THE ACTIVISTS OF ANTI-PARTY POLITICS, BY EKANPOU ENEWARIDIDEKE

It is a universal truism that hired killers are in every society but anti-party politicians are the most deadly hired killers that strike inwards with a deadly and devastating accuracy who must be feared and watched in every political party driven ideologically by transformational ideals. In every component of their anatomical and physiological architecture they are animated by thoughts of vindictiveness, thoughts of being overshadowed, outrun, outrivalled and outshone by their political contemporaries, thoughts of political hegemony and thoughts of political self-aggrandisement.

Democracy demands that politics be engaged healthily.Politics is conventionally engaged within a canoe called party when one is irrepressibly driven by transformational vision and dreams for man on earth.On this canoe nobly used for transformational drive it is demanded that political desperation die through deliberate emasculation because when political desperation dies, the transformational vision pursued gets innoculated against hovering vermins, cockroaches,leeches and cankerworms.

Political desperation often births anti-party politics and anti-party politics is the cankerworm that kills political parties because in every election the activists of anti-party politics work rebelliously as an undercurrent, undertow, in a subterranean way against their own political parties and deflect or reverse their electoral victories in satanic alliances with some other opposition political parties that have promised them the Holy Grail, Heaven and earth.

The 2023 Presidential and Governorship Elections and the subterranean conflagration it caused in different political parties in Nigeria have come and gone but not the echoes and the stories which can only be traced, identified and told with scientific exactitude by the anthills in the entire political exercise by being hypothetical, experimental and theoretical in the approach without using any known laboratory – except the common laboratory called the objective mind specially engaged in roving journeys of this kind.

JP Clark, Gabriel Okara, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka had long reigned as great thinkers and writers whose creativity is unrivalled in the literary world. The famed creativity of these literary geniuses wears pale colours and droops like tired leaves after the 2023 Presidential and the Governorship Elections in Nigeria. We still have on earth historically amazing people who are more imaginative than Soyinka and his ilk. These great creative thinkers were accidentally thrown up by the different political parties in the last 2023 elections in Nigeria. These great thinkers are variously called either the drunken anti-party politicians or the activists of anti-party politics whose full story can only be told meticulously by the anthills without distracting ornamentation.

The focal point meant here are the anthills who were affected by the electoral conflagration masterminded by anti-party politicians but who were not destroyed by the conflagration – only providentially privileged to live and tell the true story like the anthills in Chinua Achebe’s ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH though the anthills here are the anthills of the political savannah constituted by the different political parties in Nigeria.

The activities of anti-party politicians are the resource-base in any organisation. No society can behold transformation in clear outlines without drawing on the ingenuity and creativity of anti-party politicians. They are the most reliable political cartographers who ingeniously wield the magic for candidates to win election in every electoral season or cycle. They engage in imaginative thinking and create both the needed words of cajolement and the action for the electoral vision to be concretised.These are the political thinkers/party apparachiks who openly belong to one political party likely to win the election. They have their legs straddled between two worlds and their true identities whimsically ‘Sizwebansied’.

Allusively, the above must be a looming variant of ‘SIZWEBANSIFICATION in the politics of political parties in Nigeria over which we are yet to be given corresponding orientation.With this looming political ‘Sizwebansification’ gaudily projected at every political dawn, anti-party politicians always prize themselves as political geniuses whose tentacles have already found comfortable roosts. In their megalomaniacal political calculations anti-party politicians must claim this nomenclature or sobriquet called political ‘Ashawos’ and continue to reign without any challenge from any corner of the world.

Amazingly, it is often with thematically striking songs the activists of anti-party politics deploy their imaginativeness during election. Anti-party politics activists are desperate politicians who are perpetual rancour-carriers from party primaries where they democratically lost to their co-contestants. With bottled rancour from the concluded party primaries, they secretly build alliances with a sister political party whose flag-bearer they have sworn to work for as an alternative to their party candidate to whom they lost the party primary.

