prominent Eurosceptic since the early 1990s, Farage’s right-wing and anti-immigration domestic views have attracted significant media attention throughout his political career, and today they have taken advantage of the failing government to worm their way to the top as the main opposition party. His party is the one to beat now in the UK. We require a total breakaway from the past, a combination of youths and fresh leaders to give hope to millions of Nigerians, not the buccaneers recycling themselves as saviours. 

If Peter Obi had toed this path, the ADC coalition would not be his focus today. Let us examine them one by one, in the manner of Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, himself, one of the hawks of this political dispensation and a chief dramatis personae. I do not personally subscribe to Wike’s type politics. Neither do I fancy his hubris, unforgiving, and ruthless nature, but I concede to him that he is a formidable politician and goal-getter worthy of research studies. 

What is his staying power? Nobody should tell me Tinubu because Wike did not start this today. With the manner Wike has taken on the leadership of the coalition, Bayo Onanuga and his media team need not break any sweat. Wike has taken them head on, and the opposition team are running helter-skelter. Atiku Abubakar, David Mark, Rauf Aregbesola, Rotimi Amaechi, are feeling the heat. 

The question he is asking everyone of us to unravel is this: What did  all these prominent political leaders who had in the past held high profile government positions do to make the people happy when they had the privileges? What will they do differently if given the opportunity again? 

One of the coordinators of this coalition was a man given the privilege to rule an important state like Kaduna. For eight years, what did he do with his time as a leader of government? Under his watch there were  blood bath, ethnic and religious crises. But under his successor, there has been relative peace.  

Meanwhile, the unfolding drama between Wike and the coalition has been serious enough to elicit a response from the usually reticent Reverend Olumide Agboghoroma, who wrote thus: “We are getting to the cliff of self-destruct of political class with horrendous cans of worms that are being opened.” 

I hope our people will become wiser.

  *Ikhioya wrote via: http://www.southsouthecho.com

The post The coalition, Wike and political drama appeared first on Vanguard News.