Once upon a time in Nigeria, on the road to Utopia
Cornelius Hamelberg
Once upon a time on the road to Utopia ( where people excrete in bowls made out of gold)
Stockholm
People's Planet
10th June, 2025
“I never tell you finish” ( Fela Kuti ) “ She go wan take piece of meat before anybody”
Fela Kuti, the founder of the political party Movement of The People
What’s in a name? Plenty, on this Peoples’ Planet, hence you don’t have too many people naming their baby boy “Adolf” or wishing that he would grow up to be Hitler Incarnate,
another somebody you’d just love to burn…
In the realm of satire ( the most potent way to examine the absurd, indescribable realities) I have in mind this skeleton framework of a plot : A group of gangsters /ambitious sour grape lootocrats forever complaining about the current polity start a political party and have as their frontman a so far unelected, pious professor of democracy and human rights, enunciating the kinds of heartrending words that we have been hearing from Sokoto’s Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah .
Your guess as to what happens next is a s good as mine
Fast forward :
In this democratic space, Professor Jibrin Ibrahim who has “ been a student of political science for over fifty years” simply has to expand his imagination, suspend his incredulity or disbelief and replace it with some psychological realities, the facts on the ground and the most likely probabilities as I humbly beseech him that he please re-examines this paragraph of his 👍
“The DSS should therefore not have asked the court to issue an interlocutory injunction preventing Utomi, his associates, or any representatives from conducting rallies, public lectures, media campaigns, or any form of gathering that would advance the shadow government agenda pending the determination of a substantive suit already before the court. The said activities are legal, constitutional and beneficial to democracy building and should be applauded. Their claim that Utomi’s actions could lead to widespread riots and endanger lives and property is a figment of their imagination.”
To an avid reader like yours truly who has read every piece that Professor Jibrin Ibrahim has ever posted to this USA -Africa Dialogue Series, unhappy with his recent series of forebodings about the looming catastrophe ( the possibility of Nigeria already tethering on the lawless brink and actually being swallowed in the quicksand of Chaos and Anarchy , the excerpt quoted above is astounding.
“A figment of their imagination" pits theory and the nebulous imagination against the practical outcomes born out by the lessons to be learned from realities of Nigeria’s long tumultuous and variegated political history going back the past 64 years since attaining Independence on 1st October 1960.
“Their claim that Utomi’s actions could lead to widespread riots and endanger lives and property is a figment of their imagination.” Are we really being serious here?
A couple of years ago one Chidi Anthony Opara phoned me from the midst of an ongoing protest demonstration in Port Harcourt that was apparently going awry ( like the best laid plans of mice and men) and my understanding from his live commentary was that they were under attack by the military police….
So there you have it : It’s Nigeria, the combustible crucible where the pundits love to pontificate about “ Democracy” , it’s that Nigeria that we’re talking about, not even anti-democratic Plato and his ideas about the ideal society in which plebeian citizens such as artisans and disenfranchised ignoramuses among the citizenry would not dream of forming a government, let alone “a Shadow Government” , not even in their wildest day-dreaming imagination.
So you (who are reading this) think that Brer Utomi and his Merry Men in his so called “Shadow Government" should be given free rein to assemble the army of the long suffering, the poor, the unhappily unemployed and unemployable, the disgruntled, the marginalised men, women and children across all the ethnic and class divides, add to the angry and frustrated mob of disgruntled citizens our Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju who has already endorsed a Chimes of Freedom Protest March to Aso Rock : “Great” he wrote, ”this support needs to be vocal and overwhelming so the person in Aso Rock and his minions get the message “
To my ears this sounds perilously close to fanning the sort of flames that led to the storming of the Capitol on 6th of January, in Washington DC, a few years ago
In the past, there have been stalwarts such as Gani Fawehinmi ,but at no time did he put on the toga of leader, founder or member of some unelected so-called “Shadow Government” the cloud name of some unregistered opposition collective…
I don’t have to have the brains of the late Michael Foot or the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales to bet my two naira that some gentleman too clever by half could assemble a sizeable segment of disgruntled opposition elements within the realm and legally/ official register such an entity as “ The Shadow Government"
I believe that such an entity would have no legal breathing space in e. g. Merry England