By Bamidele Johnson.
The current political season, which will climax in next year’s general elections, is showing hints that things are changing, however slowly.
One hint of change can be seen in aspirants admitting to financially inducing (read bribing) delegates at intra-party elections and growing large enough cojones to demand refund from delegates who fail deliver the goods.
A former Vice President’s son seeking his party’s House of Representatives ticket, in a statement, confirmed the speculation that he has demanded the refund of bribes he gave to delegates for not voting for him. He lost the bid for the ticket, needless to say.
I cannot claim to know whether he gave a lesser sum than the winner and the wrong denomination or if the delegates just do not like his face or felt awarding him their votes would amount to giving too much to a family that has already produced a Vice President. We may never know.
But one has to admire the dude’s gritty shamelessness in admitting that he induced the delegates and the temerity to demand a refund. Unprecedented. He does not seem like he is for manning up, taking it on the chin, saying such is life and other stoic rubbish.
I encourage him not stop at that. He should take out newspapers spaces and have the names of those who refuse to make a refund published for the world to see.
Delegates, historically, are notorious for their addiction to inducements from many sources. They were probably responsible for making one aspirant faint earlier this week. He nor suppose gree.
And if publishing defaulters’ names in newspapers doesn’t move them, he should read the manual of another inducer who, according to Shehu Sani (a recipient of a grand total of two votes at Kaduna PDP gubernatorial primaries), recruited hunters and vigilantes to shake down the greedy delegates. I am a bit happy that the guy went that far. I would have been happier if the terms of engagement with the hunters and vigilantes had included publicly relieving the delegates of their trousers.
They deserve to be stripped, having stripped the aspirant of his presumably hard earned money. Additionally, he seek the intervention of Ogun, Sango and Amadioha or any other cantankerous local deity to ensure compliance.
Party delegates can make the devil himself seem like a boy scout. They’re some of the meanest creatures two legs and have always been. This nature of theirs is why I have been surprised by the sky-high hopes, even expectations, among Nigerians that the current crop of delegates are sufficiently interested in the common good to reject inducements and vote according to their conscience.
Everybody in the game knows that a delegate is the antipode of conscience. If, by chance, we find some that don’t know, we can conclude that they’re people who believe that a cat with access to milk or smoked fish, will be restrained by ts conscience and do nothing to those things other than catwalk till the access is denied. In any language, that spells naivety, if not stupidity.
Delegates include some of the people and their franchises screwing up things at various governmental levels or were actively involved in producing those delivering malevolence as governance. The implausibly lavish hopes and expectations that they can or will be different this time is wasted. Totally wasted.