For Nigerians, the visit of any incumbent President in an election year is a big deal. Perhaps too big a deal when measured against the actual benefits usually derived from these junkets.
To Kwara, President Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign trip to the state is of a different kind than its predecessors. His surprising advance has created a political excitement that, if transmuted into electricity, could light the nation.
The president came to Kwara as the personification of hope and of the rupture of a dismal legacy. Now my efforts to refrain from writing about the presidential campaign trip have gone for naught. No, not because some aspects of the visit have not received adequate coverage despite the ample commentary it elicited.
I add my humble bit to draw light to matters heretofore left in the shadows. First, I elect not to dwell on all that are gruff and grimace rather the fundamental import of the visit and of what benefit is it to Kwara.
There are two major audiences to the rally. The message from the campaign delivered on Kwara soil was about Kwara. However, the most important audience is the present political establishment in the state. While the rally contained all its spontaneity, it was surgical and unrestrained, almost sterilely so. The world attention is rapt because of the unprecedented nature of Kwara politics. More so, the image that you see of any election in the state is not the image Nigerians and the rest of the world sees. Even with the diminution of Kwara’s status during the past 16 years or so, it still remains the lone state that receives more insults than gift. Regrettably today both the nation and Kwara are feeling the weighty consequences.
There have been uncountable numbers of issues about which the ordinary Kwaran love to talk, to argue, to pontificate regarding their terrible state of affairs and for which, whether we like it or not, they are putatively deemed responsible. Kwara’s story is a compelling narration that has taken so much disdain, so much phobic projections, contemptuous and condescending pity from the rest of Nigeria. But why does the nation pity Kwara? Beyond any rational argument, Kwara is not only a victim of political corruption it is like any complex nation. It is an ever dynamic struggle between progressive and conservative forces, between justice and power, between fairness and undue advantage, between an equitable distribution of opportunity and the concentration of power, money and wealth. This is the tragedy that cries across the decades for redress.
Therefore bridging this grievance we were told cannot be President Buhari’s headache. Kwara must exhort itself especially its corps of political leaders to shed their long time romance with the trappings of power in order to do well their long neglected homework on economic development and good governance. When Kwarans were confronted with the fact that their state happens to be one of the most backward states where one could not have been born even on account of its deep traditional values, I know they were merely telling us what we have been telling ourselves. But out of prudent or realistic pessimism often come wisdom, insight and inspiration. What perhaps is critical and patently made clear is for Kwara to break loose from its geographical isolation. And to achieve this, it must find the depth, strength and character to transform its defeatism into triumph and translate the president’s thunderous welcome into electoral victory. Much more than anything else, the slim margin of Ajulo-Opin’s victory in the recently concluded bye-election in the state is not the type of victory that the president craves. Kwara must take the advantage of president Buhari’s exhortations to creatively express their concerns in the first round of the 2019 general elections. Kwara must also use the election to define its relationship with Abuja. This is the hidden burden that Kwara carries. Perhaps until after the result of the recent bye-election, no one including the president knows if Kwara people have teeth because they have never been seen or known to open their mouths. The general perception was that of a sleeping underachiever who occasionally awakens to shout for food and drink only to return too soon to its slumber. But all of that has vanished today. Kwarans have admirably and coincidentally manifested the right democratic characteristics. While Kwara of course is entitled to support the president like every other state in the country, it must find accommodation with its diverse cognoscenti, to promote and even polish its democratic world view this election time.
This is really the first time that Kwarans are taking the game to the door step of the embittered and embarrassed Senate President Bukola Saraki who himself is chaffing at his impotence, his peripatetic paralysis and a rolling stone gathering no political moss. Once the master in Kwara, Senator Saraki is now like a herdsman looking for pasture. But at the bottom is to confine him to the waste bin of history by ensuring APC victory on Saturday. Only this can nurture the people’s progressive identity, project the state’s new political culture as well as promote regional aspirations. This election is about Kwara’s dream. The election also is about two competing views of what it means to be a proud Kwaran in the face of the world. So the decision on Saturday will not only affect the course of the history of the state, it may well affect Yours.