The Silly Season Of Bolekaja Presidents

By Dan Abubakar

The clown car is continuing its journey to nowhere revealing more characters just in for a ride but who are having us believe they are in contention to be president of a country in mortal danger of dissolution in chaos.

The situation is not funny at all even if you make allowance for the fact that this is the silly season of politics when all sorts of characters bop up and by their talk and their posturing seem intent on being taken seriously.

One of the latest entrants is Labour Minister Chris Ngige under whose watch ASUU is more on strike than not, putting the future of millions of youth in jeopardy . What is he going to tell people is the reason for his wanting to be president? To fulfill a divine mandate conferred by the Okija shrine? To abolish ASUU and abolish University education? To be referred to, a short time time from now, as a one time ‘presidential aspirant’ as many of his fellow entrants obviously crave?

The public – the number that pays any attention,  that is – had scarcely taken this in when a photograph appeared in the press and social media of another entrant – Transport Minister, Rotimi Amaechi – paying what appears to be a courtesy call on the  chairman of the APC, the newly, politically, resurrected Abdullahi Adamu with heavy Ghana-Must- Go bags framing their background.

No marks for guessing what is in those bags. But don’t be surprised if tomorrow you are told a printer had just delivered fresh party registration forms!

We are in that season, of course  when you have to constantly prick yourself for the assurance that you are still alive, that what you see happening around you is actually happening and are not episodes of a particularly ghastly horror movie.

We are in a season when corruption is no longer a crime but a fad such that only fools get caught. And  so what if they are?

They can procure ready instruction from Orji Kalu, another presidential hopeful (oh help us God!) on how to trigger  judicial acrobatics that cause you  to laugh all the way out of jail or the court house. But of course there is always the option of a presidential pardon as Dariye and Nyame have just testified.

The clown car hurtles on.

Can you beat the antics of the fellow who is accused of helping to turn his state into a killing field but who now got himself tied to a stake in a reprise of the crucifixion, with the message that he was offering himself as a living sacrifice for Nigeria’s salvation? One wag has since quipped that those who had him on the cross could have done the country and especially his state a huge favour had  they used actual stakes!

And what about Ayo Fayose, ‘the stomach infrastructure original’, fresh from declaring he was also in the race, helping himself to mounds of amala at a popular buka in Abuja. It was as if he was trying to fatten himself up for combat, the type Lagosians would recognise as the forte of motor park touts and bus conductors who thanks to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu have become a major force in politics such that obeisance has to be paid to M.C Oluomo their head honcho.

This season of course began with presidential aspirants all across the country being begged by their multitude of supporters to volunteer to save Nigeria. These supporters who majorly contribute to Nigeria’s poverty index soon managed to pony up the millions needed to buy the presidential application forms for their idols to signal how serious they were.  Such aspirants could truly say that they were only responding to the yearnings of millions of Nigerians as expressed by their supporters.

Support is also expressed by one or two characters sending forth  a press release or holding a press conference and claiming to speak for bodies with lugubrious titles like Northern Youth Vanguard, Oduduwa Salvation Front, Movement to Actualize Igbo Presidency. Those names are actually made up but you get the drift.

If we had better organized political parties, that stand for something, it is doubtful if most of these so-called presidential aspirants would have had the gumption to inflict themselves on us and engage in this noise pollution.

Serious parties would even now sift the long list of candidates and quietly ask most to drop off so as to preserve some integrity for the political process and allow us to concentrate on examining the credentials of more credible candidates like Vice President Yemi Osinbajo of the APC and Peter Obi of the PDP.

But in a situation where Ghana Must Go bags rule, with the latest game in town being declaring that you want to run for president, the clown car will soon have to make way for a trailer.

Abubakar, a Political Analyst, wrote from Abuja