"Welcome, Mr. APC, what's your understanding of the elite paradigm and what do you intend to do about it?
Elite paradigm. In fenced off villas in Maitama, Asokoro, Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Lekki; in private estates (bought with stolen money) in London, Washington, Dubai, and the French Riviera, you gather in little groups and circles of affluence to form alliances, cut deals, allot positions, reach gentleman's agreements, and decide on the destiny of 170 million people. Don't worry, you don't need a vision and a mission. You don't need a programme. You see, these mumu people are not going to insist that you need to meet them in the spaces of civic agency to sell yourself and your programmes to them."
"You have the elite paradigm. It has worked since 1999 in that mumudom. The Nigerian people are the best gift any political elite intent on running a state for the exclusive benefit of the elite could have. They are the perfect clients and will never insist on a democratic ethos in which they matter and are the final arbiters of anything. They have lost ifunra and are comfortable being rolled around by iji aiye, the hurricane of life."
"Hence the insulting impunity with which APC has been reinventing the wheel of the elite paradigm. All the permutations, calibrations, jostling, alignments, and realignments that went into the formation of this "opposition progressive party" were an unimaginative photocopy of the worst forms of the PDP's elite strategies and procedures. I watched in horror as strange bedfellows gathered in banquet halls of five star hotels or in the living rooms of "chieftains" and "leaders" for consultations after which Tom Ikimi would issue arrogant statements telling the people to await further directives. None of these so-called game changers, enemies of the PDP who would wipe away our sorrows, deemed it necessary to start working on a framework that would involve the people from the very start. None of them deemed it necessary to hit the pavements of Nigeria to talk to the people. So thorough was their grasp of the atrocious psychology of the Nigerian that they knew they could take the reward of blind, uncritical, and unquestioning followership to the bank."
"They were right. Without ifunra, the people embraced them and even turned on those who dared to ask questions about the elite paradigm, calling them traitors and cynics who see nothing good in anybody. So grave is the wrong psychological wiring of the Nigerian – and the APC leaders knew they could count on this – that they do not know that opposition to the depredations of the PDP is no ground for an unexamined legitimation of the methods of the APC. In a democratic dispensation, all players – the incumbent and the opposition - must be subject to the same modes of scrutiny by the people. Scrutiny of all sides and vigilance: that is the singular civic obligation of the people in a democracy. Where the people betray this critical imperative, they embolden their traducers."
"Hence, the first notice the APC served the Nigerian people was a foundational act of betrayal: they left the inauguration room of the party and headed straight for Minna to embrace Ibrahim Babangida. They did not go to the Nigerian people. They did a little to the right, a little to the left, and zigzagged their way into the living room of the greatest symbol of Nigeria's postcolonial decay. That was a symbolic message. Luckily for the APC leaders, none of their dancing followers in the streets and on social media understood the tragic significance of the sacrilege."
- Pius Adesanmi, November 15, 2013
Beautiful No one speaks the truth with more clarity than Professor Adesanmi. The people are listening. And nodding in understanding and appreciation. Nigeria ronu...
- Ikhide
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