WE can never underestimate the evil in politics until we are victims; this is where the strain between loyalty and deceit is chaotic. Many equate deceit for loyalty but loyalty entails telling the truth and giving facts to promote societal good; unfortunately for “political bats and mosquitoes” blackmail is the bedrock to political ascendancy.

Alhaji Ibrahim Waziri, leader of GNPP in the second republic knew this when he introduced “politics without bitterness” in 1979. My odyssey reveals the bad and the good that pollute our body politics, they sprout like weeds that destroy crops and prosper in mischief.

A party leader who once enlisted you for his trivial venture but failed can resort to blackmail to destroy your political career. Their victims are those who refuse to compromise good for evil in the years of struggle but man’s memory is short and a monster in blackmail can terminate good victims at Golgotha.

This is evil repeating itself as reason and good deeds of their prey count less in persecution but if political loyalty in trenches against undemocratic forces does not count in sanity, why the vengeance to destroy good values in a man?

These vices negate democratic commitment; politics in Nigerian is entrenched in blackmail, lies and victimization. We have the honest that labours in vain and the dishonest that reaps where he never sow, these shady characters that dance, drink and eat in parties claim unmerited medals for their chameleonic slippery steps and make the words in our national item “ the labour of our heroes past must not be in vain” treacherous.

Lack of patriotism could be traced to a chaotic system that rewards indolence and failure in place of competence. Many Nigerians who laboured for President Jonathan in his acting capacity and election in 2011 are not holding political offices but are resolute in their commitment to continue to support his re-election bid in 2015 despite their limitations.

These are heroes because their support is not tied to “a loaf of bread” unlike “stomach” political destitudes hovering in corridors of power to claim others sweat. Politics of bitterness, recriminations and pull him down is consuming our values, they were mines that decimated the first and second republics and are evident today. Tribalism, religious bigotry and sectionalism in the land are traceable to political bitterness, greed, sectionalism and the blind greed for political power.

Until politics is devoid of these, leadership will continue to be tainted, policies will continue to be questioned and the political space laced with destitudes.

We must rejuvenate ethical values to guide our sustenance as a people if we are concerned for the future. Politics today is schemed towards destruction of opponents rather than growth and development; we are all victims of this contamination. The Boko-Haram insurgency that is a national tragedy, like all cancers, started from a minor part of the body before becoming a national catastrophe.

The challenges of President Jonathan are similarly hooked on rumours, lies, and blackmail by mischief makers. President Jonathan’s place of birth or religion is not his own making like other Nigerians. We must live together in tolerance because discriminating a Nigerian on the bases of birth, region, religion or tribe is questioning God’s will.

The President’s critics dressed in this bitterness in the guise of politics are wolves and Nigerians are asking whether President Jonathan would have received same antagonism from the north if he was a Hausa-Fulani Muslim?

These sentiments are distractions; they hinder good governance, unity of the nation and the war against corruption. Our homes, streets and public institutions are becoming brothels where girls of easy virtue hawk their anatomic curves for pleasures, our traditional rulers reward criminals and fraudsters with garlands and traditional titles to sustain their elegant lifestyle.

These characters with no education but stupendous wealth use their new found status to arrange marriages to highly educated women in strata of the society, as ornaments to boost their ego. Our moral resistance is weak due to lack of anti-dot to resist these strange anti-bodies virus.

Those against Jonathan are ethnic bigots, economic saboteurs and religious fanatics using blackmail to promote bitterness and like rapists that defile our women and society, heartless. We cannot blackmail Jonathan’s government and expect growth and development. When confronted by these social misfits we must demand facts before reaching conclusion because those who indulge in destroying others are as contagious and deadly as the Ebola epidemic.

Areghe Abugo, a political analyst, wrote from Uzere, Delta State.

We need to encourage nationalists like Chief (Dr.) E.K Clark because the Presidency is the birthright of every Nigerian. We must not reward vultures that mill around the corridors of power to feed on our unity and identity. We must build Nigeria on a value that sustains its people and a political ideology that encourages fertilization of ideas.

Back in Delta State Governor Uduaghan is also a victim, as every tale from misfortune to inaction is tied to him. When a man fails to impregnate his wife or his wife suffers miscarriage, Uduaghan is blamed. The moral decay and failure of parents is blamed on him. We need social and political education as we cannot continue in this blind race of destroying values because of greed. Integration and national unity in a nation so divided by greed, tribalism, sectionalism and bitterness is necessary; we need a nation that sees strength in her diversity.