Those Nigerians who think that the defections we witnessed on the Nigerian political scene recently were “historic”, “earth shaking”, “unprecedented” or “game changing” have not seen anything yet. I gathered at the weekend that ten defections that will shake Nigeria to its Lugardian foundations are on the cards, and we should all stretch our ears and await them.
One newspaper has got a scoop, quoting international terror sources, that Boko Haram is about to defect to the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps. Boko Haram’s Office for Doctrine and Strategic Engagements has prepared a memo, according to informed sources, proposing to the Federal Government that given its experience in urban guerilla, rural guerilla, sabotage, desert warfare, forest ambush, amphibious landing, mountain warfare, cross border operations, occupying towns, making IEDs, dodging fighting patrols, brainwashing youngsters and slave trading, it should be merged with NSCDC as a pre-condition for ending its insurgency. Sources said the only unconcluded matter in the negotiations is who will become the Oga at the Top after the merger, though the frontrunner is Abu Muhammad ibn Muhammad Abubakar al-Shekawi.
Yet another newspaper will soon break a story that Mrs. Kemi Adeosun is about to defect to the ranks of 2018 Youth Corpers. According to highly informed sources, the Finance Minister has applied to the Presidency for a working leave to report at NYSC’s FCT orientation camp at Kubwa. The service has been instructed to give her comfortable camp accommodation, complete with a six-inch mattress and volunteer corper aides so that in between morning drills and running up and down the Kubwa hills, she will sign warrants to release funds from the Treasury, pay Federal workers’ salaries, negotiate foreign loans to finance the budget, work out fiscal policies to increase GDP growth rate from 0.5% to 0.9% per annum and prepare the 2019 budget in time to be laid before the National Assembly in September. The arrangement is that she will be given a genuine Exemption Certificate soon after the orientation in view of her stellar performance.
This country’s two top political parties are also set to defect to new roles. The crunch will come in September, when the National Assembly resumes from its long recess. A recount of senators must be done along the lines of the Florida vote recount of 2000AD. No dimple chards in the form of undecided members will be allowed. If APC’s large majority since 2015 evaporates into a minority, then it will defect to become the first Minority Ruling Party [MRP] which controls the Presidency but not the National Assembly. On the other hand, if the Florida-style recount gives PDP a narrow majority, then it will immediately defect to become Nigeria’s first ever Majority Opposition Party, MOP, with a legislative majority but with no control of the Presidency.
In one of the biggest defections slated for later this year, Nigeria Police Force is set to defect to the Buhari Youth. This sleeper group is modelled after the Hitler Youth in Germany. Its purpose in the upcoming election campaign is to block state assembly complexes to facilitate impeachment of governors; block top legislators from emerging from their houses in order to prevent the announcement of any further defections; find the evidence by means fair or foul to connect dissenting legislators to armed robberies and kidnappings; and repudiate the advice of the Attorney General of the Federation in prosecuting cases related to Politically Exposed Dissidents.
To complement this defection, the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal are set to defect to a new NGO called Blockers in Chief, BIC. Back in 2000AD, I naively asked former Chief Justice of Nigeria [CJN] Mohammed Bello why the Supreme Court will not intervene in the then raging Shari’a dispute by advising whether or not the Shari’a Law passed by Zamfara State House of Assembly was constitutional. He smiled benignly and said, “The Supreme Court is not an advisory body. Let the assembly pass any law it likes. Even then, it is not everybody that can rush to court and challenge the law, no. Let a person who is convicted under that law go to court and challenge it until the appeal reaches the Supreme Court. Then it will make a ruling.”
The way things are now, that old path of justice is about to be overtaken by new realities. BIC is determined to acquit anyone the Executive prosecutes; upturn every High Court ruling that the Executive obtains to stop the National Assembly from re-ordering election sequence; grant bail to everyone that the Executive detains without trial or refuses to release on bail; and quash Executive Officer Six on confiscating assets of suspects on trial for alleged corruption.
Another story is about to break that all the million-plus men and women in the Nigeria Civil Service at federal, state and local levels have perfected plans to defect to a new, super NGO called Siddon Look Incorporated. Their grouse is that consultants, task forces, MPs, ad hoc committees, boards of directors, commissions of inquiry, special investigation panels, legislative oversight committees, legislative aides, friends and classmates of governors, visitation panels and court-issued orders of mandamus have together usurped the functions of civil servants. They now go to work in the morning unsure if they will have anything to do. This takeover of civil servants’ duties has been aided and abetted by computers, scanners, photocopiers, servers, Wi-Fi, wireless printers, POS’s, BVNs, GSM, PVCs, card readers, robots and date capture machines.
Traditional rulers, whose functions the 1999 Constitution absolutely forgot to mention, are about to defect to an NGO called Coalition of Yesterday’s Supremos, CYS. Royal fathers are the most sprawling extra-constitutional institution of government in Nigeria. Even though the Constitution did not provide for it, no state government in Nigeria has dared to abolish it; no court has dared to restrain it from functioning and no VIP delegation visiting any state has failed to pay a courtesy visit to royal fathers.
The people who took over charge of security from Emirs in the name of modernization and democratization, who dissolved the Native Authority Police and who took away the courts and prisons from the emirs are now at their wit’s end in the face of challenges from robbers, thieves, kidnappers, rapists, ritual murderers, transborder criminals, inter-communal warriors, insurgents and political hoodlums. The purpose of CYS is to reveal to today’s leaders the old secrets of maintaining internal security in return for an amendment to the Constitution to enshrine their roles.
As 2019 fast approaches, Nigerian clerics have concluded plans to defect to an NGO called Political Pollsters, Fixers and Facilitators Forum, or PPFFF. In Nigeria where there are no scientific polling organisations, only a cleric can tell a politician whether he should defect to another party, the right time to do it and whether or not he will win the election [the answer is always positive for all aspirants]. Clerics find themselves in the same quandary as the prisoners who rioted because they said their food was bad and the quantity given to them was small. In Nigeria, politicians simultaneously accuse clerics of instigating religious crises and of not praying hard enough for the country’s safety.
Nigerian youths, upon who our politicians heavily rely to get votes in next year’s elections, have perfected plans to defect to the World Wide Web, WWW. Instead of listening to the promises of politicians which are almost always never fulfilled, they prefer to engage in wireless communication, handle cable-less phones, eat nutrition-less fast food, play activity-less games, interact with “friends” they will never see and fall in love with social media pals that could be fake. Politicians will get from these youths intense PVC-less support.
