The resident Bishop of the Living Faith Church in Port Harcourt, Bishop Joseph Ebhohimen was fully in his elements on Sunday when he called out all Christians in the Church who have anything to do with politics for a special prayer. Quite a good number of officials, deacons and deaconesses, brothers and sisters trooped out to the alter to receive positive proclamations from the man of God. And the Bishop’s powerful decrees were in the areas of preventing the kind of death that would cause the Church to suddenly put her arms on the head in utter wailing, disappointment and shame. While asserting the neutrality of the Church in political matters, the prolific vibrancy of the holy icon was to ensure that no politician attempts to take the life of another under any guise and that anyone who receives the truth of his prayers from his or her heart would not be cut down from his or her destiny in Jesus Name; and the Church thundered a thirsty Amen. Politics in Nigeria has been tagged variously by numerous individuals and groups whose interpretations depend on their feelings and personal experiences and some times from the viewing positions of others. The simply impressionable perspective is that those who see politics as a profession are simply unemployed never do wells who have constituted themselves into willing tools for thuggery on the pay rolls of their dare devil masters waiting to loot our treasury after eliminating their fellow contenders.

I was exchanging views recently with old course mate who had always admired my guts in school politics and wished that I would one day achieve good political heights in Nigeria’s politics. I told him of my political tendency and my resolve to pursue the liberal democratic path as well as a legislative ambition. He simply waved in the air in taciturn and I thought, may be, he was unusually perturbed by my personal resolve. He was later to tell me that his grouse was with a political system that has become filthy and disgusting. According to him, “if Nigerians could be so desperate, wicked and cruel as to kill their brothers and colleagues all in the name of politics, then why do people like you bother to take any shot”.

I tried to convince my friend that politics is not all killing and assassination since they occur very sparingly and that some of them may not really be politically motivated, or rather that cases of armed robbery have been proven to be the reason behind the death of some of our politicians.

In fact I went as far as telling him that the police have been working hard to unravel the hands of Essau in what has turned to be a national calamity. But the mention of the police was like turning the table against me and that foreclosed our political discussion. The national question as presently mirrored by observers and analysts coheres on the bids by many to succeed those in office. And the road map of transition has been irascibly dogged with sterns of human trespasses and ignoble attitudes.  

At the presidential level, the blood of inordinate ambition has turned servants against their masters and those who were seen as loyal and capable of wearing the shoes of their “Ogas” have suddenly turned tigers and are now openly denigrading the policies they helped put in place. They have suddenly worn the toga of critics and public analysts. Chief Gani Fawehimi’s critical views of the nation’s performance over the years have not met their style of running over their own initiations because they have been tutored in the practice of pulling down everything in order to be noticed. It is only a fool that will let his house be taken over by a friend whose remarkable ingratitude has been noticed by all the other visitors.

The dimension of venomous criticisms of polices and programmes   of a particular class by a member of the same class for the purpose of securing lime light is crude and uncivilized. It is only reasonable that those seeking public office should consider it duty bound to publish the programmes they intend to usher into the system. It would then be left to the electorate (who have always been taken for granted) to discern and decipher the intentions of office seekers at the appropriate time.