As I stated repeatedly last week in this column, there is no necessary
and logical connection between the effective devaluation and deepening
fall in the exchange rate of our national currency, the naira, and the
apparent decreasing profile in the standing and credibility of our new
ruling party, the APC, as a progressive force for change. If for one
reason or the other, the world price of crude petroleum was to suddenly
begin to go up and up and up, the value of the naira would begin to
appreciate significantly. But this would not necessarily mean that the
standing of the ruling party as a force for progress and genuine
development would automatically also begin to improve. As a matter of
fact, we have seen this happen before during the reign of the former
ruling party, the PDP. During the sixteen-year period of its rule, we
went through one or two cycles of fall and rise in the world price of
oil and concomitant cycles of fall and rise, rise and fall in the value
of the naira. But this had absolutely no effect on the standing of the
PDP which, from day one to the end, absolutely never stopped in its fall
from grace and, eventually, power. Can and will the new ruling party
learn from this fate of the PDP? More importantly, what can we, the
Nigerian people and nation, learn from this and what must we do with the
lesson? In this postscript on last week’s piece in this column, I am
invoking the following parable of the worm as a speculative and
imaginative answer to these questions.
The worm provides us with one of nature’s most fascinating profiles of
consumption and self-reproduction. Because its digestive tract extends
through the entire length of its body, the worm consumes endlessly and
indiscriminately; the only things which it does not consume are
inorganic materials like discarded plastics and tin cans. But as far as
all organic materials are concerned, whether they are living or dead,
warm or cold, moist or dry, worms will consume them endlessly. Perhaps
the most gruesome thing about this omnivorous pattern of the consumption
habits of worms is the fact that sometimes, they take up residence
inside a living organism which they feed on until it dies, after which
the consumption enters into another round on the dead carcass of the
deceased host. If this profile is beginning to give the reader
intimations of a parable about the PDP when it was in office for sixteen
years, please note that this is indeed my intention.
True enough, Nigeria as a whole did not exactly “die” and provide the
putrefying body of the nation for the “worms” in the PDP leadership and
rank-and-file foot-soldiers to feed on, but we came close to that
macabre fate. Indeed, if you talk to the families of Nigerian soldiers
killed in the campaigns against the Boko Haram, I am sure that they will
tell you that to them, all those involved in Dasuki-gate that shared
the monies meant to procure weapons are human “worms” feeding on the
corpses of their loved ones. Thus, in the context of this week’s
postscript on last week’s piece, the question that arises is whether or
not the symbolic and metaphoric implications of this parable can be
extended to our new ruling party, the APC. To answer this particular
question, we must now move to perhaps the most fascinating thing of all
about worms as a metaphor for limitless predatory consumption in nature
and society, this being the myths and facts regarding the innate
capacities for self-production and self-regeneration of different
species of worms.
For centuries, it was widely believed that if you cut a worm into two,
each of the two halves would regenerate and become a new organism giving
rise to two new worms. But this was and is not exactly true of all
species of worms. For instance, take the case of the common earthworm
whose scientific name is lumbricusterrestis. If you slice it too close to the head (yes, worms have heads!) which is very near the swollen part of the worm known as the clitellum,
it will not regenerate and both halves will die. In other words, the
self-regeneration of the earthworm is limited by the fact that only on
the condition that you leave its head completely intact can it reproduce
when it is sliced into bits. The species of worms that will reproduce
and regenerate regardless of where you slice it and into how many parts
you cut is the so-called planarian flatworm, planaria torva.
This particular species in the family of worms is the ultimate in its
capacity for endless self-regeneration. For instance, if you slice off
just one-three hundredth (1/300) of its body part, that infinitely small
part will grow into a new flatworm that will retain all the memory of
the worm from which it was sliced! Let me state this clearly: the new
flatworm regenerated from just one-three hundredth of the old worm, will
have the full memory, not of all flatworms in general, but of the
particular flatworm from which it was sliced! In other words, and to
link this to consumption, the new flatworm will start consuming with all
the memory of what its “parent” flatworm was consuming!
