2015 ENTERS INJURY TIME

By Osondu Ahirika

How do I define injury time? Well, for every football enthusiast, injury time supposes that period, when the match becomes more intense and players from competing teams draw up every trick in the hat and throw at each other to kill off the game and win it. It is more so, if one side is leading by a slim margin, usually by a lone goal, and it is 10 to 15 minutes left to play. In our football culture where fair play rules don’t wield much difference, the players resort to what in bar lingo, they say: “if you miss the ball, don’t miss the man.”

Injury time gets worse when we have added time on to the 90 minutes of regular time. It is not altogether rare that, most players get seriously injured or sent off with a red card, due to dangerous play during this critical time. That is where we have landed in the race towards 2015 governorship elections in Akwa Ibom State. We have been coerced into injury time. Difference though is, unlike as in football, this injury time has barged in on our body polity, way too early.

An aphorism teaches that, if you put your ears to the ground you will hear the whisper of ants. Folks, every ear that is down with the currents of politicking in the land will not just hear whispers, but Babel of rumour, insinuations, allegations, and blackmail as well as the rupture and eruption of strife, disaffection and divisions in high places. Opponents have finally crossed swords and conflicting interests are beginning to crack and heat up the system.    

Chief among the causal agent of this perilous switch is gossip, blackmail, name dropping and slander. As power play and scheming politicians draw their plot, the game is, pull one down when you can and install yourself. A thug of war is being reinforced around leading gladiators in the gubernatorial contest. Each acolyte, hanger on, bootlicker, briefcase politician, busy body and thug is sweating to endear and entrench himself in the structure as the lead actor. The route to achieving this is to engage in the most deadly acts of smear campaigning against perceived or real threats to that aspiration. As a matter of fact, blackmail is the oil that greases the wheel of politics.

Poor governorship hopefuls, they become prisoners to backstabbers and political backbiters. “Mr A is not supporting you” is one complain they affect to confide in the aspirant. “Mrs B is plotting to run against you” another basket mouth will drop. All their game is a rapacious intent to becloud the mind of the aspirant and draw up a blacklist of enemies for him. Unknown to the man of ambition, he begins to erect an apartheid regime to bar people, designated as persona non grata to him. This is an error.

Reality check is, as an aspiring politician, you cannot afford to run a caste system where you discriminate against certain people. This is the heart of what instigates, fires and sustains political injury time. Taken to its extreme, it leads one down the road engaging in such vices as thuggery, politically motivated murders, assassination and violence. These can ultimately ruin the project 2015 for whoever is the culprit.

 Should I offer advice an unsolicited to governorship hopefuls? Here is it: Never underrate anybody and don’t treat any person, group or tribe as outcasts. This reminds me of a movie entitled, Dark Shadows. Based in the 18th Century, Barnabas Corlins had an affair with a housemaid called Angelique. A lot of factors come to play up class distinctions and Collins begins to despise Angelique. He finally dumps her in favour of a beautiful (young virgin). Feeling scorned and abused, the housemaid seeks revenge. All-along, she was a witch who kept her witchery secret. She summons her witchcraft powers to cast spells of darkness into the once bright prospects of Collins. His newfound virgin wife commits suicide throwing herself off a cliff, while Collins is turned into a suffering Vampire who was finally buried alive. Lesson: Even the housemaid, and the one you look upon as a nobody who is inconsequential to your destiny, may become the stepping stone or the stumbling block to your fortunes. For the politician who aspires to the top, cherish every relationship. The class divisions or observed deficiencies, weaknesses and flaws in the people that surround you, should not sway you to emotional swings. Whether you have concrete ground or not to cancel a man out of your reckoning, it is safer in politics to play along with all manner of men.

They say X is a nuisance, don’t banish him. Make do with his nuisance value. If Z is a talkative, he should not be expelled. Adjust to his flippancy. Where Y is treacherous, weave a path through his treachery, but don’t dismiss him from your countenance. Everyman has his value and may one day become the master card or joker you pull out to carry the day. Looking to divorce them and throw them out like Collins did to the housemaid spouse, they may turn around to play the bewitchment that makes your political fortunes to collapse. Have I said anything?

The point I’m making is this, creating divisions, factions and castes within your political camp is hardly the way to excel politically or collectively. Can I earn the luxury of signing of, on this piece with a story from India? Five members of a family were last August sentenced to death for the torture and brutal murder of a young couple in a so called “honour killing”. Asha, a 19 year old girl and her boyfriend Yogesh, were murdered in 2012 for trying to get married. Yogesh a taxi driver, according to the age long caste system in cultural India, belongs to the lower caste. The family of Asha objected vehemently to the relationship and didn’t want Asha to marry outside their caste. When she persisted, her parents, uncle, aunt and brother, attacked them, tied them with rope, struck them with metal pipes and electrocuted them. This barbaric act earned the five villians death sentence by hanging from Judge Ramesh Kumar in Delhi.

Does this relate to my theory of injury time of 2015? Sure! It does. The lure to kill opponents who don’t share the same political camp, ideology or persuasion will sound appealing. The lure to exterminate all contrary contenders will sound politically correct honour killing, but the consequences, may in the end analysis be dire. The way out is this: To all manner of men, become all manner of things, so said Saint Paul that you may win them.