By Douglass Anele
We have discussed several reasons why a typical Nigerian politician plays politics with bitterness. Another factor to be considered is the way politicians treat one another, the kind of language they employ in addressing their rivals and opponents.

Leaders of the dominant political parties in Nigeria oftentimes use uncomplimentary adjectives and pejorative phrases to describe politicians in opposing parties. The trend began with the inauguration of party politics during the colonial period. Since then, politicians have become less decorous in their speech.

The latest is the widely publicised report that the President, Goodluck Jonathan, at a campaign rally in Ibadan stated that his party, PDP, will do everything in its power to wrest political power in the South-West geo-political zone from rascals.

Clearly, the President was venting his personal frustration and disappointment because PDP has repeatedly failed to win Lagos State, and recently lost some of its governorships to rival parties. Of course, leaders of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), have responded in the same uncouth manner to President Jonathan’s verbal ballistic missile, in a situation where silence would have been golden.

At any rate, even in the United States and Britain with mature democracies, politicians sometimes employ acerbic language while referring to their counterparts in opposing camps. For instance, President Barak Obama of the United States, during the presidential campaigns in 2008, was called all sorts of derogatory names (including “muslim terrorist,” and “socialist”) by some extremist Republicans who were thoroughly disgusted with the prospect of a Blackman becoming America’s President.

But he survived and emerged victorious at the polls. Now, the major difference between the typical Nigerian politician and his Western counterpart is that, whereas the latter will send congratulatory message to his victorious opponent after election results have been announced, our politician will certainly reject the result if it did not favour him, on the ground that the election was rigged.

Most times, Nigerian politicians who allege rigging also rigged; the problem is that they lack the honesty to accept that they were out-rigged. Because of politics-with-bitterness, most of our politicians are bad losers. Therefore, we ask: why should anyone who genuinely wishes to lead maim, kidnap, and kill some of the people he wishes to serve, in order to serve?

If leadership is as demanding and arduous as Nigerian leaders both past and present say it is, why do we have politics-with-bitterness in the country? We believe that quack politicians and half-baked messiahs that have been privileged to lead Nigeria are chronic liars.

How? Because these people pretended as if they were motivated by the desire to serve, by patriotic fervor to work hard for the people, whereas what was uppermost in their minds right from the beginning of their tenures was primitive accumulation.

In countries whose leaders are truly working for the citizens, the physical stress on them is always obvious for everyone to see – more lines of stress appear on their faces, they sprout more grey hairs and lose weight. In Nigeria, the reverse obtains: just a few months after becoming a commissioner, minister, governor, president, the lucky fellow puts on weight and exudes a palpable aura of well-being and relaxed opulence which were non-existent around him or her before the assumption of office.

Compare the pictures of top political office holders in the newspapers before or just after they got to their present positions with what they look like after about six months or one year in office. The difference would be very clear. Political offices in Nigeria serve the interests of oppressors, the godfathers and kingmakers.

For the ruling elite, together with hard-core wealthy capitalists, Nigeria is a source of stupendous personal wealth, even if it means denying the vast majority of the citizens fundamental human rights like food, shelter, clothing, education, health, employment and security.

Politics-with-bitterness is ruining the country. It is the grandfather of hatred and violence. Many Nigerians are apprehensive that the forthcoming elections this year will be marred by violence.

Those that are pessimistic about the future are not prophets of doom: they are merely reiterating that unless the major political actors in the country totally abandon the winner-takes-all mentality which promotes politics-with-bitterness, fears and anxieties about safety will discourage a sizeable percentage of the electorate from exercising their political right to vote.

Whatever party any politician belongs to, he or she should remember that politics is about people and that no political position, not even the presidency, is worth all the trouble, the violence and loss of lives that had occurred in previous elections. We are all Nigerians, irrespective of our political, ethnic, and religious differences. Politicians should grow up and avoid the silly mistakes of the past.

They cannot remain perpetual toddlers, always explaining away their stupidities with the clichés “we are operating a nascent democracy,” “democracy is a learning process” etc. Time is ripe now for our democracy to move past the nascent stage; our politicians should stop trying to reinvent the political wheel. The evolution of world history has made available some of the fundamentals of democratic governance. Politics-with-bitterness is certainly not one of those fundamentals.

On the contrary, it negates the values that strengthen people-oriented democratic leadership. Once again, we call on Nigerians to reject totally politicians and political parties that have a penchant for lying, dishonesty, persistent uncouth language, and violence. Politics-with-bitterness is one of the reasons politics has been described as a “dirty game” in some quarters.

But politics, or any game for that matter, is not dirty; it is bad politicians that have polluted politics. People of goodwill should stand up and rescue it from the pollutants, “new barbarians.”
Concluded.