Activists of anti-party politics are masters of oratory before whom the Ebanu of Torugbene and the John Ayabotu of Ayakoromo pale into insignificance as historically applauded orators.As masters of oratory and cajolement, these anti-party Lords collect millions of money from both their party candidate and the candidate of the opposition party. Before the two candidates they differently offer two terms of cajolement. To their own party candidates they tell this: You have won the party primary and so you are good to go. The rivalries and rancours of the party primaries are over now. The party is supreme and it is our mandate to work for the victory of the party. You have nothing to fear from me. To the candidate of the opposition party they have consolidated alliances to work for, they maintain thus: I was robbed in my party primary. I am very bitter about it and in my bitterness I have decided to work for you. Your victory is sure. I shall remain in the party and work against my party. I shall only decamp from the party after the general election. All our votes shall be given to you. Who wouldn’t’ fall for anti-party activists with this imaginative terms of cajolement and engagement?

There is a generous river for the activists of anti-party politics. The river from which they draw their creativity is generous and inexhaustible. In response to, and in line with, the dictate of their imaginative flight they create a tie in the results of the polling units within their control or they slightly make the votes of their own political party higher than their choice candidate in the opposing political party. When the choice candidate in the opposition political party wins the election, they storm the door of the winner with their votes with the argument that they actually worked for the opposition party with their body and soul and so merit political appointment. And where it is the candidate of their own political party whom they fought with tooth and nail to dismantle that won eventually, they quickly change the cajolement narrative to this: it was a fierce electoral battle but we eventually won even if with a slim margin. It was this slim margin that was cunningly created by the anti-party politics activists to ingratiate themselves politically into the favour of the winner in the election as a basis to get political appointments.

Disgustingly, it is with theatrical remorseless speed the so-called anti-party politicians journey to congratulate and dance ‘Filete’ dance steps with the winner of the election – and alas, this was a man they cunningly worked against after collecting millions of crisp notes!

Collection of huge sums of money from the candidate of their own political party and using the money to wreak electoral havoc on the candidate is another annoying characterisation of anti-party politicians.Yet, some of these politicians are those who prize themselves as ‘watcher-dogs’ and shamelessly shed their noble ascription, position, enclosure, and became the ‘watched-dogs’ during the 2023 Presidential and Governorship Elections.This must be a political anticlimax over which the watcher-dogs must feel compelled to offer themselves for serial flagellation because they are the venal, pliable and bribable politicians who can do anything in condescension to guarantee their political relevance – even if it would mean killing off their opponents without possible traces.

It is the same infernal politicians who celebrate the failure of their targeted candidates in the election with triumphalism without a single thought spared for providential possibilities. In their misguided triumphalism these cunning activists of anti-party politics feed the governor or the president with denigratory tales imaginatively moulded to destroy the political survival possibilities of the failed candidates. Bravo to anti-party politicians!

Clearly, it takes only meticulous,methodical, eagle-eyed and gifted anthills of the political savannah to detect the destructive antics of anti-party politicians because they are so professional in their sugar-coated pretence and ‘Mowenmowen’ that they can hardly be caught red-handed even after the perpetration of electoral atrocities.

It is always difficult to catch humans who are cunningly janus-faced or hydra-faced, but not for the anthills of the political conflagration. When anti-party politicians know that failing their polling units would expose their perfidy, they strategically position polling units away from their jurisdiction to cause the political damage from some respectable distance and eventually escape being spotted or tainted as the mastermind of the political damage caused their own political party. Another shameless strategy is to send their own children, wives, cousins and relatives to cause electoral damage in targeted polling units while they strategically stay away from those polling units. When such desperate politicians are confronted with the electoral debacle or fiasco in their own polling units, they cleverly explain that they were rebelled against by their own family members who did not wish them well in their political careers, even where it is evidentially clear to all that the so-called family rebels are still living on the political patronage of the politician supposedly rebelled against electorally. Can you now ‘SAW’ how cunning these anti-party politicians are? Can you ‘SAW’ the ease with which they rhetorically justify their actions using rehearsed explanations and answers? These imaginative anti-party politicians are vermins and cankerworms in any political party who make politics a very dirty game.

