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Change must also be
subject to change. If one calls a spade a spade, one has merely seen and
described things as they are, but if one calls a spade a spoon, one has
an eye on how the technology of progress is discursively created. For
the Nigerian politician trying to escape from the allegation of being
bereft of ideas, the reinvention of a spade into a spoon is an ideology
for feeding a nation’s famished democracy. Democracy, as an occasion to
think freedom, should make it possible for us to talk nonsense, think
nonsense, do nonsense, and get a deafening applause.

In this republic,
campaigns should be about fanning emotions, not about crafting and
performing logical argumentation. Election candidates who hope to fail
at the polls spend all their time on the campaign teaching the
electorate how to think. Isn’t that an insult? Nigerian voters know the
difference between thinking and doing. And where else could this “doing”
be found than in the mobilisation of cash flow and other social
friendship practices? You do not bring your campaign boat to my
constituency empty! Where have all the Ghana Must Go bags gone?

The roads that lead
to re-election are littered with the bodies of those who think that we
should always call a spade a spade. Isn’t an election a business
investment? You put in your money and expect results, first that the
money gets the votes, and then that the votes fetch you government as a
business enterprise. The person in power also ought to be the person in
the money. Government, as your business investment, should bring in
dividends, not just to cover the cost of contesting an election but also
to ensure that you are the richest man in Babylon. Moreover, this
“business” of government ought to provide you, the investor, with an
insurance of the power to determine who comes into the business and who
goes. Isn’t that the meaning of what they call “the dividends of
democracy”?

I advise elected
politicians in Nigeria not to bother to initiate and execute new
projects at the federal, state, and local government levels. Not much
comes from new projects anyway. It is in the province of repair and
maintenance that true governance happens. Better still, such repairs are
more meaningful when elections are around the corner and the government
must be seen to be doing things without doing things. At a quarter to
election o’clock, wise guys in government wake up and remember that
things they have failed to do are more urgent than things they have
done.

Who but an
unpatriotic element would not support the re-election of someone who has
brought out all the tractors he can find and has recruited all
experienced and inexperienced road-makers to keep the roads alive? Those
who have eyes let them see that government has started happening and
should be allowed to continue to happen. Only an unwise electorate would
not allow a “working” government to stay in power to complete the good
work it has just started doing.

Why would all those
academically minded political candidates in Nigeria win elections when
they think that mere argumentation is all it takes to enlist support
from ordinary Nigerian voters? They can keep their logic and good
English in the classrooms; such are not for the masses of Nigerians who
are looking for politicians that have Mmuo Mweputa, the Spirit of
Bringing and Bringing. Things go better in African politics when those
with Mmuo Nnaputa, the Spirit of Rescuing and Rescuing from some hands,
are paired up with those who possess Mmuo Mweputa, the Spirit of
Bringing and Bringing.

Donate ten thousand
motorcycles and branded crash helmets to a particular group of people
with the Spirit of Rescuing and Rescuing, especially when okada the
Spirit of Commercial Motorcycling is gaining ground among the young and
the old as an easier means of surviving in a republic of hunger. Give
and it shall be given unto you, a good measure of deceit pressed down,
running over reality, inflating the votes in the ballot boxes. Deceit is
better when it is mutual and reciprocal. As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be, nascent democracy without end, amen!

Why shouldn’t the
spirit of rescuing gifts from the hands of some politician who has the
spirit of giving be seen as a patriotic duty and not just a personal
employment?

Stolen apples are not the only things that are sweetest. Stolen victories are, too.