By Joesf Omorotionmwan
ON entry into new offices, government officials take various oaths. Quite often these oaths are respected only in the breach. This past week, the All Progressives Congress, APC, added yet another new dimension to the abuse of the undertaking and oaths processes when the presidential aspirants were required to sign undertakings that if they lost at the primaries, they would not defect to another party. Not only does this typify the medicine after death syndrome, it also attempts to kill the patient beyond death.

We remember our Child Psychology class of those days where the Professor posited that the only disciplinary language understood by the child is that of the cane. That’s why a child would maintain himself when the mother tells him, “If you fall on the railway line and get crushed by the train, I will cane you”.

Similarly, the only language that is repugnant to a political leader is that his members are trying to decamp to another political party.

Again, the APC is learning fast. Having existed for so long as an opposition party under the self-acclaimed largest party in Africa, as an apprentice, so to say, the APC is now beginning to behave like the big one.

In Nigeria today, there is a total abuse of the oaths swearing and undertaking processes. In fact, by the time political leaders begin to subject their followers to the empty threats of signing these not-so-useful undertakings and the meaningless oaths, watch out, for they are up to some mischief! When Senator Chris Ngige was taken to the Okigwe shrines, his handlers already knew the tricks they intended to play on him.

The litmus test of the vainglorious undertakings required by the APC can be located in the golden rule – do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. Truly, APC has extracted an undertaking from each presidential aspirant.

Meanwhile, the same APC is busy harvesting other defectors who failed to get the nomination of their political parties. In fact, APC may have set up committees, task forces or marketing strategists to lay wait at the entrances of nomination venues to catch those who have failed to secure their parties’ mandates.

In all conscience, what would have been pleasant to the ears is that APC had first resolved not to accept defectors who had failed in other political parties before issuing its own prohibition order.

Essentially, whether you are talking of the “Okotoko shrine”, the “Okija shrine”, APC’s new order, or all those oaths of office and secrecy; oaths and laws that are not backed by real sanctions cannot stand. In all of them, the only oaths that might work are those oaths of confidentiality – by whether name called – which the Federal Government administers on some selected staff because they carry grave sanctions – if the leakage of that secret is traced to you, you lose your job!

Nigerian political leaders are mischievous: they beat you and ask you not to cry. They preach against imposition while they engage in the worst forms of imposition, perhaps oblivious of the fact that the only antidote to a successful election is free, fair and transparent primaries.

The emptiness of the likes of the APC requirement can only be appreciated within the context of one living case:

Enter Mallam Nuhu Ribadu: For the purpose of illustration, we shall assume, for a while, that the APC new requirement existed in 2011; and that Nuhu Ribadu signed the undertaking that he would not defect to another party after the nomination.

Initially, the leadership of the ACN saw in this anti-corruption guru, a most viable candidate to fly the party’s flag at the presidential election. But no sooner did they nominate him than they turned their back on him. In fact, in the 2011 presidential election, the same leaders who nominated Ribadu actively encouraged their members to vote against him. Whatever the consideration was, ACN leaders mandated their members to vote for President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP.

In the circumstance, let someone tell me the type of marine rope that ACN would have used to tie Ribadu to the party, particularly when President Jonathan ambushed him with a very juicy job, the type of job most of the ACN leaders themselves would have willingly accepted – Chairman, Petroleum Trust Fund!

Any man who is waylaid is the best judge of how to get home. If a man signed all the undertakings not to defect from your party on losing nomination; and on his way from a failed nomination, he branches to another party’s secretariat to enlist in the latter’s membership, so be it. What would you do? Would you call the police on him? Or would you dismiss him from your party after he had left?

Leaders and legislators normally attract problems to themselves when they begin to legislate on morality. One valid theory of criminal punishment is based on the prediction that the threat of unpleasant consequences will deter those who would otherwise engage in crime. What is the APC new requirement intended to achieve? Nothing!

Regardless of what we think we are trying to do, we must be weary of the evils of over-criminalization. When we make laws and regulations that cannot be enforced, we only succeed in weakening an already weak society and in the end, it is undermining of faith in the entire system. And when we legislate on moral issues; issues that should terminate at the advisory level; and issues that could only be talked about and never reduced to writing, we only succeed in drawing unintended attention to such issues while we welcome, perhaps inadvertently, a group of people who might be willing to flout the order, just to slap it on your face that you can do nothing. Time spent in making such regulations is like time spent sleeping with a barren woman. That’s not what the nation needs at this stage of her development.