ISSUES/POLICY: Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail

 

BY KANMI ADEMILUYI

THE sadly departed American political journalist Hunter Thompson redefined the coverage of political events. Momentous works such as “Fear and loathing in Las Vegas”, and “ Fear and loathing on the campaign trail” defined an era of politics. Famously he turned President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandals into an object of ridicule and exposed him for what he really is a “man of talent without character”. It will be fascinating to work out just what Hunter Thompson will have made out of Donald Trump. That will have been a treat.

Thompson’s coverage of the hidden plots in the “ politics” as the theatre of the absurd currently playing out in Nigeria will have been riveting.

For example, the just concluded elective convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) portrayed the country as a post-colonial entity bereft of the very needed “independent institutions of the state” (in the words of the constitution of the Republic of South Africa” ) which ought to form the bedrock of the modern nation-state. 

As light relief, the hardly independent Economic And Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC} belatedly stated that they were looking into the industrial-scale bribes in hard currency used to procure delegates at the convention. This is as ludicrous as it gets. All the institutions of the state stood arms akimbo as the laws of the country covering financial transactions were brazenly violated. And of course, the less said about the inactive tax authorities the better. 

Unfortunately, taxation which should be of a  progressive nature matters. The nation’s treasury is in dire need of revenues paradoxically it cannot find the political will to collect taxes from low hanging fruits like people with unexplained (unexplainable?)sources of wealth. 

The absurdity highlights the utter stupidity of repudiating the 1963 Republican Constitution which was based on the generation of production leading to  revenue. Since then it has been downhill all the way. Revenue sharing and allocation has replaced production. This is reflected in the nomenclature of the Special Purpose Vehicles[SPV’s], which in another era were known as political parties. Mirroring the framework of the rent collecting state which gave birth to them the SPVs are not based on ideology but on how to drink from a diminishing trough. 

Nothing different should be expected when the APC stage  their own theatre tomorrow. Note that the emphasis is always on elective conventions nothing on policies in a country faced with existential threats on a myriad of fronts. For instance the warnings about the debt situation, the consequences of primitive trade facilitation system and a constantly depreciating currency can no longer be ignored. The disaster is foretold. Nigeria today is a classic case straight out of a nineteen-sixties textbook on “growth without development” and the “development of underdevelopment” all motion and no movement.

Whatever the outcome of the APC’s coronation ceremony tomorrow only the fringe candidates are likely to present a rigorously worked-out alternative to get us out of the morass. The situation has become dire. Without a response from the duopoly controlling the political landscape, we should be profoundly disturbed.