By Festus Adedayo
Is there morality in politics? Or, should there be morality in politics? Governors of Akwa-Ibom and Delta States, Umo Eno, Sheriff Oborevwori and ex-governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa, are of the opinion that there isn’t. Or, there shouldn’t be. They made this known last week in epistles that should be fittingly entitled, “An ode to betrayal and betrayers”. Like blabbering kid thieves caught stealing from a pot of soup, Eno and Okowa waffled pitifully, in a manner that beggars belief, on why they abandoned/abandoning the PDP, a faithful political kin, which threw them up from obscurity to prominence and redoubtable wealth. They seem to be oblivious of Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Macquarie University, Australia, Julie Fitness’ quip in her “Betrayal, Rejection, Revenge, and Forgiveness: An Interpersonal Script Approach” that, “Throughout recorded human history, treachery and betrayal have been considered among the very worst offences people could commit against their kith and kin”.
When the discourse is about betrayal and betrayers, my people walk a profound path. They recourse to an allegory which carves an imperishable place of pride for a faithful animal, the pigeon, Ẹyẹlé. With this, they paint the distastefulness and horrid colour of betrayal. In the ode to this evergreen bird, they hold aloft her fidelity to an unwritten bond of friendship. So, my people say, the Ẹyẹlé, which daily eats and drinks from the House Owner in time of plenty, will not break that bond even when the House Owner faces life’s existential travails. Unlike the Ẹyẹlé, Eno, Oborevwori and Okowa would seem to have chosen political harlotry for which Nigerian politics/politicians are known and are so audacious enough to flaunt it in the people’s face.
Political Iscariotism has become a punishing phenomenon in Nigerian politics. On a national television last week, former PDP presidential running mate, Okowa sought all manner of ways to legitimize why a pigeon should abandon the House Owner in his autumn, hi moment of decline. Asked what he found in the pot of soup that made him cup his hand suggestively, Okowa said the move was in the best interest of Delta State, “the need for us to connect to Abuja, that goodwill… that resource that’s in Abuja of which Delta State is a large contributor.” For once, forget this oesophagus politics of “connect”, one of Okowa’s lines of defence for his adulterous political acrobatics was that ex-Senate President, Bukola Saraki, had earlier trodden same path, a case of my adultery is lesser than yours, if you like.
In the same way, Pastor Umo Eno, governor of a state whose successive governments have repeatedly mouthed their wedge to PDP as “the state’s religion”, found ideology as the 30 shekels to collect for betraying the PDP and his people. He found a troubling anecdote to tell about a traveler and two airlines for a reinforcement of his blabbering thesis. At a Town Hall meeting held for the Ukanafun Federal Constituency last Tuesday, speaking in Ibiobio, Eno put his duplicity in perspective: “You are about to board a flight to Lagos from Uyo, and you see Air Peace and Ibom Air. Ibom Air develops faults while trying to take off and disembark its passengers. But Air Peace is ready to fly to Lagos, would you cancel your flight to Lagos because you do not want to use Air Peace and wait till Ibom Air is fixed before you travel to Lagos? Would you do that?” the Political Iscariot asked the crowd. In replying his own rhetorical question, Eno came across as seeing politics as indistinguishable from prostitution. He said” “Board a flight, disregard the name of the plane. Go to Lagos if you have business you want to do. When Ibom Air is fixed, and you want to fly another day, you can fly with them. But if you have an important business, board the available plane and fly.” Apparently seeing the need to reify his betrayal epistemology, Eno thereafter appeared on a radio station programme where he attempted to demonize ideology in Nigerian politics.
The bible, which Eno reads, is very profound in telling the story of betrayers and betrayal. Bible scholars say in that holy book are 50 verses about betrayal. It runs from the story of the patron-saint of betrayal, Judas Iscariot, Delilah and the Philistines, David’s betrayal of Saul, the Absalom story and repeated pronouncements like “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise up against parents…” If the bible were to be re-written today, with Eno’s betrayal in mind, his unkind cut of betrayal of a party that brought him from obscurity to limelight would make the 51st story of betrayal.
