To my protest that politics was a calling and that real politicians are beginning to emerge that are not in it for the money, he got personal. Politics is a calling just like being a pastor is eh? You are a pastor; you set up a church just so you can make money. So you and your family can be rich. See, you have money just because you are a pastor. I assured my dear “egbon” that I was not going to apologise for being rich as he said, because since God, my father, owns everything, there can be nothing hindering my access to my heritage. I assured him that I had not set up a church and while it was true that there are pastors whose motivation might be material, it was wrong to say so of every pastor. Needless to say, we agreed to disagree...
I had two very interesting conversations during the past week, both politicians and both members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The first was with an “egbon” who says he’s an elected ex-officio member of the party’s Lagos executive. It was an essentially good-natured exchange of banter among friends. I walked into it actually, as it had been before I stepped in.
By the reckoning of this “wise and wily” politician, Lagos was already in the can for the “largest party in Africa.” It doesn’t matter what any of the other parties, including the ruling Action Congress, do or fail to do, Lagos will fall and that will complete the stranglehold of the party on the South West of Nigeria. He had a supporter among the five or six debating party who even “bet his life” that it was going to happen exactly as said.
Now, how was it going to come about, I queried. And he said something like this: “the Fashola that the AC is banking upon will soon join us in the PDP. And that will be the end of AC in Lagos.” When I protested that Fashola was too principled to cross over to the party that Wole Soyinka famously described as having “a nest of killers” within, he launched into a lecture about the essential nature of politics in Nigeria. First he debunked the insinuation that there was any nest of killers in the party, saying that those who were killed over the years were killed by “their own People”. Although he admitted that he has two body guards who have been detailed to be around him even as a lower cadre official. Asked why that was necessary, he said it was to give job to the boys. Then, he spoke about how all that every politician wanted was money because politics was a “trade” from which every politician wants to profit financially and materially.
To my protest that politics was a calling and that real politicians are beginning to emerge that are not in it for the money, he got personal. Politics is a calling just like being a pastor is eh? You are a pastor; you set up a church just so you can make money. So you and your family can be rich. See, you have money just because you are a pastor. I assured my dear “egbon” that I was not going to apologise for being rich as he said, because since God, my father, owns everything, there can be nothing hindering my access to my heritage. I assured him that I had not set up a church and while it was true that there are pastors whose motivation might be material, it was wrong to say so of every pastor. Needless to say, we agreed to disagree as I left the venue of our unscheduled debate.
The other conversation was with a younger friend of mine. He is a born-again, spirit-filled child of God, a regular at events of the two ministries to men that I am involved with. He has this ambition of some day becoming the governor of Lagos State. So well known is his ambition that we all already hail him as Governor. I shall refrain from mentioning his name lest somebody within his party see him as a threat.
As we rode together from a child-naming service of one of our own, I asked him how things were shaping on the political front. And what he said about the coming election took me aback. According to him, the election was going to be rigged again, because in Africa, it is virtually impossible to conduct free and fair election. He even quoted ex-president Obasanjo position that not even the Lord Jesus could wrought the “miracle” of conducting a credible election in Nigeria to buttress his point without directly agreeing or disagreeing. His views on Lagos State and Fashola were uncannily similar to those of “egbon.” Lagos was going to fall to the PDP. Fashola does not have a choice but to join them if he wants a second term. As far as he was concerned, Fashola needs the PDP to run and win. The choices before him are that limited – he either runs on PDP ticket and win or run on any other platform including that of the Action Congress and lose. AC, he said, was already in disarray, with the boys they use (to rig elections) crossing over to the PDP in droves. And in any case, he said, voter apathy among the elite always guarantees that those who think their votes will not count will stay at home, leaving the field for “the boys”
Of course, I took him on. As a child of God, I told him, he had no business being in politics if he was sure there can be no end to the evil called rigging, wondering whether he would be available to do any dirty assignments for his party. Of course, he quickly assured me he would do no such thing. I wondered whether he still remembers the import of his confessions and asked how rigging can ever be ended if those who have the power of death and life in their tongues, continue to confess its inevitability. And on the subject of Fashola, I assured him as I did “egbon” that Fashola was unlikely to join the PDP and that if push comes to shove and he doesn’t get the Action Congress ticket, the one platform under which he was sure to lose was PDP. As an Independent candidate or in any other party, his victory was sure. This I anchored on the fact that there would be no voter apathy if Fashola runs and he would not want for foot-soldiers of the decent and honourable kind.
Let therefore the warning go out to those do-or-die politicians, Lagos will not be available to capture, whether Fashola runs or not. I feel constrained to repeat Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s admonition on the death of late President Yar’Adua, quoted here last time: “….One can only hope that, while mouthing sanctimonious platitudes such as “power belongs to God,” they have now learnt that the politics of Do-or-Die cannot guarantee who does and who dies. They must stop playing God…” Let him that has ears, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to Nigerians.
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