“When one with honeyed words but evil mind persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.” – Euripides
“You will find Nigeria a very interesting country” wrote P. Nwadike, “if you have the right mix of narcissism, sarcasm and sadism.” The unveiling of Senator Kashim Shettima as the Vice Presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the forthcoming 2023 general election threw up yet another scathing cocktail of sarcasm and sadism. Some great men of letters in sacred science like Thomas Aquinas had argued that no sin of lying exists alone. It has multiple subsets of itself trying to cover the primordial cause. To cover the sin of lying, man blows more lies. It was likened to digging holes to fill a hole.
The practical dimension of this theological theory was seen last midweek at the Shehu Yar’dua Centre Abuja, venue for the unveiling. For more than seven days to that event, criticism had trailed the choice of Sen. Kashim, a Muslim northerner as running mate for Bola Tinubu, another Muslim faithful from the South, in a premeditated same faith ticket.
Apparently, aware of the public backlash and how the controversy generated was already depleting their electoral credibility, which has ab initio been manifestly depreciating, APC made the smart move to cover their deceit with another round of deceit. First they flaunted a sham statement of endorsement by Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, His Grace, Most. Rev. I. Kaigama, but when their lies was blown open, they hatched a more egregious scandal.
They allegedly made costume of christian (Catholic) prelates and hired artisans from the street to adorn them and impersonate Bishops at the occasion. It was their third frantic effort to drum validation for their awkward candidatures from the christian sects. But their deceit were too raw and bare to pass the test of naked eye.
The impostors and their handlers didn’t do their homework well. The costumier did nasty job. And the director of the movie was so ordinary, the public easily spotted the difference. All the crew members forgot that we’re in social media age. They also missed the right christian denomination to mimic. They choose the Catholic church with its sophisticated ecclesial orthodoxy. They forgot that it has one of the most time-tested organized decorum that takes one at least twelve years of consistent seminary formation to blend with.
The Catholic church is not new to such bogus usurpation of its ministerial regalia by double-dealers. But it always boomerangs.
On Monday March 04, 2013, during pre-conclave meetings for the election of new pope following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, a man dressed in faux ecclesiastical robes was escorted out of a meeting of Catholic cardinals by Swiss Guards after trying to sneak into a closed-door Vatican meeting.
The man, whose real name is Ralph Napierski, introduced himself to reporters as “Basilius” and said he was a member of the “Italian Orthodox Church”, which does not exist.
He was wearing a purple scarf around his waist that was similar to the sashes worn by senior Catholic prelates, and he shook hands and chatted with priests and cardinals arriving at the meeting.
Security guards say they realised he was an imposter because his purple sash was too short and he was wearing a black fedora. And that was the time Roman Catholic cardinals from around the world were about to start a week of closed-door meetings before choosing a successor to Pope Benedict XVI.
It is usually during the talks that they decide the opening date for the conclave where the new pontiff is elected. And the man attempted hacking the whole process, but found how hard a nut it was to crack the esoteric ancient protocol.
The Catholic orthodoxy is attested to, even by atheists and religious nymphs. It would have been a little easier if APC and its cohorts had tried any of the many new generation sects with vague identity indices. But they weren’t prepared for an award-winning movie anyway.
They were also not aware of the ancient latin adage that “habitus non faciunt monachum” (habit doesn’t make the monk). Priesthood is in the character and not on the cassocks, soutanes and other fabric vestments.
Most importantly, they failed to differentiate the prelatical outdoor regalia. They vested their tele-guided impersonators with liturgical vestments such as stole, chasuble and pallium which are adorned only during liturgies (Holy Mass, and other celebration of sacraments, etc).
The truth is that, this fake bishop misadventure was one of the most nauseatingly reprehensible dress rehearsals of APC going into 2023. It needlessly aggrandized the lack of religious pluralism in the APC presidential ticket it was supposed to conceal and overshadowed the main event itself. But many Nigerians don’t seem to appreciate it. English playwright, Noël Coward, in his days said: “it’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
Nigerians should be more worried ahead of the high crime rate APC is capable of unleashing in their desperate pursuit to remain in power beyond 2023.Those who sew bishops’ cloak can sew police and military uniforms on election days. If they don’t have sense of awe for the sacred, what other evidence do we need to know that they will have no respect for the will of the people at the polls?
Another distasteful implication of the fake bishop deployment was the joke it casted on those who out parochial or tribal sentiments, wilfully deluded themselves into arguing that “religion doesn’t or shouldn’t matter.” Tinubu and APC’s move to coact prelates to feign endorsement of their treasonous same faith ticket to the presidency, rubbished all efforts of their sycophantic defenders.
We will end this week’s musing with an editorial from The Punch newspaper last Friday: “preoccupied with power and their privileges, Nigeria’s politicians should pay attention to what is happening in Sri Lanka.”
For Nigerians at the receiving end of the depredations of their politicians and poverty, Sri Lanka demonstrates the option of ‘people power.’ For the ruling class, it signposts the danger of complacency and the fallacy that the people’s seething discontent will forever remain latent.
The triggers of the Sri Lankan crisis eerily mirror Nigeria today. Long-running economic adversity plunged to new depths beginning in 2021 and worsened by 2022. Like in Nigeria, where the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), and the state governors are running the country aground, the Rajapaksa government that won a popular mandate in 2019 to save a collapsing economy, instead thoroughly mismanaged it.
All the ruinous policies that bankrupted Sri Lanka are multiplied in Nigeria: printing money recklessly, borrowing without method, spending less on people, investment, and capital, mismanaging the foreign exchange market, running a rentier system driven by cronyism, sectionalism, and incoherence. Nigeria adds religion to the mix, where sectarian considerations interfere with economic decisions. Corruption thrives.
Nigeria’s economy is broken, debt servicing is taking over 90 per cent of revenue, about 95 million people are poor, majority of the youth are jobless, inflation is record high and the naira is crashing against major world currencies. For an import-dependent country that like Sri Lanka failed to diversify its exports away from primary products, this is disastrous. The collapse of the national power grid on Wednesday – the sixth time this year – and the official increase in pump head prices of petrol highlight the energy crisis where prices of diesel, aviation fuel, kerosene and lubricants have devastated businesses.
Add to this, insecurity everywhere, the alienation of large sections of the polity and the lack of functional basic services, Nigerians are being driven to the brink.
Amid all this, the regime and politicians flounder; are uncaring and fixated on the next elections, power, and plunder (as they spare no effort including masquerading fake prelates to amass fake validation).
Nigerians should realise that they have power and owe themselves, and present and future generations the right and duty to demand accountability and good governance. The people’s complacency has emboldened politicians and impoverished the country. Through all lawful means –peaceful protests, petitions, sit-ins, town hall meetings and active civic participation, including voting and mass mobilisation –they should compel attention from the political class.”
For the political class, Sri Lanka is a stark warning. One day, the famed patience of Nigerians may run out.
May daylight spare us!
