NIGERIA is becoming notoriously famous as a country of diverse revolutionaries who wish us to believe that they possess the character of nobly selfless heroes to alter and halt our brutally shattered dreams and rescue us from our current emotional, spiritual, economic, political and judicial shipwreck. These revolutionaries mostly permeate opposition parties, civil liberty organisations, trade unions and other sundry groups outside the mainstream and central ruling party. In diverse ways, and through different kinds of phrase-mongering, they wish us to see and applaud them as veritable titans of democracy and supreme champions of integrity.

They are the famous heroes (and heroines) of the Nigerian masses and people who they will never abandon as they have been abandoned by those in power, authority and government, those “who enjoy without working”, and by this, they mean those who are in the central government in the land and the party they are members of.

The veritable models of democracy and invincible champions of integrity are the beautiful ones who gave hell to Abacha and company in the hey days of the malignant ones and in the reigning years of the wily cantankerous general who was once our Head of state and now an ex-president. In point of fact, our steadfast and beautiful revolutionaries carry in them grains of benevolent visions to be utilised for the victory fight on behalf of the teeming masses over the “wretches”, “the “gang of robbers and scoundrels that is governing us”. Yet in them we see that their visions of benevolence are derived from the dictionary of sentimentalism. Again, in point of fact, their benevolent visions are those of pseudo-revolutionaries, if at all they are revolutionaries, interested only in power for themselves, and not really on behalf of the exploited masses that they will subsequently embitter after grabbing power. They are not and they will never be the alternatives to the beautiful ones. They are not better than the current landlords of our destiny.

Now, what am I up to? The action of the Lagos anti-democrats who are doing a revolutionary battle with the Guild of Medical Doctors after an agreement of honour duly entered into with the Guild and Lagos government is an appropriate example to cite to prove our thesis. So many dead patients have been recorded since the unnecessary impasse between the government and the medical doctors who are fighting for the complete abolition of poor health policy that is of no benefit to the generality of Lagos people and masses. Of course, democratically healthy remunerations for doctors should and ought to be part of any sound health policy which a democratic government that cares for workers and the people it is governing must make allowance for. But this Lagos government of a progressive and a revolutionary party is not ready and is not caring to hearken to the voice of reason. It is sticking to its killing gun of sacking the doctors who are rightly on strike. The doctors must stick together to win the present contest against the bourgeois government and its bourgeois revolutionism which it wishes us to accept as democratic progressivism. The doctors must not succumb to blackmail. They also must not allow the tiny acts of tiny betrayers in their midst to deter them. How they will shame and humiliate us if they do!

In an earlier essay, we tendered a nobly honest advice to our lawyer-governor whom we assumed was a true democrat and comrade. We now know better. He belongs to the club and circle of landlords who always resist the abolition of landlordism. Certainly, the club and circle he belongs to formulate pseudo-revolutionary or pseudo-progressive aspiration which the masses and people of Lagos State naively accepted as “the algebra of revolution,” to quote Hegel’s words, that would give them cherished equality in the polity.

Now we can see clearly what their party would have subjected us to if it had “won” the election that ushered in the current central government. The lawyer-governor’s circle and cycle of benevolent rulers would certainly have treated us all in a far more supercilious manner than they are treating the doctors and dying people of Lagos, their families and all of us who are requesting the Lagos democratic government to be truly democratically benevolent and truly benevolently democratic and positively progressive. This epoch is watching. But why are we blaming Dr. Jonathan and his fellow-farers in a government not pretending to be on the side of the suffering masses and people they are crushing without conscience? The PDP people may weave rotten cobwebs around the masses, but should the ACN do the same?

In Edo State the comrade-governor indeed is building structures, but the people are languishing in pains. The workers are suffering the uncompromising pains of excessive taxation. In fact, ask the civil servants what they are going through. Ask the medical doctors also what they are bearing and stomaching. As I am writing this, I am being admitted into the knowledge that medical doctors are quitting the central hospitals almost on daily basis. By the way, it is common knowledge that retired civil servants cannot get and are not getting their gratuities as and when due. Desperate ones are even doing things they should not have done to jump queues that should not be created in the first place before getting their entitlements after spending the best years of their existence on earth in the Edo State civil service. Perhaps the comrade governor and our ex-national labour leader is not aware of what is going on. But he is aware of the excessive taxation crushing workers in the state.

Would he have accepted this in his labour bad days that shot him to fame and landed him in his present garden and orchard of sweets? Must Edo State workers and people live by structures alone? We ask these questions not unmindful of what transpired during the tenure of those he succeeded as governor. But those were not comrade-governors. And what provision is he making for the many jobless persons in the state?

One more thing: our progressive, fiery and revolutionary ex-labour leader is not tolerant of criticism. He does not at all compromise any opposition, no matter how light or gentle or mild it is. He loathes the Nigerian Tribune like he loathes a plague and a monster because of his wrong perception of this newspaper as an enemy newspaper that publishes materials from his opponents—even when the paper publishes from time to time materials from his own end. The Edo State media, including the once great Observer newspaper and State-owned Television/Radio Station has nothing to do with news materials and items from his opponents. Is this what should be in a democratic state governed by a people’s governor, a comrade and revolutionary? The governor is still mourning, so I must hold my tongue forthwith.

But he and all his revolutionary partners, people of democratic timber and caliber and of fiery progressive and revolutionary temper, must give thought to what I perceive as the important, significant and historical issues and questions that I have tendered here. Or have they revised their revolutionism against the masses and people of Nigeria? How the PDP people are chuckling! How they are chucking before the coming deluge! And how I pity them all and the pseudo–revolutionaries! How I pity every body!

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