YES, it stands out like a sore thumb-and really it is a sore thumb whose exquisite pain throbs and refuses, in all its carbuncular virulence, to go – that is June 12 for you.
It comes just like any other date in the nation's politically seismic calendar, once in a year, but just that once it opens up a can of writhing ghost worms which stink to the high heavens, and remind us poignantly of our incompatibility with, and aversion to, honesty, decency and indeed law and order, as a nation.
Yes, our military ignoramuses, claiming to be geniuses, have succeeded in snuffing life out of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola of blessed memory, the kindest and most generous Nigerian that ever walked this earth , but they have failed woefully to erase what he symbolised.
As we are faced inevitably with the stark reality of our corporate failure and antipathy to stand up for noble endeavours, let our moral castration debouch into introspection and stocktaking, at least of our darkening political landscape and indeed the active inertia of the littoral mafia holding the nation captive audience to its ethnocentric drumbeats and vocal monody.
First and foremost , why do we as a nation continue to use mediocres for sensitive national assignments when there are competent technocrats whose skill would assure excellence and continuity? For instance, in all the elections Nigeria has had the fortune or misfortune of organising, none has equalled that of Professor Humprey Nwosu in being free and fair.
But when there was the need for another, one would have thought that he would be the automatic choice. However, President Goodluck Jonathan did an about-turn, having understudied his mentor, the sassy General, and appointed just another professor, not the particular one who has had a track-record.
That simply translated to intellectual mediocrity of the first water. I hasten to add that I am not entirely accrediting Nwosu, either. Yes it is true that he organised a perfectly credible and by that fact laudable election, but he tainted his integrity with cowardice, for he did not stand up to the one who brazenly nullified the election. Intellectuals are supposed to evince both integrity and boldness.
Another culpable culprit frustrating credibility and transparency in our elections, and indeed our entire democratic socialisation, is the Ota General who stood history and logic on their heads by foisting on us May 29 instead of June 12 just because he was too petty to give credit to whom it was due. Let us all call this man's bluff and right the wrongs which he has personally initiated in our polity.
Does it show socio-psychological intelligence that we have allowed a discredited power broker to superimpose his own absurd petty vindictiveness over a national apprehension and reality? Could someone convince me that the day Nigeria initiated this bastardized and corrupt democracy is more important than when the whole nation put sentiments aside and voted massively for progress?
If the answer is an emphatic no, let us make bold to reclaim our integrity and corporate intelligence. How could we have apotheosized this petty jealousy over rectitude and documented history? That is the millionaire question.
And what, if we may ask, is the Nigerian Legislature doing to sanitise our undemocratic propensities and sustain the rule of law? Pretty little or nothing at all, if you ask me. The fact is that our National Assembly is tarred and speckled by the sinuous serpents of not only sun-burnt ignorance but also caterwauling greed, selfishness and opportunism.
When our ''wise men" are not busy legislating heaven-bound allowances, bonuses and perks for themselves and recycling same for their generations yet unborn, they are browbeating the nation, demanding that the detail of their remunerations be cloaked in musty-smelling secrecy. It is an open secret that their pay packets are so fat that they are believably richer than Arab oil sheiks.
As a result, the lard of fat has so shrouded them that when ''Lord" Jonathan brought the emergency rule bill which invested him with absolute power, none of them was alert enough to decode the gambit. And all these in a ''democratic" dispensation.
When it was a time for them to pass into law jail terms for corruption they dissimulated, can you imagine?
And the Judiciary? The much-vaunted hope of the common man. Not particularly better either. if a particular High Court judge could say that padding the voters register with fictitious names was a pre-election issue-even if it is illegal and proved- and another merely fined a high –ranking thief of N22 billion less than a million naira, the point is already made.
And the President himself? What has he done, or not done to redress the wrongs of yester years? Again, pretty little or nothing. In fact , the man has ''ported", to use a new technical cant. If you had been taken in by his ''fresh breath" symbolism at the beginning, you have been gulled and I blame you. If there is any symbolism relevant to what his government has done to the ordinary Nigerian, I can swear to an affidavit , that it is that of a ''browning twig".
To be sure, the harmless avuncular man-next-door image of the past has given way to that of a tyrant of the typical banana republic, replete with attack dogs and sycophants in the manner of Napoleon in Arthur Blair's Animal Farm. That is the dramatic sublime irony.
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