By Chris Agbedo

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing… When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” – Edmund Burke

“After more than two decades of our support for the PDP, Enugu state has only unemployment, insecurity, dehumanisation of her indigenes by law-enforcement officers and the resultant youth restiveness to show for it. It is against this backdrop that we welcome you on this courtesy visit, and predictably we have received a sumptuous dish of often-repeated promises from you…”
– HRM, Igwe Amb. Lawrence Agubuzu

The thrust of discussion in this piece is PDP’s ‘sumptuous dish of often-repeated promises’ to Ndigbo, which Atiku Abubakar predictably lived up to his characteristic billing while on campaign visit to Enugu on Tuesday, 14 February, 2023. It imposes a requirement on Burke’s ‘good men to do’ something; lest, they fall as easy prey to the ‘contemptible’ conspiracy of the ‘bad men’. Nonetheless, in this context, there is a role reversal: Burke’s ‘good men’ signpost our own brand of ‘bad men’ and vice versa.

Edmund Burke’s position foregrounded the 18th century politics of England dominated by the powerful blocs – the Whigs and the Tories. The Whigs had remained the dominant party from the early part of 1700 up to the late 1760s when its power structure began to wane.

As a Whig and renowned writer of the late 18th century era, Burke had in his seminal discourses called on the Whigs to unite against an emergent Tory power-base, one woven around George III under the Earl of Bute, which was considered extra-parliamentary and therefore unconstitutional in Burke’s estimation, unlike his Whig power, which hardly derived its legitimacy from a modern party structure but anchored by a perverse system of patronage, influence peddling, and cronyism.

Burke set for himself the task of imploring and convincing the Whigs to unite and coalesce into a party to stave off the existential threat, which the then evolving Tory Party represented.

The Enugu State Council of Traditional Rulers, led by its Chairman, Igwe Lawrence Agubuzu in a statement on behalf of his colleagues, decried massive unemployment and insecurity in the State despite 22 years of loyalty to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). It was issued as a welcome address during a courtesy visit to traditional rulers in Enugu by the presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, as a precursor to his campaign rally.

The excerpt of the statement issued by Igwe Agubuzu, Nigeria’s former ambassador to Zambia and Malawi, who also doubles as the Chairman, Southeast Council of Traditional Rulers ran thus:
A factual and undiluted political history of our country’s present republic will teach that the political party known as the PDP was midwifed by eminent and patriotic Nigerians known as the G-34.

They did this under the leadership of the Second Republic vice-president, His Excellency, Dr Alex Ekwueme, an indigene of the Southeast geopolitical zone. Since the inception of PDP, its presidential candidates have always been warmly welcomed by us, each time they came hunting for votes.

PDP presidential candidates invariably made mouth-watering promises to our subjects who consequently voted massively for them. After more than two decades of our support for the PDP, Enugu State has only unemployment, insecurity, dehumanisation of her indigenes by law-enforcement officers and the resultant youth restiveness to show for it. It is against this backdrop that we welcome you on this courtesy visit and predictably we have received a sumptuous dish of often-repeated promises from you.

If our late brother, Prof. Chinua Achebe, were to be here, he would have simply advised you to go and count your teeth with your tongue. Everything considered our hope of a better Nigeria compels us to remain engaged and pray for peaceful, free, fair and credible presidential election. We pray that the election produces the best candidate, irrespective of his political party…

True to type, the PDP presidential candidate confirmed the royal father’s statement at the rally as if the latter possessed power of clairvoyance to probe into the former’s mindset when he said:

Last time I came for stakeholders meeting, I told the people of South East that I’m the stepping stone to Igbo Presidency and that is why I chose an Igbo man as my deputy. Whether the person comes from South or East, let it be from Igbo people. Enugu State will receive massive attention from my administration because you have shown me that Enugu State is PDP. I urge you to vote for PDP during the election because you have been doing it.

Promises and pie-crust, according to Jonathan Swift, are made to be broken. Promises, notes Stephen Richards, are only as strong as the person who gives them. The danger of serially-broken promises, is that they are like broken mirrors, which as Richard Paul Evans surmised, leave those who held to them bleeding and staring at fractured images of themselves.

As if Igwe Agubuzu knew that Mr. Atiku was set to make a ‘sumptuous dish of promises’, he took a proactive step of arming himself with a big broom to sweep up the broken pieces. Just as Atiku would doubtless have promised anything for the mere pleasure of breaking all bounds so would the Monarch have even liked to request him to swear on oath so he could add the attractions of perjury to his horrible pleasures. Atiku dutifully proved that his words were like satin on his skin; he just picked the lies that he liked the best.

The politician in Atiku knew that promises are about as good as already chewed-up gum. At no point was he in doubts that his ‘sumptuous dish’ of promises has become a willful tactic to get what he wanted against genuine commitments that he intended to keep, and that the only thing that he had come to Enugu to do was the delivery of serially-broken promises.

“Promises, made and kept; forgotten in keyless chambers; dusty with age and neglect; promises – that once were, and still are, will always be what they are – mere promises,” so said Akanksha Singh. “People,” as Frank Sonnenberg posited, “are way too quick to make commitments and too quick to abandon them.”

Good enough, Igwe Agubuzu in his celestial wisdom had chosen to pick the gauntlet of proving William Shakespeare’s saying that ‘the King’s name is a tower of strength—strong, tall, unassailable.’ The Monarch gave vent to Martin Luther King’s position that “oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever; the yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”

While recognizing that there may be times when a people are powerless to prevent injustice, there must never be a time when they fail to protest; and that no matter how difficult it may be to speak truth to power, circumstances such as serial political lies have made doing so increasingly inescapable.

