The Tale of Two Generals

It wasn’t too long ago that I joined forces with a few friends to launch the website www.againstbabangida.com. At that point, it was the general’s mercenary forces that were working feverishly on his behalf, flying his ugly kite. Perhaps they would remain grateful to him for the rest of their lives, for they all have benefited one way or the other from his largesse, originally confiscated from us. The general, in his time, has made a few people very rich. Those people are still beholden to him, and they wish him back in the saddle. It is now left for people of goodwill to stand up and chant with one voice, “NO, not again.” Never again this noise-some pestilence in our land.

I won’t be one to ask the general about what he forgot at Aso Rock that he wants back. As far as I’m concerned, he should not go around that place at all. If there was ever a time to ask the mobile policemen to “shoot at sight,” this is it. His shadow should be shot anywhere around the seat of government. Let’s banish him from the palace and hunt his pedigree to the furthermost region of the earth.

In a proper society, one like him would already be in jail, atoning for his past actions. But ours is really not a proper society, all pretensions to propriety notwithstanding. A country where “anything goes” is just a place for the mindless dispossession of many. This dispossession usually takes many shapes, but it is rooted in the failure of the state and the dehumanization of her citizens. Ordinary people are left with empty hands, pleading to God to intervene in this case, as in the divine erasure of the goggled dictator.

The bastardized constitution of Nigeria may have permitted anyone the right to vote and be voted for, but for the general that has banned, un-banned, and re-banned unfavoured and dis-favoured politicians in the past, he should be in a category of “Never again” all by himself. And for those who are canvassing for him, as if they never lived in this land when we were all alive to his windy ways, I would like to recommend a form of “the Singapore treatment.” In other words, they should all be flogged publicly as an example of what not to do, and who not to be associated with! Our parents did that when we were younger, teaching us that evil communication would always corrupt good manners. We could either easily listen and obey their instruction or be forced to obey because we really had no choice: You never associate with questionable individuals.

Criminals are flogged in Singapore. Supporting this kamikaze general borders on criminality. Criminals who are caned in Singapore are strapped to a wooden frame and lashed across the bare buttocks with a long rattan stick. I was just thinking that we could mete the same treatment on all the general’s campaigners who are nauseating us to no end with the hue and cry of the evil genius’s inordinate ambition to rule us again. That man should rule over a bunch of locusts until they all consume one another. That man should rule over a bunch of cocks, until they finish eating each other’s intestines. That man should rule over a colony of brambles, those tall, leafless trees without brains. For it is only those that are without brains that would wholeheartedly support and actively campaign for a self-confessed evil genius for a second chance at the trough. Why cast your pearl before a swine? Only those who have collective amnesia will condone the re-stepping of the ingenious ravager to re-sabotage our collective existence.

Or are those supporters and campaigners human at all? Even mice can feel each other’s pain. A bunch of Canadian researchers concluded this recently as they reported their experiment in a reputable journal of science. They injected some rodents with acid to make them writhe in pain while their cage-mates looked on. These researchers then discovered that the uninjected and uninfected mice were feeling and behaving the same way like the injected ones. But the marauraders of our dreams don’t feel our pain as much as they can make their gains. They are like cockroaches, full of germs and very useless to normal human beings. Cockroaches have changed very little in their 400 million years on earth, says another Canadian researcher. Let’s curse all the political cockroaches, and then soak them in kerosene. Sorry, kerosene is now very expensive, and nothing to play with if that’s what stands between you and cooking what to eat. I wonder how people survive with the use of kerosene, sometimes diluted. God is doing overtime in Nigeria, keeping the ordinary people safe in spite of everything stacked against them.

However, there is something I should commend the general for, if indeed he really worked against the sitting ex-general in his own bid to perpetuate himself in office. We don’t need tin gods in this land, thank you, even if that single human person arrogates to himself the ability to solve all our problems in spite of the inconsistencies of his actions and policies. There is a season and a time for all things. If the last seven years was not enough to make good on your promises, the next fourteen years can never help you. Some people suspended their beliefs and gave you their goodwill, hoping you could make a difference, and we thought you did make some. But thinking that you alone could make a difference borders on insulting us. Your time is up and you must go back home now. Pack your bags or whatever contraptions you came in with, and leave.