Letter to Machiavelli

Forgive me the presumptive effrontery, Signor Machiavelli, to write to you across the centuries.

Since the day I got hold of your slim volume entitled The Prince as a teenage undergraduate, my life has never been quite the same. With my evangelical upbringing, I was at first startled by what you had to say regarding human nature and about the sentiments that drive human beings in the pursuit of naked power. Life in Nigeria has taught me that you were far more accurate a thinker than many of the wooly-minded fools who came after you.

Cavaliere, I seek your wisdom to illumine the current realities of our dangerous political landscape. The illness of our president has thrown our entire nation into a nightmare of uncertainty and confusion. From what we are told, his kidneys and heart are failing. It is evident that the burdens of office have imposed a severe strain on this decent and good man. According to our constitution, in the event of such debilitating illness, the Vice-President takes over automatically. For some people, this is unacceptable.

We all know that the ruling PDP is an agglomeration controlled by an illuminati of cultists and garrison commanders whose sole objective is power and its accoutrements; men of absolutely no vision. It was from such a system that Umaru Yar’Adua emerged. He himself hails from a tradition of progressive politics. His only sin is that he was backed by the wrong master who hoped he would die on the road to office, or if he survived, would remain a malleable stooge. The primitive charlatans who control our political process are now secretly hoping Yar’Adua will die and allow them a new opportunity to reposition themselves to continue their idiotic games of looting.

Some of us have continued to pray for Umaru Yar’Adua not because of any innate pretensions to a higher piety but because he is a good and decent man who has exercised power with compassion and justice. As he lies in far-away Saudi Arabia, enduring what must be excruciating pains, the vultures are hovering ominously under an overcast sky.

Some have been putting not-so-subtle pressures on Vice-President Jonathan Goodluck to resign. They cannot contemplate a scenario whereby power shifts to the so-called ‘South-South’ through some accident of history.

In response, ‘the remnants of Israel’ are threatening that they will return to the creeks or worse if their man is forced out. It’s a frightening zero-sum game. The national executive council and the national assembly have mouthed the predictable pious pledges of loyalty to the President, but nobody believes them. Meanwhile government has ground to a halt.

Last night, on my way to a friend’s birthday dinner, the police were brazenly extorting money from people. The country is gradually returning to a state of lawlessness. All sorts of rumours are in the air. It is clear that the people who run things currently have vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

Our highly defective constitution is virtually irredeemable because it was hammered out in the dark rooms of a military barrack. And our lawmakers, many f whom came to office through a defective electoral process, cannot now be expected to reform a system that has served them so well. It is a classic case of the Prisoners’ Dilemma in the theory of games.

Within our country, the mood is a deeply sombre one. Externally, we have never fallen lower on the hierarchy of world prestige. Being a Nigerian abroad often entails having to endure petty little indignities, which eat into one with the relentlessness of a cancerous wound. This nation of extraordinarily brilliant people has been brought to its knees by goonies who have never understood the first principles of constitutional government.

The ordinary people, who endure all sorts of untold suffering, are in no position to rebel. As for the elites, we are all putting our heads in the sand, hoping the ill winds will go away. We are living a lie and hoping that, somehow, some miracle from heaven will save us from the dangers that loom ahead.

This is the scenario playing out before our very eyes and it is deeply ominous. As a political philosopher, what counsels Thou?