In political season when the peer pressure of political correctness forgoes truth for the sake of groupthink and herd mentality, it is an anathema to question the exclusive preserve of the conquistador – the manufacturer of public consent – to change mental models of his captive audience.

Yet, in spite of his professional background defined by diplomatese, Igwe Agubuzu took a break from the niceties and finesse of euphemisms and airs and graces of political correctness to rile up his repugnance and voice of dissension against political manipulation and chip away at its benumbing and inebriating powers. After all, “one word of truth in a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence,” according to Czesław Miłosz, “sounds like a pistol shot.”

In a time of deceit, notes George Orwell, “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” The way to right wrongs, as Ida Wells-Barnett observed, is to turn the light of truth upon them. The King was not unaware of the repercussions of being a prophet in the wilderness speaking truth to power. Nonetheless, he was not unmindful of Edmund Burke’s warning that the hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.

Even though it is far easier to follow the lucrative trade winds of popular opinion; all the same, the wise Monarch chose to take refuge in Stewart Stafford’s wise saying that “withheld honesty results in forgotten words.” Indeed, His Royal Majesty wouldn’t allow any politician bought and sold like cheap merchandise in the political markets, those who are more interested in fame, in standing on the podiums of filthy arrogance and sitting to dine at the table of grand deception, to continue plying their utterly reprehensible trade.

Surely, Mr. Atiku’s captive audience is to blame for enabling and even nourishing the toxicity of political manipulation. By remaining receptive to their sumptuous dish of broken promises, the people being lied to become willing accomplices to Louis Yako’s dagger-wound conspiracy. Wound hardly heals insofar as it continues to treasure the alliance with the dagger. In summative sense, the efficacious remedy is in the ailment itself. The people’s silence is the chronic ailment. Their iron resolve and unmitigated commitment for change and for exposing the rotten underbellies of serial political liars is the remedy.

Simon Sinek relishes the zestful flavour of Martin Luther King’s inspiration and how he inspired a movement. Furthermore, he learned that a cause must be organic. And for a cause to have an impact, it must belong to those who join the movement and not those who lead it. For daring to clip the wings of ‘bad men’ by standing up to speak truth to power, His Royal Majesty, Igwe Agubuzu has like Martin Luther King, inspired a movement.

It is one movement that seeks to unmask Atiku’s partisan contrivance, a ruse, a doodad, a wily subterfuge dressed up as ‘stepping stone to an Igbo presidency’ to suck in the dewy-eyed simpletons and consummate his lifetime political ambition. Ndigbo cannot afford to be a willing accessory to this cheap blackmail intended ab initio as an incalculable insult to their collective psyche and sensibilities.

Let Ndigbo join the consummate Monarch in this all-important prayer that the February 25 presidential elections ‘produce the best candidate, irrespective of his political party’. This represents the best recipe for clipping the wings of evil men and their sumptuous dish of broken promises.

Edmund Burke, the British parliamentarian who championed the cause of American independence, underscored the overriding importance of unity and galvanic purposefulness in combating societal evil. In local Igbo parlance, this concept of ‘united strength’ is captured by the two adages – ‘Gìdìgìdì bụ ùgwù Ézè (The King’s respect/strength derives from communal support); Anyụkọọ maamiri, ọ gbọọ ụfụfụ (Joint urination foams).

For Burke, a people united on a common cause would easily and speedily communicate the alarm and urgency of any booting evil design. They are predisposed to fathom it with common counsel and combat it frontally with united strength. Conversely, mutual communication and possible resolution remain ineffectual and mutual resistance impracticable whey they lie dispersed, without order or discipline.

This finds equivalence in the proverb – ‘Anụ gba ofu ofu, e gbuo ya ofu ofu’ (Haunted game that opt for solitary escape bid get killed solitarily). A group is incapable of executing a joint task with uniformity, perseverance, and efficiency if members are neither acquainted with one another’s principles, practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in a common cause, nor enjoyed personal confidence, friendship, and common interests.

Whereas the most footling and niggling man, by adding his value to and increases even if infinitesimally the weight and worth of the organic whole, no man unencumbered by grip of vainglory would choose to wallow in self-delusion by banking on his singular, solitary, and desultory efforts to thwart the subterranean subterfuges of perfidious sons and daughters of perdition.

The time to send the mercantile politicians, who have mastered the ungodly art of feeding Ndigbo with toxic gas and yet denying them the scatological comfort of farting, to their well-deserved political guillotine, is now. The import of Igwe Agubuzu’s royal intervention is that PDP’s stifling knee has been too long on the neck of Ndigbo and they can barely breath again.

It is only hoped that this royal message, quite uncommon in these age and times of crass opportunism and phony-baloney, plucks resounding resonance with his fellow Igwe in Enugu State and indeed, the entire southeast, whose natural duty it is to shepherd their flocks in the right direction.

To everything and a season for every activity under the heavens, there a time, so says the wise King in the Book of Ecclesiastes, 3:1-11. There is no better time to set Ndigbo free from the enslaving manacles of the politicians’ shenanigans than now. HRM, Igwe Lawrence Agubuzu, may your reign be long! Igwee!

To Ndigbo, I dare say, lo and behold, February 25, 2023 beckons! Shine your eye well, well! We no dey carry last! Gird your loins; fasten your seat-belts in readiness for the critical cruise-level, for a new Nigeria is POssible! I come in peace.

*Chris Agbedo is a Professor of Linguistics & Director, Centre for Igbo Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN)