By Inaju U. Inaju
“There are those who should not be allowed to go near power for their own sake and the sake of the people they are meant to serve.” IUI. 2019.
A few weeks ago, I did a write-up on the prophets of Baal and the despicable politrical diatribes that has come to define the malfeasance they call leadership.
I argued then that Ibaji people should not allow themselves to be drawn into the ongoing unnecessary war of words between King Baal and his hangers on and those who have fallen out of favour among his tribe of political marauders.
When the going was good, none of us saw the benefit of their unbridled political union, if anything, some of us saw the evil that was the product of their union. When things went sour between them, some of us benefited from their fight.
If nothing else, they came out to wash their proverbial dirty linen in public. I cannot wait for them to go to court and who knows, they might as well open the proverbial pandora’s box.
As I write, things are going through my head, one of which is what King Baal and his acolytes will tell Ibaji people when they visit Ibaji to campaign for reelection. King Baal would probably tell Ibaji people that their son who was given a vantage position in the disastrous New Direction Government mismanaged or stole all the goody-goody meant for Ibaji.
In one breath, these sad poster children of politics act, looks and seems shameless, but in another, they look and sound like troubled souls searching for solace, finding none, they drag the rest of us, kicking and screaming, on their bedevilled political journey to self destruct.
My fear and utmost worry is about the long suffering masses who seems to have been beguiled by king Baal’s raw political brutality and his stupendous and rapacious ill-acquired wealth that he is willing to deploy with the sole aim of enslaving the people.
Even more disturbing is some people’s gullibility and the their Stockholm syndrome that makes them acquiesce to such terminal politrical machination. To hear some misguided people, especially the youth, campaign for king Baal, you will think that King Baal is the best thing that happened to the people of the kingdom after a chilled ice-cream bar on a hot day in the forever sun-scotched kingdom’s capital.
Re-election, ordinarily, should be the time when it becomes incumbent on incumbency to proudly beat its chest and tout its achievements, give account of its stewardship, dare its detractors and opponents to contradict it with competing achievements, while campaigning vigorously for the people to give it a second chance to complete unfinished business.
Sadly for the Kingdom of Baal, not only has Baal and his disciples failed woefully in every aspect of governance, it is such a shame to hear them bragging about it on social media and prime time tv news and still ask the people to vote them back into power so that they can continue to fail as leaders.
King Baal and his acolytes demand for public ovation for their bad governance is perplexing, but more perplexing is the fact that there are people who are spurred to deliver such ovation with deafening precision.
The ongoing war of salary in the kingdom took a new twist penultimate month when the deputy King of the Kingdom threatened to sue the government if his salaries and other entitlement is not paid within a week.
King Baal has refuted his deputy’s allegations and dared his deputy to go to court. The battle line is drawn and we wait, patiently, to see who will blink first, however, while we wait to see who blinks first, it is pertinent for all people residing within that kingdom who have the right to vote to understand that in November, they have a political right to right the wrongs of the past by choosing, carefully, who they will send to the palace of Baal.
When I argued in my last piece on the confusion in the kingdom and how bad it is, I was not aware that both the king and his deputy will dance naked in the market. It is heartening to read in the media that King Baal’s media handler has openly admitted that they know the complicity of deputy Baal in the arson that brought Aluaja community in Iyano of Ibaji local government area to its knees.
“We warn … who is known to history as a man whose affinity for violence is unparalleled not to judge us by his own standards. The report of the … government commission of enquiry on the Iyano ethnic crises in 2017 is still fresh in our memories.”
Between king Baal and his deputy, it is hard to know who speaks the truth since both of them have unsavoury relationship with truth and they find truth abhorrent and despicable.
One thing, though, is obvious, “If crocodiles eat their own eggs what would they do to the flesh of a frog,” so says the old proverb.
In effect, if the deputy Baal can support an arson attack on his immediate constituency, only God knows what else he is capable of and if the kingdom government can owe a man of deputy Baal political status for months then it goes without saying that the long suffering civil servants of the Kingdom of Baal, who bear the brunt of the four years political machination must be right in accusing the government of owing them 36 months of unpaid salary.
Recently, one of the prophets of Baal boasted on national TV that the New Direction Government is owing civil servants only 12 months of unpaid salaries! It is bad enough to pay salaries late in any month not to mention owing people for a single month, but to owe people for 12 months and go on Channel Television to brag about it is tantamount to adding insult to injury.
For a leader who literarily bulldozed his way through the back-door into power by colluding with a befuddled court of law to brag of owing workers who have wives and school age children, is to say the least, the height of leadership insensitivity, political irresponsibility and management callousness.
If the Kingdom’s civil servant fails to rally round, under the Labour Union leadership, and send these political aberrations back to their villages, then they would have no one to blame when the battle is fought and won and they are left holding the short end of the baton.
If politics was a football match, the remaining time before the next election in November 2019 would be called injury time. Let it be said that the kingdom of Baal is now playing political injury time because a prominent member of the kingdom’s bad government, knowing they have failed woefully, have described the next election is a “do or die” battle.
For the civil servant, the next election must not be a “do or die” election, however, it should be the beginning of the chance that they have always craved for.
While Baal and his shameless band of jaundice political thieves will come with sugar coated biles to ask for your votes, you must decide if you are happy to be owed for one month not to mention twelve months or the full 36 months as some workers have claimed.
The kingdom’s civil servants and the broad spectrum of the voting public must come to the full realisation that the only way they can show their pleasure or displeasure with whoever rules the kingdom is by either rewarding them with a second term or throwing them out and replacing them with people with practical idea on governance.
The current occupants of the defiled Lugard’s house are nothing but modern day political fossils that must be sent back to their catacombs.
