By Uche Onyebadi

NIGERIAN politician and wordsmith of blessed memory, K.O. Mbadiwe, used to coin phrases and make sentences that dressed up the English language in regal and enigmatic robes. He once described himself as “a man of timber and calibre” and always cajoled his opponents that he was capable of “cementing the cementables” as well as being a man of action “when the come comes to become.”

For good measure, the ShehuShagari government appointed him as Nigeria’s “Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.” But, when this man who saw himself as a heavyweight politician lost an election so badly that he also lost his mandatory deposit for garnering very few votes, a Nigerian newspaper came up with the headline, “the fall of the unfallable,” to describe the weight of K.O. Mbadiwe’s political humiliation.

The U.S. recently witnessed such a fall of gargantuan proportion. Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives and the man tipped to succeed John Boehner as the Speaker of the House, took a political tumble when he lost the primary election. The man who beat the well-known Cantor was David Brat, a politically unknown professor of economics.

The battle for the Republican Party primary election in Virginia’s seventh congressional district was more like a fight between two people of unequal strength. Cantor was a national figure, while Brat battled with name recognition even in his own district. Brat struggled to raise about $200,000 for his campaign, while Cantor reportedly garnered $5.4 million for the epic battle. Of course, the national press was impressed with Cantor’s credentials and hardly paid Brad any attention during the campaign. Cantor’s campaign dealt with a variety of issues and showed his mastery of how to navigate the waters of American politics.

On the other hand, Brat campaigned on just one issue, immigration, and did not even have so much to say about it other than America should shut its doors against “illegal” immigrants. Cantor was so sure of victory that the Republican Party was concerned with his margin of victory over Brat, not about him losing by any stretch of imagination. So cocksure was Cantor about his victory that on the day of election, he was nowhere in his constituency, but was busy doing fundraising for his political allies and colleagues in Washington D.C. His pollsters had assured him that victory was as sure as the rising of the sun.

Then came the result. Cantor, the man who would be king, was floored by the little known David by a 56-44 percent margin. It was not a close call. Like the biblical David, this David had used a mere slingshot to decapitate heavily armed giant Cantor. The entire nation was awe-stricken by the news that Cantor’s political career had been rubbished by a man of little political weight. It was the fall of the “unfallable.”

Several reasons have been adduced to explain Cantor’s loss. Some of the political pundits claimed Cantor had lost touch with his constituents, and had become so much of a Washington insider and player that he apparently forgot that the people of the seventh congressional district in Virginia had sent him there to represent their interest. Others argue that what clipped his political wings was the immigration issue where Brat, campaigning on the sentimental issue of immigration under the canopy of the “Tea Party” wing of the Republican Party, made Cantor look like an unpatriotic American. Yet others contend that Cantor was so focused on his quest to become the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives that he forgot his primary job of representing his people.

These criticisms and analyses may or may not have merit. What is being ignored is that Eric Cantor’s loss strengthens the U.S. political and electoral system and, I daresay, democracy. First, Cantor did not do what politicians in developing nations love to do: use their defeat to attempt to destabilize the nation by taking their misfortune to court and using thugs to cause all sorts of mayhem. The man, Cantor, knew that he had been trounced and had the good sense to concede victory. Not only that, he announced that come the end of July, he would officially step down from his exalted position of Majority Leader in the House of Representatives.

Without official rigmarole or rancor or debilitating political jostling and hustling, the U.S. House of Representatives has since moved to elect another man to replace the outgoing Cantor. He is Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, a representative from California.

So, in less than a month after Cantor’s unforeseen defeat, the U.S. political/democratic system functioned as it was designed to roll and produced another person to take over from the man who lost his position. If you were not following what was going on in U.S. politics, you might not have even noticed the change of guard in the office of Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. The transition has been swift. That, might be the lesson for less democratic nations where a loss of political office often translates to unnecessary national crisis.

But all said, one cannot fail to notice the irony in Cantor’s fall into political purgatory. He was among the very militant wing of the Republican Party members who vowed to make Obama a one-term president. This same group had placed, and continues to place, all sorts of twigs and thorns on Obama’s route to governance. But, unbeknown to Cantor, while he was busy and enthusiastically digging Obama’s political grave, little did he know or anticipate that he was unwittingly preparing for his own political funeral.