Traditional African society abhors betrayal and perceived betrayers as lepers. In an ancient aphorism, my people ask that the tree that is leaned upon for support should be magnanimous enough to warn one off if it would suffer a fall. Modern relations also scoff at these twin leprosies. Dragos Avandanei, writing in “Literature’s Loyalty to Betrayal” (2018) plotted the graph of how, in ancient and modern literature, writers have always engaged the concept of betrayal and see betrayers as scoundrels. Citing Karin Altenberg’s quip which says that “Betrayal seeps through literature like a dark stain…” in his Top 10 Books About Betrayal, (2015) Avandanei submitted that, “betrayal (has been) a fundamental theme or motif in literature—literature in general, from the first known such work, Gilgamesh, through Greek and Roman mythology, fairy tales and folk tales, medieval romances, Dante, Cervantes and Shakespeare, to Goethe, Tolstoy and Joyce, to Anne Sexton and Philip Levine.”
Literature, continues Avandanei, is riddled with thematic occupation of betrayal and its synonyms like “treason, treachery, deceit, dishonesty, duplicity, perfidy, infidelity, crime, trickery, cheat, hypocrisy, cunning, backstabbing, conspiracy, disloyalty,” more than literature has ever dealt with themes of betrayal’s positive antonyms like “trust, loyalty, honesty, truthfulness, devotion, fidelity, innocence, friendship and the rest.” Greek literature is pockmarked by betrayals at every turn. You had Aeneas betray Dido, Clytemnestra betrays Agamemnon and Ephialtes betrays the Spartan in how he helped the Persians at the battle of Thermophylae. In The Epic of Gilgamesh for instance, which has come to be known as a great work of literature, a story of the god-hero of Uruk, Mesopotamia, we learn the importance of loyalty and friendship as depicted by Gilgamesh and Enkidu, as well as consequences for violating implicit trust. This was revealed in Hierodule’s seduction of Enkidu or Gilgamesh’s betrayal of the goddess of love, Ishtar. In virtually all Shakespeare’s books, themes of betrayal are eminent in them as he examined tragedies that come from betrayals.
Whether in literature, politics or everyday life, betrayal provides no variation. Betrayal signifies the breaking or violation of presumptive contract, trust or confidence. This break produces moral and psychological conflict in a relationship. It could be between organizations, individuals or vice versa, but its common denominator is that, support is rendered to a rival group, in violation of support for the previous. Whatever sphere it is recorded, betrayal results in extreme social distress and disrupts established mental model. Betrayal also ruptures trust and contaminates relationships.
But politicians, trying to be clever by half, say that in politics, unlike literature or our everyday relations, betrayal isn’t an anomaly but the water with which they bathe. To escape from the damnation awaiting betrayals, they make a distinction between betrayal and what is called “political compromise.” Politics, they say, is an art of compromise, give-and-take, if you like. In the end, politicians leave us with a paradox, especially in their saying that, what is politically expedient, though may not be morally admirable, is not immoral. With this, Nigerian politicians have drawn a different world for themselves, a world where there are no standards of political excellence, while leaving us to idealize political integrity as Utopian. That is why in Nigerian politics, loyalty to a cause is as scarce as a hen’s teeth and loyal politicians as rare as snakes in Ireland. Against what Angadipuram Appadorai taught us in his Substance of Politics (1968), Nigerian politicians have redefined moral integrity as different from political integrity.
However, while political Iscariotism of the kind of Umo, Oborevwori and Okowa is selfish, self-serving and greed-propelled, the ones of pre-independence Nigeria was ideological. The first documented case of cross-carpeting, or “decamping,” a Nigerian word for switching of political party allegiance, was recorded in 1941. It was at the feisty contest for a vacant seat in Nigeria’s Legislative Council vacated by Dr. K.A. Abayomi. The contest pitted Ernest Ikoli, an Ijaw, against Samuel Akisanya, with the former emerging victorious, though Akisanya polled 108 votes as against Ikoli’s 60 votes. This incensed the Eastern and Southern supporters of Akisanya and especially his Ijebu Yoruba kin who, in 1941, pulled out of the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM) Nigeria’s first genuine nationalist organization founded in 1934, in protest against the announced victory of Okoli. Nnamdi Azikiwe was one of them, who left NYM to join forces with Herbert Macaulay in forming the NCNC.
The second case of decamping happened in 1951. With Nnamdi Azikiwe of the NCNC ostensibly coasting home to victory, having won 42 out of 80 seats to produce the highest number of members in the Western Regional House of Assembly, the Action Group infiltrated Azikiwe party members and succeeded in securing their decamping. Within 24 hours, 20 NCNC members decamped to the AG, ultimately halting Azikiwe’s majority needed to become Premier and giving the AG enough membership leverage to secure majority in the parliament.