What about those conscienceless politicians who manufacture indefensible excuses or emergencies and refuse to go to their polling units to vote during the general election? For this category of politicians they have perfected the machinery to wreak electoral havoc on the targeted candidate of their own political party and so their appearance in their wards on the election day would seemingly make them complicit in the planned electoral coup or insurrection. After the electoral damage is done, these absentee politicians exonerate themselves from the electoral mess by saying that it happened because they were unavoidably away on the election day, but where the targeted candidate of their own political party wins the election dramatically, they cunningly attribute the electoral victory to the fact that they gave directives to their boys in the ward to work for their political party’s candidate. What exceptionally intelligent politicians are they! Wole Soyinka and JP Clark must feel obliged to claim the creativity of these anti-party politicians in borrowed terms because their rare creativity vibrates at a higher frequency than theirs.

Anti-party politicians and activists of anti-party politics are great politicians celebrated for their operational cunning and creativity. When these bribable migratory politicians know that the vindictively targeted candidate of their own political party has victory possibilities in identified polling units, they deliberately create convulsions in those polling units either by destroying the sensitive electoral materials or creating a killing spree to ensure that no votes are got from those units.

It remains a memorable chronicle in the chronicles of anti-party politicians that they are eagle-eyed in political vision. Even within the grip of 2023 the so-called eagle-eyed politicians see what will become of their antagonised and targeted person in twelve years. In their respected eagle-eyed vision they see their opponent becoming a president or senate president in the political journey, the vindictive eagle-eyed and psychic anti-party politicians would create all the obstacles to cut short the envisioned rosy political future of their opponent.

In the life of activists of anti-party politics rosy growth is an anathema.Anti-party politicians do not want to see any rosy growth in the life of their targeted person. They can assemble all their political arsenals to bombard a person today based on their psychic vision that their targeted person is likely to become the president of the country in another ten years.

Anti-party politicians could wage political wars against opponents over something bound to occur only in another 500 years. What a quixotic, frivolous, senseless and fruitless war? Have anti-party politicians become God who exactly knows what will happen in another ten or 500 years? Are anti-party politicians authors of political life-span and political configurations in this world? Have anti-party politicians assumed the divine mantle to create, determine and annihilate whimsically, the political destinies and life-span of individuals in this world?

From the figures of the 2023 Presidential and Governorship elections everybody saw the performance of anti-party politicians in every political party. It was a sad commentary on the behavior of politicians hitherto seen as dependable forces. Something becomes intriguing in a weird way when puzzles pounce on puzzles and produce puzzles like the bush pig that challenged Solo the hunter in Oyangbene forest and warded off a gunshot aimed at it and fought the hunter to a standstill until an approaching hollered human interventionist invasion scared the bush pig away, leaving the hunter worn out, when politicians suddenly break into a dance without a musician at work vocally,instrumentally or acapella. Barrister Soja Smooth did not did not come, neither did Pereama and Izonebi.There was no music blaring in the forecourt of the secretariat of Pdp,Lp and Apc; yet the people who proudly call themselves the activists of anti-party politics got inebriated ecstatically and broke into a choreographically rich dance and congratulated themselves clinking glasses, huffing and puffing, when the celebratory jamboree was pronounced over

Only vile politicians celebrate electoral victories gloatingly as if tomorrow had died long go.And whenever politicians are spotted dancing gloatingly over electoral victory, they must be the Archbishops, the Doctors of anti-party politics because their markers are always gaudily different

Politicians who celebrate electoral victories with triumphalism are political lizards. ‘Lizardic’, they are convinced they can jubilate and crowd out the truth.Despite theatrical attempts to crowd out the distilled truth of the authentic story carried by the anthills, it still remains that in the 2023 presidential and Governorship elections some hitherto trusted and formidable politicians of the different political parties labored in collusion with bribable allied forces to wreak havoc on their own political parties through activist advocacy for anti-party politics. After this dismal performance these anti-party politicians are today at work to win the ear and eye of the president and the governors through concocted stories and toadying congratulatory messages splashed everywhere.

