Guardian

Tony Afejuku, radical poet and professor of English, Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Benin, Benin City, writes on 14 years of democracy, warning that citizens must get ready for a cleansing.

SUDDENLY, Nigeria has galloped to fourteen years of democracy. Maybe we should even say that Nigeria has hopped-stepped-and-jumped to fourteen years of democracy, since the military chaps forced themselves to the barracks at a time they seemed not well prepared to do what they did. But we can only say this now from the sagacious point of view of hindsight. Yes, from the sagacious point of view of hindsight, for what we have been roughing through fourteen years now is not democracy in the serious sense of the term but “demonautocracy”.     Yes, demonautocracy, meaning, in my own special way of understanding my new term, political autocracy run, controlled and managed by demons gifted and talented in the political art and act of demonology.

This was certainly not what our peoples of Nigeria, in all our disparate sensibilities and thoughts, wanted when the commanding military men hurried themselves out of political governance of our dear country, our one and only fatherland and motherland; we must for ever wish to remain and stay indivisible.

Did I say the commanding military chaps hurried themselves out of political power? No. I must obviously be wrong and mouthing and writing a statement I should not be uttering in any forum of sane Nigerians of sincere democratic propensities and propinquities. We hurried, hurled and hauled the protective men in uniform out of our civil circumference of governance and politics after the death of the military commander of black goggles, called Sani Abacha.

Of course, earlier on, the gap-toothed one, whom he succeeded had been forced to step aside on account of his invented political prophylaxis, which he himself realised well and much too late, and to his chagrin, had nothing prophylactic about it. Yet our hindsight of sagacious mien can now acclaim and proclaim from its safe haven that we should have allowed General Abdulsalam Abubakar, who succeeded Nigeria’s military and political history’s monstrous one to tarry a-while, before unleashing on us the type of democracy we never truly wanted or bargained for. Have you ever encountered a demon lover? These demon democrats are worse than demon love.

The question will forever be asked: Why did General Abubakar give us these men and women, these male and female politicians running and ruining our country and our lives? Only the General, our last military Head of State, can truthfully answer the question. He may not enjoy the question as he is certainly not enjoying Nigeria now. He must be regretting his foisting on us the pestilence, pestilentially bringing to ruin all we hold dearly and value highly. In his quiet moment and in his sanctum sanctorum, he must be asking and wondering thus: “Is this the country I am going to leave for my children and grand-children?

The happenings in the land, since Chief Obasanjo and company entered the arena of civil politics, were they what we thought when we gave them democratic power, democratic authority, democratic government? If our last military Head of State is not regretfully asking these questions, we may not be creative enough in our astonished state to call him a name that he must rightly be called. Perhaps we should use this medium to ask him openly to answer these questions openly. And we should go ahead to ask him why he has remained criminally taciturn despite the uniquely negative pain, discomfort and anxiety his grand scheme is causing us all. Or has he been caught with his own petard, which he hoisted? Is he now a prisoner of his own snare? Answer, General, answer! Talk, General, talk! Exhibit your integrity and utter for us genuine democratic statement that would help to save burning Nigeria from the clutches of her demonautocrats. Or, do we soon call you by your rightful name, once our astonishment loses its grip on us?

Fourteen long years must be too long now for further quiet from our General’s end.

?We must remark here from the foregoing, that the true identity of our current democracy is not of us as a people who are blessed by God to be wise enough to have leaders who are to be our guiding light. We must shed the mystery of mis-governance, demon governance and utter and inveterate rudderlessness and propellerlessness in the ship of Nigeria. No matter what generation we belong to, no matter what social class we come from, no matter our ethnical affiliation, we must accept now and henceforth that only the best is good and must be good for Nigeria. Unless we all affirm, acclaim, proclaim this spirit now, we shall continually grope in darkness from Sapele to Sokoto, from Warri to Maiduguri, from Port Harcourt to Potiskum, from Otuoke to Oturkpo, from Abeokuta to Abiugborodo, thence to any where in Adamawa, from somewhere to nowhere and from nowhere to nowhere in Lagos to Lokoja or from Ibadan to Bida or from Enugu to Misau. This will be our undoing, and we will forever lament as we eternally give thought to the “Best president Nigeria never had.” But we must say a big no, a capital NO, to this thought and expect now the best president Nigeria has ever produced, no matter where he/she comes from in this our Nigeria that must be one and indivisible Nigeria.

May this “Democracy Time” enrich our thought in this direction, as we trust in God, Christ and Allah and all the mighty forces in creation to lead us to our destiny and the destiny of our country dear. We wait for this to happen once and for eternal time in the healthy life of our fatherland and motherland. Nigeria, we hail thee as cleansing now comes to thee – at last. True democracy at last. I see it. I smell it. I feel it. If you disagree with our logic, you must be one of the political vampires and cannibals in the land or one of the monstrous and satanic supporters of the political demonologists who are harbingers and creators of crushingly satanic and satanically crushing mediocrities in the land.

Am I mercilessly hard, or, too far gone, in my condemnation of the horrible selectocracy called democracy in this our fabulously and famously and at the same time notoriously and evilly rich country? If you habour this thought, then I must urge you to conjure your cogent thoughts for us to interrogate. Ponder, O dear disagreeable debater we must ever disagree with!