From a Facebook Post
For over one year now, everyone in Kaduna had been talking about the huge potholes in the terribly bad roads, the lack of infrastructural developments, the sack and looming sack of civil servants, the dilapidating state of public utilities and social amenities, the very visible absence of government presence in the State, the flamboyance of the government in the midst of the unprecedented abject poverty of the masses, the terrible dysfunction of public service and our anxiousness for 2019 to come so that we could change our plight at the polls. We were all – rich and poor, male and female, Muslims and Christians, We and Them – we were all discussing ISSUES of mutual concern. Pronto, at the eve of 2019, our common adversary, the devil, threw an apple of discord into our assembly of the people. Suddenly, our subject of discussion changed from bad road to ‘Them versus Us’, from the misery of civil servants to ‘Them versus Us’, from the hard times we all face to ‘Them versus Us’, from the flagrant disobedience of court orders to ‘Them versus Us’, from the insecurity and rampant incidences of kidnapping to ‘Them versus Us’, from gross disrespect for traditional institutions and religious establishments to ‘Them versus Us’, from the absence of any visible achievement to ‘Them versus Us’, from looking forward to 2019 to ‘Them versus Us’.
We’ve suddenly stopped discussing ISSUES. We’ve begun aligning with primordial IDENTITIES. We’ve stopped lamenting about the woeful failure of the government. We’ve started celebrating successes of ‘We Against Them’. The devil is happy, pretending to be a peace-maker in the day while fanning the embers of ethno-religious strife at night. The devil talks peace to the whole world in English, castigates Them in vernacular and incites US against Them in creole. The world only hears his sermon in English; We and Them take his poison in vernacular; but only the very few WE among us get his true intention in creole.
While we kill and maim, while we burn and loot while we hate and are hated, the devil rides in a Prado, smirking and waving at us, with more apples of discord in his bossom, waiting to fling more apples at us if we dare remember our miseries and decide to converge to confront him, our mutual misfortune. With a few more apples, with a few more months to 2019, the devil plans to pitch Us against Them and take the spoils of war at the polls.
In Kaduna, the devil rides safely and gleefully in a Prado into 2019 – on the blood that was in US and in Them!
▪ This post from late last year was sent to www.everyday.ng this week to explain the double-facedness of politicians.