Another very epochal case of decamping happened during the First Republic. As a result of the political tiff within the AG, the Western Region Premier, Chief Ladoke Akintola, and his rump of party faithful moved over to form the United Progressive Party, (UPP) which later formed an alliance with the NCNC to become the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP). In the same vein, a political clash between Azikiwe and Dr. Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe also resulted in Mbadiwe breaking away from the NCNC to form the Democratic Party of Nigeria Citizens (DPNC).
In the short-lived Second Republic of 1979 to 1983, a gale of political defections also occurred. The most epochal of them was the shifting of alliance from the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) to the to the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) by Ondo State Deputy Governor, Chief Akin Omobioriowo with allies like Olaiya Fagbamigbe. The other was that of Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, governor of Kano State. Elected on the platform the Peoples Redemption Party, (PRP) Rimi was bold, courageous and never shied away from upsetting established orthodoxies. He formed the first “All Graduates Cabinet” comprising the likes of Alhaji Sule Yahaya Hamma. He was credited with abolishing the personal tax called haraji and cattle tax, jangali which were inherited colonial taxes. He also suspended the Emir of Kano, a decision that led to the Kano riots of July 1981 and the murder, on July 10, of his Political Advisor, Dr. Bala Mohammed Bauchi, and the burning of the Triumph Newspapers, Radio Kano, and several ministries.
Rimi however fell out with his political mentor, Mallam Aminu Kano in May 1983 and decamped from the PRP, under whose banner he became governor, to the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP) to contest the 1983 elections. As an underscore of the political morality obtainable at this time, Rimi resigned his position as Kano State governor since he was leaving the party under whose banner he vied for the governorship ticket and was subsequently replaced by his deputy, Abdu Dawakin Tofa.
But, progressively, the colour of virtuous politicking in Nigeria waned, leading to shameless harlotry as a political credo. Okowa, Oberevwori and Eno’s epistles on leaving their political parties were hollow, feckless and irritating. Even among sex workers who change partners at the dictate of their thirst for cash, there is honour.
Yes, today, the PDP, like the anecdote of Ẹyẹlé and the House Owner, is facing its most harrowing political time ever, due to mismanagement, greed and power recklessness. Like mortal man who never learns, the APC is embroiled in same hubris, relishing its own self-proclaimed power immortality. Virtually all the PDP Ẹyẹlé, who supped and dined with it at a time of plenty, have abandoned the House. One of them, a tempestuous and vile character, was even made the Sheriff of Abuja as his own 30 shekels of Silver payoff, in exchange for agreeing to be the undertaker and pallbearer of the party.
The dearth of ideology in Nigerian politics is reputed to be the culprit of the political vagrancy that is worn shamelessly by politicians on their lapels. Though when it catches their fancy, especially in their manifestos, Nigerian politicians revel in superficial classifications and inappropriate self-labeling of their political stands as “progressive” and “conservative”, and “left” and “right”, there are no ideological commitments in Nigerian politics. This is worsened by a chronic identity and money politics in Nigerian party politics, gross indiscipline, parochial and selfish politics, high turnover and mortality rate of political parties and their leaderships, as well as death of internal democracy. These are the identifiers and hallmarks of Nigerian politics. Yet, if we continue to be drowned by these ills and do not get party politics right, no meaningful development can be made in Nigeria. Not only are parties one of the most complex and critical institutions of democracy, many scholars have referred to them as “makers” of democracy. The sacral place political parties enjoy in the quest for democracy is such that some scholars claim that democracy and democratic societies’ existences are unthinkable without political parties.
As divorcees consistently blame individual spouses for their marital fatality, Eno and Okowa hold ideology responsible for their harlotry. However, central to the existence of political parties is the place of political ideology. Talking of its importance, Anson D. Morse (1896) argued that ideology is a durable conviction held in unison by party members, a bargaining chip for party unity, while Okudiba Nnoli (2003) describes it as a mirror with which a party looks at society. Ideology is a political party’s vehicle, its moral lens/mirror/compass with which it sees the outside world. It may sound scary but the truth is, we can never get Nigerian development right unless morality and ideology return to Nigerian politics.
You may disparage PDP as I do; you may not even be able to stand the cantankerous Labour Party as I cannot. The truth, however, is that, if Nigerian opposition parties do not get their acts together, we may be doomed to stagnation. We then will have more Enos, Oborevworis and Okowas whose politics is indistinguishable from prostituting, who invariable give the APC and its Leviathan opportunity to fertilize the ground for the building of a cult of personality. It is the first step towards a totalitarian state.