Calling APC to repentance

As he turned 60, John Kayode Fayemi, former two separate term-governor of Ekiti State and former minister, seems to be in a mood for confession. He may possibly, be ready too, for recitation of act of contrition. He would probably have gone on with his plea, right away, but for the fact that the sins in focus are not his alone. It is a class offense. That, is where the problem starts.

If Fayemi had sinned alone, he probably would have declared mea culpa and go home feeling better.

After what has been an eventful, beneficial, not too long a career in politics, so far, the former governor appears to have problem with the character and bearing of the group he belongs to. Indeed, he seems to have found something unbearably miasmatic in the political environment he has inhabited. He thinks it is time to say sorry.

It seems, from indications, that Fayemi is resolved to chart a different course from the company he has kept in the last decade, in the fold of All Progressives Congress (APC). Only such departure can account for his recent public recommendation that APC should tender apology to Nigerians, for failed promises and concomitant failures of the party. But for old times’ sake, Fayemi, surely, would have gone further to use the appropriate words for the wrong doings he firmly believes should be apologized for. He would certainly, have talked of betrayal, obtaining by false pretence and visitation of unprecedented calamity on a people by his party.

APC, is, of course, too hardened to consider such contrition as the spirit has moved Fayemi to recommend. Disposition to remorsefulness is not part of APC’s DNA. In any case, as far as the party is concerned, Nigeria is still standing. Until the country fully caves in, the party’s apparatchik and propagandists believe that all is well. They never stop proudly declaring to themselves anyway, and to the rest of their hapless compatriots, that the fruit of their hard work will soon mature. The key word in their promises is always “soon”. This has become worse than the classical economist’s phrase, “in the long run”, with its morbid import.

Then again, the traffic into the party from stranded, hunger-driven, ever-wandering prospectors in the political field, has picked up remarkably. For the party, therefore, if Fayemi has elected to distance himself from the brotherhood, that is his business.

Fayemi’s public call that APC should apologise to Nigerians for betrayal or what he prefers to call failed promises, can only come from a repentant sinner. But is he truly repentant? Time will tell.

It is pertinent to note,though, that Kayode Fayemi is still a politician. Species in the ecosystem he inhabits, mutate and shift, according to change in temperature and weather. Who could have believed, for instance, that Nasir el Rufai would be found preaching humility and the need for mutual respect and accommodation, at this point in time? If care is not taken, el Rufai may soon take his new missionary message of global brotherhood to Southern Kaduna. What two odd years in the wilderness can do! That is another story,for another day.

Does APC owe Nigerians apology? The answer is an emphatic yes. The validity of the answer is eternal. The greater value in Fayemi’s uncommon call is not so much with who made the call, as with the need for the action he recommends.It is an equivalent of a call for a truth Commission,in the wake of the rape of a country. Someday, for sure, when the intoxication of extant powers must have worn out and many have dismantled from their high horse, such call as Fayemi has made for contrition and apology, for grave injustice done to a country, by some of its citizens, will gain more traction. It may be a day of reckoning, too.

The sharp decline of the Nigerian state in the last ten years, under the watch of APC, goes beyond what politics ordains. The devastation is unprecedented. An army of occupation cannot do greater damage.

Across the world today, from north America and Europe to all countries of Australasia, Nigerian citizens have continued to empty out, fleeing their country. For many Nigerians, it is anywhere but home. Doctors have gone in their numbers,leaving hospitals bare. Nurses have gone. Teachers, gone. Scientists, gone. Artisans, too. Almost all major multi-national industries with recognisable global brands, have fled the country.

And yet the APC government insists it is attracting foreign investments. The common lie is that so many memoranda of understanding have been signed and the investors are coming in,or about to. The result,they say, will be manifest. Soon!

Is there any law saying that the said newly won foreign investors must not operate alongside the ones that have been the bedrock of Nigeria’s economy over the decades and centuries?

President Donald Trump’s quirky policy in USA has thrown up new tension that exposes the failure of countries and governments,far away from his country. Twenty years back, fifteen years back, would any Nigerian have felt as if the world was collapsing on him, if he was asked to leave USA and go home? That, now is not the case.

Where are Nigerians not heading to these days? Libya. Lithuania. Sudan. Mozambique. Some to the folkloric realms of the Eskimos. Just to escape Nigeria.

Everything that is terrible, APC has done to Nigeria. Till date,nobody has repudiated the information, released few years ago, again, by an erstwhile chieftain of the party, that the stage for the current consuming terrorism in the country was set about ten years ago, when APC chieftains imported mercenaries from across the Sahel, prior to the 2015 election. What was the purpose? To cause mayhem across the land, if they lost the election. They won the election, but infested Nigeria with a mortal wound. There are damages apology cannot atone for.

Is it the total ruination of the economy? An economy that was, not too long ago, buoyant enough to have ticked many positive marks in the United Nations human development index. Reversals in the health sector, the new scourge of malnutrition and the total undermining of critical institutions of the state have become legacies in ruin. Apologies cannot be enough.

This was the same party that externalized internal electoral contest, when barely a year after its formation, it went out to strike an unholy accord with the Kenya-sired president of United States of America, to directly determine the outcome of a national election. Barack Obama was reported, some time ago,to have expressed regret over his role in destroying Libya. He still has more regrets to express.

Kayode Fayemi may have underestimated the extent of the damage to Nigeria and Nigerians, for which he asked for repentance from APC.

Whatever his motive, genuine or contrived, in service of a new political enterprise, hecput his hand on a noble plow. There is guarantee he cannot turn back. The reality,however, is that Nigerians need much more than what Fayemi has called for. Apologies may be apposite, but of immediate and urgent importance is for APC government of the day, to stop on the trajectory it is charting, if it can. The slide has become too sharp and too dangerous. 2027 may yet be too distant, even as it seems nearby. The Titanic has become more than a parable with grave message in human history.