By Innocent Okon
London city sure has a magnetic pull that attracts Nigerian politicians, retired, retiring and untiring! It was that old city of Queen Elizabeth that all the constitutional conferences, which birthed our flag independence in 1960, were held.
Besides being the political capital of our colonial overlords, London also enjoys the notoriety of being a safe haven for looted public funds and first choice of real estate investment of kleptomaniac Nigerians who have had access to public treasury. The latter must have activated King Charles 11 to reportedly ask president Muhammadu Buhari during a recent visit to Buckingham Palace if he had one of those properties in London!
Am told time there was in the 1960s and 1970s when a one way ticket to London was a princely N20 only, and no Nigerian needed a visa to visit good old London. Then some Nigerians were fond of travelling to London at the least opportunity to have breakfast and host birthday owambe parties.
That belongs to history and I now appreciate why Federal authorities banished the study of History below tertiary levels in our approved educational curriculum. History has a long memory and makes you question the present with the audacity of a monk. It can also make you wiser if you allow its lessons to guide and guard your endeavours.
The labour market in impoverished economies, such as ours, may not give history a high ranking. But it remains an indispensable fulcrum that turns the wheel of comprehension of humans and humanity.
Nigerian politicians love to replicate history, but hate its lessons!
In 2014, Rotimi Amaechi, then Governor of Rivers state literally took then Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), General (as he was then prefixed) Buhari to deliver a lecture on Contemporary Nigerian politics at Chatham House in London.
The thinly veiled political mission was to sell Buhari to the International community and possibly court the support of No. 10 Downing street (official residence of UK Prime Ministers).
It was a masterstroke as uninformed Nigerians in the diaspora interpreted such audacious move as a reflection of the unpopularity of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan Federal government! But the truth be told, it wasn’t the elocution nor the content of Buhari’s speech at Chatham House that won him the election in 2015! Any credible political pundit will mention religion, irredentism and skewed electoral conduct as the main factors that won him the Presidency at first ballot.
When Buhari returned to the polls again in 2019, he never bothered to pay a visit to Chatham House again to present his score card to his International audience. What a pity! Like a pregnant woman who can never forget her clinically confirmed Delivery Date (DD), Nigerian politicians are orchestrating 2023 as the magic year that “the come must come to become” (apologies to KO MBADIWE)!
Recently, Chatham House in London became the preferred podium for the standard bearer of APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to kick off his Presidential campaign in the diaspora. He ignored all entreaties by the local media, but including Channels TV and Arise TV to appear and talk to Nigerians about policies and programmes.
He jetted out to London with a motley assemblage of political soulmates! Unlike Buhari who took all the questions to the best of his ability in 2014, Asiwaju decided to outsource answers to questions put to him to his political subordinates who attended the parley with him. Some of them were taken aback by the novel turn of events at the Chatham House and Femi Gbajabiamila, the Speaker of the House of Representatives had to ask the anchor man to repeat the question Asiwaju referred to him.
The logical deduction here is that the Chatham House parley has achieved opposite results! It’s either BAT thinks that the Presidency is already in his pouch (sokoto) or Nigerians do not have a better option than him!
Even Donald Trump at the height of his magisterial arrogance wouldn’t try this with Americans. Not few foreigners who attended that “Reality show” would resist to rate Nigeria low in understanding the matrix on demands of governance. It is even more painful when recalled that a Town hall meeting with a similar purpose was boycotted back home in Lagos by the same man about the same time! His spin doctors may tailspin in desperate attempts to adorn that Chatham House appointment with the toga of team work and capacity building. But the inescapable truth is that it was a comic skit , “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” for Nigerians!
Okon, a journalist and lawyer, lives in Uyo.
