by Ikhide Ikheloa
Many people have asked me my opinion of the change of baton between the PDP and the APC, that breakaway faction of the PDP. It should be obvious that I am not crying in my beer that Mr. Goodluck Jonathan is out of Aso Rock, he was not fit to be president of Nigeria, I am contemptuous of his reign and that of the PDP. And I have a hard time being grateful to Mr. Jonathan for being gracious in defeat; it is high time we stopped thanking the servants of the people for merely doing their job sometimes.
On the other hand I am not dancing on the streets because our thieving public intellectuals, the Napoleons of Animal Farm are heralding the coming of the tired face of yesterday on the backs of criminals and thugs and liars as “change.” I do not share in the euphoria; I repeat, we have merely changed the letters of the alphabet from odious PDP to odious APC, same difference.
No one fools me, I will continue to push the conversation about what is appropriate in terms of governance. Democracy without accountability is killing Nigeria and Nigerians. We have spent dozens of billions of Naira to race past broken schools, broken hospitals and broken roads to execute a shoddy election and install the illusion of change. We have just traded ravenous locusts for starving termites. We will be miserable for the next four years as we continue to endure an unsustainable democracy. This democracy is an unsustainable farce and we all know it. If we are not careful it will be the end of our nation as we know it.The PDP needs to go, the APC needs to go, they are collectively responsible for our mess and I am not excusing one bunch of thieves and incompetents from blame.
My people. I would like to be wrong, I pray to be wrong for one reason. My generation and older, of leaders and intellectuals owe this generation a huge debt of relief. We owe them what we have afforded our own families and children from the safety of the West and the faux suburbs of Lekki and Abuja. They deserve good schools, homes, hospitals and robust safety and security that our children and family enjoy. We have ripped them off, looted their present and future and fed them lies from birth. We owe them relief.
My people, since independence what has happened to Nigeria and Nigerians, I call black-on-black crime. Nigeria was quite honestly better off under white rule; that is exactly what our black rulers have proven to their eternal shame.
In the name of this generation of hopeful youths, I plead with the incoming farce, this change borne on the backs of criminals and thugs and liars, to prove me wrong and show some compassion and competence. Please do something in the name of millions of young people who truly believe in you and expect structural changes in the next four years. Prove many of us wrong and do something productive for once. We have the solutions but sixteen years of corruption and buffoonery by various versions of the APC and the PDP have taunted the question: Who will bell the cat?
I salute and congratulate every young Nigerian that has begun the journey of fighting back. It is your country, they owe you, you do not owe them. They work for you; hold them accountable., make them leaders, not rulers. Make them treat you the way they treat their own children. This is a promise: In your name, I will continue to be a one-man army railing against the APC and the PDP until they morph from being enemies of the people to champions of the people. I do not need money from any of them, I just want them to do what they have promised. It may not happen in my lifetime but it won’t be for lack of trying. A pox on both their houses.
Finally, I must thank those who engaged me on my wall; as much as I joked about #BLOCKING folks, I found that I did not really need to use that powerful tool. The vast majority of folks proved that they were raised right and engaged me with passion and uncommon respect, even when I was being bad and I am not the easiest person to have as an adversary. I salute you and I look forward to more skirmishes as I join like-minded folks to continue to name and shame our ruler-criminals. Nigeria is ours, not theirs.
Ikhide Ikheloa is a writer and literary critic. He tweets from @ikhide.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
