War, by any definition, is neither a tea party nor is it synonymous with any form of merry making. Its major characteristic is violence. War is not for the weakling, but for those who are physically strong.  In fact, a war front is not a gentleman’s playing ground.  At the battle front, you try to kill to avoid being killed. So, it is usually a do-or-die affair.

In Nigeria, politics is the most lucrative venture. Because of the fame and wealth (in some cases, ostentatious living) that public office confers on its occupier in the country, most Nigerian politicians develop Machiavellian stance. They see the process of access to public office as a do-or-die affair.

Therefore, election period is a war period. The actions and/or inaction of politicians or political office seekers and their supporters, most often, present them as men and women on the battlefield. The polity itself, therefore, becomes a war theatre.

The war is always fought among political stakeholders — aspirants to different offices and their supporters. Whether it is inter or intra-party squabbles, it is always fought as a war of attrition by the stakeholders. Thus, the polity is always heated whenever an election period is approaching.

Now that the 2011 election is drawing closer, the polity, as usual, is already being heated. Or, how do we explain the hues and cries about the zoning policy of one of the political parties which members today behave as if their party’s zoning arrangement is a constitutional provision in the country?

Some of the apostles of the zoning policy of just one of the political parties in the country are already threatening fire and brimstone if they are not allowed to have their way in the coming political dispensation.

To them, it is nothing but a do-or-die affair. In fact, to some of them, it is either a northerner takes over the reins of power in 2011 or there would be no more Nigeria as a single political entity.

The desperation of most of the politicians is a function of their veiled selfish motive and the nation’s age-long ruinous ethno-politics. They seek political offices not for the general good of the people, but for sectional cum veiled egocentric reasons. By this, they inadvertently activate and make more ruinous the centrifugal forces in the country. This is the root of the nation being mired into political retrogression and unwarranted underdevelopment in all ramifications since independence 50 years ago.

The discovery of  large weapons of mass destruction imported into the country through the Lagos port recently should be seen as a revelation of the desperate preparation of politicians for the 2011 elections, or rather, 2011 ‘war’, the bickering about the source and destination of the weapons notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, when the war comes, it will not be limited to the desperate politicians. Many innocent and hapless Nigerians, as usual, are going to be consumed in the war that was designed not for their interest but rather for the exclusive interest of the politicians and their cohorts.

The level of the sophistication of the weapons caught at the Lagos port explains the degree of the desperation of those preparing for the 2011 war. The escapist or diversionary factors of Iran and Hamas should not reduce the concern and vigilance of every stakeholder in the polity, as we approach the 2011 planned war of attrition by desperate politicians.

Unfortunately, Nigeria’s socio-economic environment provides a fertile ground for such war of attrition.

The large army of unemployed and unemployable young Nigerians, created by long years of misrule and planlessness, forms the large pool from where the desperate politicians recruit thugs to prosecute the war.

Implicit in the arms build-up by politicians is the fact that they are yet to embrace the culture of free and fair elections being promised by both the president and the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). It is quite unfortunate that in Nigeria, almost all politicians do not believe in the democratic principle of one man one vote to determine who controls the reins of power as in other democratic climes. This explains why virtually all political parties in the country are involved in election rigging.

Before 2011, if President Goodluck Jonathan and the INEC chairman, Professor Atahiru Jega, are serious about free, fair, credible and generally acceptable elections in Nigeria, they have to see the importation of arms and ammunition into the country at this time as instructive. They must, therefore, reappraise their strategies to achieve their desire for an acceptable election in the country.

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