On Monday, 8 August 2010, Channels Television relayed at 10.00pm, arguably its prime news time, a pathetic news item pertaining to the gruesome murder of a young Benin politician in within the city.

The young man, Mr. Oghogho Omorogbe, an engineer, was formerly of the PDP and lately of the ACN.

In fact, he just made a switch to the ACN and was doing his grassroots rounds in preparation for his entry into the primaries of his new party for nomination to fly the party’s flag as its candidate in the elections to the Edo State House of Assembly come 2011. As at now, the motive for the dastardly murder of the 34 years old father of a month’s old baby is yet to be ascertained. And it will not be until the police investigators, hopefully, do their thorough duty.

No matter what the Police may come out with eventually, the sad killing of the young man is a further degradation and debasement of our higher faculties by the lower which, for now, predominate over the higher. More importantly, the terrible killing rekindles and foreshadows the doom ahead of us in the 2011 elections. That is, if the killing was inspired by politics, Nigerian style, as the young man’s pastor-father wants us to believe. Speaking on the same Channels Television in the morning of Tuesday, 10 August, 2010, Pastor Omorogbe gave an inkling into his son’s brutal murder, which has political undertones.

If we believe Pastor Omorogbe’s suspicion, and also if we believe the account of the dead young man’s wife also relayed on Channels Television, then we all are in for it as 2011 draws near. Politicians as well as non-politicians are in deep trouble as we get near the election year that will make or mar our nation state of Nigeria.

Recently, in the same Edo State, The Nation correspondent nearly got maimed permanently if not for mother luck when he went to cover a re-election event. The Edo State Governor has since tendered his unreserved apology to the NUJ, Edo State Council in respect of that bad event. Yet we must say it loud and clear that all is far from well with our democracy and all will never be well with it until the powers that be force themselves to alter our orientation. Somebody of negatively high political quality said it before that politics in our clime is a do or die affair. Must it be so? And what a febrile political philosophy that sooner or later will turn us against ourselves and into cannibals?

Now, if we move from Edo State and make a brief political stop-over at Ondo State, our observation and analysis of the situation there is not particularly different from that of Edo State. In fact, the recent voting/electoral crisis at Okitipupa was another supreme manifestation of our amazing political rage leading us drearily towards the imprisoning destination of what is to come in 2011 and beyond.

Edo and Ondo are supposedly Labour States. In other words, the two states are states where we were expected to find every citizen happy; states where inconstant fortunes that beset every citizen and every individual would be usurped by the “people’s governors” governing the respective states.

The two states, and their brother state of Lagos were expected to consign the sorrow and pain and disillusion of ambition and the vanity of hopes of the common man and of all and sundry to the dustbins where they rightly should be. The three states, expectedly and supposedly governed by forward-looking young men and acclaimed nationalists/patriots and human rights advocates were going to be seductively exemplary states of perfect governance. But with the different kinds of coercive violence that we have witnessed in them, we cannot but wonder and be perplexed at the ironical turn of events in our three expectedly perfect democratic States. This coercive violence has taken away something laudable from the achievements of our expectedly exemplary governors.

Our reflections and meditations upon the failings, weaknesses and anxieties of governance in our exemplary states fill us with fear as we foresee the horrible calamities ahead, especially in the non-exemplary states, as 2011 approaches.

On the eve of the one or two elections he partook in as presidential candidate before he answered the divine call from the earth plane, Chief Obafemi Awolowo predicted, rightly, that we would not see democracy again if he was rigged out of power. Of course, since his demise, we have had series of elections, but none of them has been infallibly democratic. The acclaimed best, even if imperfect, presidential election won by the late Abiola was undemocratically aborted by the impeccably gap-toothed Maradonic near-anarchist who wishes and itches to return to Aso Rock. No political, literary and cultural historian, even of supremely conservative bent, wishes this to happen, no matter the very rigorous apology he may offer for the wrongs he committed in the past. Besides, the hard lesson his do-or-die erstwhile commander gloomily drove down our implacable heads and sensibilities cannot be forgotten in a hurry. And to boot: the confusion, the irruptions and rhetorical non-senses his zoning and non-zoning wisdom and formula are generating in our polity today are giving us the wisdom and strength to arm ourselves against further undemocratic calamities from the Generals who combined to kill all our dreams as Awolowo predicted.

Now, the gist of the little and much I have offered above is that as 2011 draws near, doom, like a ferocious tiger, lurks and looms in the polity. Things are not what they seem; and what they seem are not what they are or will ever be. Eloquently, the futility of the majority of our immoral, deceitful, unnationalistic, unpatriotic and undemocratic politicians who at best are scoundrels, will play itself out in the coming months. And may we wish the looming doom to give us the final and ultimate triumph. May our destiny stop sobbing over the coming gloom which paradoxically shall be the turning point of our historical destiny. This: a wish/prayer and consciousness we must struggle for with the authoritative rigour of the fearless and the wise.

Matter to come: Queen Bolanle, and Oba Adesina of Akure have reconciled. Watch out for In and Out on these dramatis personae of royal love.

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