It is democracy by fiat, fuelled by guns, bombs, machetes. We have seen it in the past two weeks in all the states. In Sapele, we read of gunmen shattering the calm election queue by a rat-tat-tat of guns.
call it election but rather than vote, we tote AK 47. Before that, there were campaigns, rallies, posters, songs and dances, party names and emblems, rhetoric and barnstorming. Azonto, shaku shaku, et al. It swings from a fanfare to a fair of death and rancour. It ends not as democracy, but impunity. It is comedy if we remove the blood. A comedy in which we are afraid to laugh.
These politicians in the Niger Delta want it for personal, group interest, to ransack and flog the region to its knees and cart away the resources. Voters scampered away, a few fell and died, blood coloured the pristine sand, screams upturned the morning air. Ballot boxes were destroyed and the instruments of power mingled with blood and sand.
They see violence the way the ritualist sees it. In the shrine, the priest takes the goat or the cow, or the ram, and slaughters. The blood gushes out. The gore, too. The priests and others glow to the triumph. If it means fertility, then the child has come. If it means wealth, it means money will adorn every effort or lack of effort. If it is gunning down your enemy, your foe has fallen. You are triumphant. The ritual is a prophecy of victory. It is testimony in itself.
It makes one shudder about the region. What calibre of governors and legislators would have represented the people if the brigands did not take over the cathedral? We shall never know. When we have senators without theories, or governors without vision, or commissioners with the gift only to toady up to the master, then the region is doomed. Militancy has been blamed for this, including the roars of the Itsekiri-Ijaw hostilities. When they downed the bullets and guns of hate, they did not drown.
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