I leave it to the reader to decide for herself or himself whether the APC is a lumbricus terrestis reproduction of the PDP or a planaria torvatransmogrification
of the former ruling party.There can be no question at all that it is
either one or the other, for as we all know, close to a half to
two-thirds of the leadership of the APC at one time or another in the
past belonged to the PDP. Above all else is the fact that the extremely
predatory consumption habits of the former ruling party have resurfaced
widely and deeply in the leadership ranks of the new ruling party. What
is still in doubt, what is still open to debate is whether or not the
APC will do what the PDP never managed to do in its sixteen years in
power and that is listen, actually listen, to the universal cry
at home and abroad against the unrestrained, free for all,
social-cannibalistic consumption that is without equal in the whole
world. Permit me to dwell very briefly on this point before returning to
the matter of whether the APC is an earthworm or a flatworm resurrection of the PDP.
For close to
about the last ten years of its sixteen years in office, the PDP was
relentlessly barraged by denunciations of the excessive greed in the
payment of salaries, emoluments and allowances to our public
officeholders, federal, state and local, with particular reference to
the legislators and state governors and deputy governors. Columnists
wrote endlessly on the matter, including this particular columnist.
Professional associations and civil society organizations protested
unceasingly. At one stage, some NGOs banded together and took the matter
to the courts, suing the National Assembly to reveal to the nation and
the world the “secrets” of just how much the legislators were being
paid. Significantly, the suit was filed under the Freedom of Information
Act (FoI) that the National Assembly itself had passed into law. The
case was won and the National Assembly was ordered to comply with its
own lawfully passed legislation. But it refused to comply and more or
less arrested the suit in endless court hearings based on appeals and
counter-motions. When one of the legislators, Dino Melaye, broke ranks
with his fellow legislators and tried to reveal the actual figures, he
was severely dealt with. At one point in this saga of the total refusal
of the PDP to listen to the cries for accountability, prudence and
frugality in the use of our national wealth, the former Governor of the
Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (now Emir of Kano) waded into the
fray and revealed the staggering sums the legislators were paying
themselves. For his “audacity” he was ordered to appear before the
lawmakers on pain of being charged with contempt of the “august”
legislative chambers. Sanusi duly obeyed the summons but held his ground
and spilled more beans on the iniquity, the shamelessness of the greed
of the legislators. Indeed, the matter made a spectacular appearance
internationally when, on July 15, 2013,The Economist published
a report which showed that Nigerian legislators were not only the
highest paid legislators in the whole world but that each Nigerian
legislator was receiving 116 times the GDP per person of the country. No
other country in the world came remotely close to this staggering
figure.
The leadership of the APC, like that of the PDP before it, is giving
every indication that it either cannot hear or will not listen to the
cries that this must stop, especially now that the naira is in a
freefall and there is crippling economic stagnation and great suffering
and hardship in the land. This brings us back to the parable of the
worm. Is the APC alumbricus terrestis reincarnation of the PDP or a planaria torvaregeneration
of the old ruling party? I admit that this parable is a satirical and
mildly playful imaginative rendering of a matter that is of life and
death urgency to the vast majority of Nigerians. My justification for
this is that satire and irony have their uses in times of great stress
and hardship in the experience of individuals and entire societies and
nations. Please think of the following grim fact, dear reader: there is
no great personal consequence for most of the leaders of the
PDP that the party is no longer in power and has perhaps gone into
permanent historical oblivion since most of them have their loot, their
billions of naira and millions of dollars. As we can see from what is
going on in the courts in the trials of the accused mega-looters, most
of them seem confident that with the help of an endlessly corrupted
criminal justice system, they are going to get away with their loot.
This raises this crucial question: are the bosses, the leaders of the
APC not thinking along these lines and are therefore not really bothered
whether or not they last in power beyond 2019? I mean, if you can make
as much as you can now, before 2019, what does it really matter whether your party is back in power after the 2019 elections?
Ultimately, the riddle of whether the leadership of the APC is metaphorically speaking a resurgent lumbricusterrestis or aplanariatorva of
the PDP is for the Nigerian people to figure out and take appropriate
action. For, is there really a choice between the worm which has limited
regeneration capacities and the one whose strategies and forms of
self-regeneration after a dismembering are endless? No, there isn’t; one
is just a more odious, more challenging version of the other. The real
challenge is to shake off all species of worms from our national body
politic.
No comments:
Post a Comment