The morally indicted obsequious anti-party politicians are those who may be forced to move against the writer of this piece for the portrait that radiates their infernal performance.But where the anti-party politicians daringly file out like ants against the writer, the Tompolos, the Asupas, the Otuaros, the Boros, the Pondis, the Macdonalds, the Bebenimibos,the Penawous, the Izonebis, the Gbaramatus, the Egbesus, the Oyanbous, the Akparemobous, the Ozibous, the Ndorobous, the Timiebis, the Maikas, the Ferebos, the Ekotoros, the Oruserikemes, Ombutuaoweis, the Serikoromos, the Fortetas, the Ebizimors, the Opudus, the Ngbiles, the Gogis and the Grand Geometrician of the universe will form a formidable counter-force against those anti-party politicians animated by pathological desire to hurl deadly stones at individuals and institutions holding views at variance with them.

Journeying to different canals from the above within the larger river called anti-party politics, I am very certain it must have sunk into the consciousness of readers that anti-party politicians are such a marvel in their behaviour and characterisations that when they invade the mind in their multiple gaudy colours,
seemingly interminable analytical journeys spring up before one like a vast expanse of raffia palm trees or a treeless ocean one explores without a marked terminal point in sight except one chooses of his own volition to end the journey despite the ever expanding expanse or treeless ocean and sometimes even risk repetitions dictated by the serpentine structure of the journey.The story of anti-party politicians is one that necessitates being told phenomenologically because the dance steps of politicians vary in every election, provoking different hermeneutical approaches or framework even where one knows of invading repetitions in the narrative.

Anti-party politicians are fittingly the political Sizwe Bansi of Atho Fugard’s creation who thrives on dissembled identities. Before the very eyes of the candidate of their own political party they deposit or showcase the respectable image of core party stalwarts willing to work undistractedly for the electoral victory of the party, but right before the very eyes of the opposition party, they assume the image of grand masters of political manipulation, political ‘Maradonaism’ and political ‘Alemoism’, poised to deploy their political marksmanship to hunt down the candidate of their own political party. These two dissembled identities are cunningly maintained by anti-party politicians until the elections are over and the winner announced ultimately.

The characterisations of these so-called anti-party politicians are multiple in built.They have a vindictive knack for instigating the failed candidate in the primary to seek legal options even where they are not contesting in the primary.Sometimes they even bankrole the legal expenses of the candidate.Those are core activists of anti-party politics

Professionalism at work is also an echo of anti-party politics activism.They are professional pretenders who have had one chronicled in the privacy of their thoughts as a sworn enemy but yet mask their true feelings and smile broadly at you when they see you.They are dangerous incubators of enmity against people.Their masked world is populated by political enemies they have accumulated to victimise at the targeted time when their envisioned victory eventually smiles at them. Dear anti-party politicians, do you know the ‘HOROSCOPIC’ cartography, the ‘HOROSCOPIC’ topography, of your life as designed by the Grand Geometrician of the universe as you shamelessly revel in being the incubators and carriers of smouldering antagonism and hatred invisibly directed at targeted persons who don’t even know you have registered them as certified enemies for no just cause?

Countable number of politicians played anti-party politics during the past 2023 Presidential and Governorship Elections.The results of the elections now released, contrary to their projected political calculations,they are now shamelessly drumming up a counter-propaganda that they stood countless nautical miles away from anti-party politics during the elections.Balderdash from shameless political desperados!

I hereby challenge all those morally indicted politicians in my area to stand before me and deny the anti-party politics tag they behaviourally deserve and merit. If they can beat their chest and deny it publicly, they should be ready to journey with me to the sacred Temple of Egbesu anywhere in Ijaw and swear an affidavit of non-immersion in the waters of anti-party politics during the Presidential and Governorship Elections.

