Nigeria has reduced itself to the butt of the crudest jokes all over the world.
Forgery at the highest echelon of power in the land has put a bad patch on Nigeria in the eyes of astonished commentators across the globe.
Trust Nigerians to defend abject malfeasance along partisan and ethnic lines in a most shameless manner.
The pathetic revelations coming from Chicago State University in the United States do not need any repetition from me here.
It suffices to stress that Nigeria started the self-inflicted humiliation by forging a so-called democratic election that has turned out as a ruinous joke.
The most resounding statement that defined the last Nigerian election was made this way: “Grab it! Snatch it! And run with it!”
Only a most dimwitted political non-starter would not know that power seized in such a brazen manner can only lead to disaster.
The other cry that reached the high heavens during the election was: “It’s my turn! Emilokan! Yoruba Lokan!”
The reduction of political contest to tribal war has turned Nigeria into one backward jungle of primordial propensities.
The politicos are fighting to the death, and Nigeria is at its lowest moment with the highest honour in the land, GCFR, being translated to read: Grand Certificate Forger of the Republic!
Reputations have been ruined as most erstwhile lionised Nigerians have been exposed as per living a lie.
It is indeed a very off-putting sight watching an emperor dancing naked before the eyes of the whole wide world.
Morality has been kicked into the latrine in Nigeria as technical legalese are conjured up to defend the indefensible.
The depiction of forgery in the world today is captured by one sentence thusly: “It’s a Nigerian thing.”
The ruling politicians and the legislators are in cahoots with the misnamed Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the judiciary in dispensing anarchy in the land.
The crucial thing to learn is that it is cool to grab power through blatantly rigged elections instead of getting into hot water by taking power via a military coup.
Coup at the polls spells Democracy with a capital “D”.
World powers such as the United States and France will always back the “coup-at-the-polls African democrat”.
For me, the grotesque Nigerian twins called democracy and military rule are fatally joined together at the same fat stomach like Siamese twins.
What passes for democracy in the old country is what has come to be seen as the recycling of old forgers of power and their turncoat agents.
Nigeria is bleeding badly because the chosen one forged everything from birth to afterlife, and more!
It is only left for corrupt tribesmen to manufacture all shades of infantile lies as defence for the unconstitutionality of a plethora of forgeries.
According to Will Rogers, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!”
The digging of the hole of forgeries goes on exponentially with new names being added to Wikipedia as counter to old counterfeits.
Former self-advertised Marxists, socialists, activists and progressives are all geared up fighting the tribal war of attrition with shameless abandon.
They even want to ban the press, starting with a contrarian TV station called Arise.
It is as though Nigeria has been plunged back to the Stalinist purges of the old Soviet Union in this evil season of the dictatorship of clannish democracy.
Let’s adapt the lyrics of the musical group Third World to read thus: “Now that you’ve got power, what are you gonna do with it?”
It’s all back to hackneyed prebendalism, but history teaches that even if one appoints only his tribesmen and cronies into positions of authority it doesn’t change much.
Corruption and criminality are now all the rage as the stomachs of the politicians keep enlarging while the workaday Nigerians are suffering and crying and dying.
That one’s tribesman is president does not in any way help one’s poverty, and fighting to the death to defend the tribesman is only akin to a death-wish.
The eye-opening parochialism of this day and age will of course be rued in due course after celebrating the debaucheries inherent in the privileged presidential son flying the presidential jet for long hours to go and watch a game of polo!
Nigeria is at the nadir of its existence for which we have become the laughing-stock of the thinking world.
The strange doings of Nigeria remind me of one of my favourite novels, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
Part of the blurb reads: “The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow; his retinue includes two demons, a naked girl and a huge black cat which talks, walks upright, smokes cigars and is a dead shot with a Mauser automatic. Some of the devil’s pranks are sheer anarchic fun, more often they are chosen to bring out the worst in everybody. When he leaves, the asylums are full, the forces of law and order are in disarray and the population is haunted with feelings of guilt and shame…”
Nigeria’s moral burden is stranger than fiction.
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is a renowned poet, journalist and author