Josef Omorotionmwan
THEChristian in Nigeria is constantly faced with a serious dilemma: He must confess positive all the time, because in the church’s belief of the self-fulfilling prophesy, the power of the tongue is very strong. At the same time, he is enjoined to remain truthful, even at the edge of doom.

Truly, in whatever direction we look, we see Nigeria sitting on a keg of gunpowder, which could explode anytime. It gets messier by the day.

In the past, the police formations and the army barracks were places where people took refuge in times of danger. But today, the reverse is the case. Police and army barracks are today sacked with impurity. Soldiers and policemen with their families have had to flee to private houses for safety. How bad could the people’s lack of security be?

We are still entertaining ourselves with the recent infamy in which our “combat soldiers” came face to face with men of the Boko Haram and our soldiers ran for dear life, escaping into the Camerouns. This may have been exposed inadvertently. Otherwise, it happens all the time, unnoticed.

There is thoroughly a frightening glimpse into our future. The greatest threat here is the desecration of our once sacred institutions. Perhaps the only license one needs to get away with murder today is to run into the PDP after committing the murder.

Oblivious of the fact that what goes around comes around, they embark on their impunity slowly – in the tradition of the mad man who feigns total ignorance of the big conflagration raging over there. After all, he only started a small fire here. They have defiled and decimated all our institutions, particularly in states outside their control.

At first, it sounded funny when their party became hopelessly fragment that at all levels, from the ward to the national, they ran parallel executives. They soon graduated from there to states outside their control where they moved into the legislative and executive branches of government.

On the executive side, they instigated the impeachment of the governor. That’s how impeachment, which was originally meant to check executive excesses, was soon reduced to an instrument for addressing even minor political disagreements.

Yet another dangerous one is what they started lately – setting up parallel legislatures with the instrumentality of the federal might, so called. That’s what they have in Rivers and Edo states. In Rivers State, the obnoxious practice is named after the arrow heads – the authentic legislature, which has an overwhelming majority in the House is called the Amaechi parliament; while the PDP side, which is in a microscopic minority is the Wike parliament.

In Edo State, the overwhelming majority is sarcastically referred to as the APC House while the microscopic minority, purchased largely from the APC, is referred to as the PDP House. In each case, both sides run parallel legislatures. This could be their understanding of the concept of a “bi-camera legislature”.

It portends danger: First, it threatens our elections and the Constitution because as the miscarriage develops, after every election, each contending party will simply set up its own legislature; appoint its own principal officers; and carry on its own business.

Second, we see the same anomaly being extended to the executive branch, in which case, every subsequent gubernatorial election will produce only winners. After the election, each candidate will just set up his own government and operate from his separate Government House. Then we shall have ‘APC Government House’ and ‘PDP Government House’ – a future approximation of what we already have under Oshiomhole and the other big mouth!

In this animal kingdom, whoever has the support of the police will gain the upper hand.

That is the same animal kingdom where they have now moved to the Judiciary. In the past week, two times within four days, the courts in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, have been sacked by “hoodlums”; and in the last of the two incidents, the office of the Chief Judge of Ekiti State was invaded, with record books torn to shreds and proceedings disrupted.

In the commotion that ensued at the Tribunal hearing the case of the last gubernatorial election, Hon. Justices Akintayo and J.O. Adeyeye were given the beating of their lives and the suit of the latter was totally shredded. The car of the Tribunal Chairman, Justice Muhammed Siraj, was smashed.

Other judges, lawyers, court officials and litigants within the court precincts were not spared. Everyone had to scamper for dear life. While the hoodlums had a field day, unleashing their mayhem; the police and other security agents equally had a field day watching and enjoying the theatricals, no thanks to the federal might!

Meanwhile, ‘Big Brother’, as usual, says he is “on top of the situation”, trying to fish out the hoodlums and their sponsors. Bravo! They must continue to hunt the perpetrators, even when the Governor-elect of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has avowed unequivocally, “Most of our judges have compromised… The strategy of APC will not work.

Nobody no matter how highly placed would remove me cheaply. It would not be too cheap like Segun Oni. I am not going to be cheap at all because I am elected by the people”.

That is the macabre dance in Ekiti State, which will soon snowball to all parts of the country. The Judiciary used to be the last hope of the ordinary man. And now that the Judiciary is gone, all else is gone!

In all this, we have no one to blame but ourselves. In the real democracies, no political party retains power in perpetuity. When the Americans decide to vote out the Republicans and enthrone the Democrats, it is not that they love the Republicans any less; but they seek change and this helps to keep governments on their toes in terms of performance.

When we accept a 60-year continuous reign of one political party, we must also be willing to serve the term of imprisonment to which we have involuntarily sentenced ourselves!