No words should be further bandied with the archbishops of anti-party politics who have now chosen to deny it. A verifying journey of truth-discovery, truth-extraction and truth-exhumation to the sacred Temple of Egbesu over which the godhead sits in judgement is the answer.What about truth-exhumation journey to the sacred forests of Akparemobou, Oyanbou, Ozibou and Ndorobou?Or where they are not ready for any of these verifying journeys, they should be content to have their names publicly mentioned, followed by publicly displayed copies of the results in their various polling units and wards.Is this okayed by the archbishops of anti-party politics?

The activists of anti-party politics are workaholics intensely interested in anything geared towards the dismantlement of their perceived enemies.Anti-party politicians labour vindictively to deny targeted persons of appointment from the government by using fake stories.If for instance, Mr Henry is the targeted person, they constantly drum up anti-Henry propaganda before either the president of the country or the governor of a state.As Jp Clark would say in his The Ozidi Saga, may such political infidels ‘be macheted thousand times and be left by the wayside to rot!’

It is a fruitless exercise for the anti-party politicians to.deny publicly that they wined and dined gluttonously on the delicacy called anti-party politics during the 2023 elections, thus becoming the most dedicated and honourable promoters of gargantuan political appetite in party politics.Can you cast your look at Akparemobou,Ozibou, Oyanbou, Ndorobou Forests and the Awala of King Alfred Izonebi’s creation and deny how you feasted on the sumptuous meal called anti-party politics?

Refreshingly, let me reawaken those anti-party politicians who cloak themselves behind two identities – the identity of their current political party and the identity of their waiting new political party as the stream for ceaseless flow of political patronage, survival and relevance that they are dead ‘Atholfugardically’ like Sizwe Bansi with a second identity as Robert Zwelinziwa in Athol Fugard’s play SIZWE BANSI IS DEAD.They are not only dead; they are the cockroaches of every political party who should be treated like the cockroaches which infested the photographic office of Buntu in Athol Fugard’s SIZWE BANSI IS DEAD and obstructed his photographic business to the extent he had to use pesticide and cats to eliminate them for his photographic business to flow without barricade.

In politics where ideological commitment is privileged over and above any other thing, decampment to another political party pursued within the bounds of the values of transparency and openess timely and publicly communicated to acquire hectares of fertile new political land to maintain the sanctity of ones ideological commitment and vision in another political edifice called PARTY is morally permissible.This so-called decampment is permissible and let go of like the flowing waters of Akparemogbene River if it passes the test of ideological commitment, transparency, timely and publicly channelled communication of decampment journey or intention.

Universally speaking, it is ethically okay to take a stand against one’s own political party when driven by development ideology to pursue and actualise one’s vision in another political platform timely communicated to the political party long before the election during which the new political party chosen as the alternative platform to pursue the vision is known and clearly communicated, not the one politicians shamelessly stick to the shibboleth of remaining in one’s political party and fighting the party to secure victory for his waiting new political party with two questionable identities terminologically appropriated as anti-party politics.This is why anti-party politicians must be eased off in any political platform because they are the cankerworms in any organisation who think they are politically indispensable and immortal based on their mastered skill of political manipulation during elections.

At this moment we do not need Rosicrucian or masonic pointers of morality and mysticism veiled cabalistically to know that the wind has blown open the rump of the fowl as regards politics and the wishy-washy political attitudes of individuals hitherto prized as formidable political personalities.This means the new President Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the new state governors should be wary in their daily steps, particularly his Excellencies Rt.Hon. Sherrif Francis Oborevwori and Siminalaye Fubara of Delta and Rivers States. Not only wary should they be, they should equally create platforms that could function as character-moulding or personality-moulding engagements for straying politicians to embrace attitudinal changes in their political interactions and journeys as this is the only way the new Nigerian president and the state governors can intellectually ally themselves with former President Nelson Mandela of South Africa who unburdens his visionary stand thus:’I maintain that nurture,rather than nature, is the primary moulder of personality…'(6, Long Walk to Freedom).

BY EKANPOU ENEWARIDIDEKE

Writes from Akparemogbene, Delta State.