Updated : Re- “There are no saints yet in politics. Any politicians claiming sainthood is an opportunistic hypocrite.” (Chidi Anthony Opara )
Cornelius Hamelberg
Sublime :
Veal Idey Avadecha Hanetim sung by Moshe Koussevitzky
Veal Ydey Avadecha Haneviim sung by Zavel Kwartin
From the sublime mood of the above to the everyday mundane mood on this planet earth my brother, at ground level, let’s narrow down the discussion of sainthood in politics to Nigeria and the forthcoming Mother of all Nigerian Presidential Elections, suffering, hollering and howling, from the grassroots up…
Last night was bad enough zapping through Jibrin Ibrahim’s deeply disturbing and disheartening Party Primaries and the Limits of Transactional Politics
This morning was even worse, truly terrible when I read this devastating piece of news in this forum posted by the Hon. Ojogbon Falola himself :
Atiku Wins PDP Presidential Primary.
Oh my gosh!
Good golly Miss Molly!
Chidi, isn’t the title Al-Hajj - in Nigeria, “Alhaji” // El-hajj (one who has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca), isn’t the title suggestive of holiness, almost coterminous with sainthood?
You must agree ( survival of the fittest) that it’s no mean feat, to bag the PDP ticket. Alhaji Atiku must be praying that the APC candidate that he will be facing in the battle, will be weaker than he is…
Atiku Abubakar who was born in Adamawa is older than me and he’s still hell-bent on being elected Nigeria’s next President! Some men are more motivated than others. Cheers! No wonder he withdrew his condemnation of the stoning to death and burning of the corpse of his deceased Nigerian Christian Sister up there in predominantly Muslim Sokoto - he is fearful of antagonizing the Muslim Brethren and Sistren who togther and united are numerically the most powerful electoral block in the entire Federation. So, the wily Atiku is naturally fearful of condemning the murder and the murderers lest they reject him on election day, the upcoming day of judgement which is scheduled to fall on 25 February 2023, the day when, as the saying goes, the sheep will be separated from the goats, the bulls among the Fulani cattle from the ewes ( the female sheep)
Since Ojogbon Falola was the one to post the Breaking News, I wonder if before the $2 -$4 Billion campaign season is over Alhaji Atiku will be given the opportunity to blow his mind on one of the forthcoming Toyin Falola Interviews …
Anyway, one thing’s for sure Olusegun Obasanjo is not going to support Atiku because he has already assured everybody: “God will never forgive me if I support Atiku for president!” And the Rt. Rev. Olusegun Obasanjo should know what he’s talking about because Alhaji AbuBakr Atiku served as Obsanajo’s vice-president, just as Joe Biden served as Obama’s vice-president, without Obama accusing Biden of corruption.
Even more worrying, if there’s any truth to details Jibrin Ibrahim supplies when he decries this sorry state from which there seems no escape:
“Some researchers have estimated that it costs as much as $2bn to win a presidential election in Nigeria and the amount increases significantly with each election. Ironically, the recently revised Electoral Act, which previously placed the maximum amount to be spent by a Presidential candidate should not exceed N1bn ($2.4m) has now been increased to N5bn ($12m). The law allows the candidate to spend $12 million but the candidates are spending up to $2 billion. This is madness. The underlying problem is that none of the presidents of the 4th Republic has had that money to invest in politics so political entrepreneurs pay for the process and of course have to make their money back with handsome profits. It is a process of deepening corruption in the political system.”
For now, Atiku must be beaming with satisfaction, rubbing his palms together, occasionally, confidently patting the money belt bag safely tucked away under his thobe, on his way to his El Dorado, his Fort Knox, his Aso Rock, firm in the knowledge that money talks, bullshit walks.
From now on, the hack writers who will be hired to rebrand and polish a more marketable Atiku image will be on their big grammar steroids, cruising in overdrive, even if the lumpen proletariat and the long-suffering uneducated Almajiris that exist in almost every ethnic sub-nation, are the ones that must be persuaded as to who would best serve their interests.
Even if the news and social media are all that's available, and we ourselves are not in Nigeria in person, it’s impossible to escape the various kinds of immorality and the obscenities that foul up the political atmosphere in Nigeria, an immorality that’s generally inherent in politics, worldwide, almost everywhere, is supposed to go with the territory, and currently, sadly, goodness alone knows how things are going in Sierra Leone, but the stink in Nigeria (I can smell it from here) is polluting the air a little more than the stink in Ghana, and from Ghana, it’s a little less putrid than the unburied corpses corrupting the air in Ukraine and in the DRC….
In On the Postcolony ( 2001) Mbembe ( one of Kenneth Harrow’s favourites) devotes his chapter three to examining “The Aesthetics of Vulgarity” (all of which can be read in this link - it’s a brilliant chapter even if Nigeria is not centre-stage there)
Without actually identifying the miscreants by name, Chidi who is centre-stage in Nigeria has been dwelling on this theme of demons, chameleons, charlatans, and up to no good politicians masquerading as saints, for as long as I can remember, and the next person that does a PhD on Chidi’s poetry and the surrounding environment that generates much of his poetic reflections - partly as his ongoing interactions and daily dialogue with that environment, cannot afford to neglect to pay sufficient attention to this core element of Chidi Anthony Opara’s pathos and his iconoclastic, anti-establishment crusade as a constant, a fixed agenda, because the causes don’t go away, even the next general and presidential elections are not going to blow the causes away. It would be a miracle that any of the hypocrites that are currently presenting themselves as saints are going to uproot corruption by the testicles and dump it into the sea, or cremate it and dump it on one of the rubbish heaps in Abuja - like Gehenna in old Jerusalem
I propose the following possible explanation of this phenomenon of wanton sinners presenting themselves for inspection as Saints: That the praise-singing culture which is particularly strong among the Yoruba, is likely to give rise to hagiography even among the living, and here I hasten to add that there is no dearth of good, solid, honourable men among the Yoruba, in politics and out of politics, thereby nullifying Chidi’s blanket overgeneralization that “There are no saints yet in politics. Any politicians claiming sainthood is an opportunistic hypocrite”
The example that best illustrates the veneer of hypocrisy is the term chazer fissel which describes the outward appearance of the pig ( a non kosher animal
Leviticus / Vayikra 11 : 1 - 8 :
“And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, to say to them:
Speak to the children of Israel, saying: These are the creatures that you may eat among all the animals on earth:
Any animal that has a cloven hoof that is completely split into double hooves, and which brings up its cud, that one you may eat.
But these you shall not eat among those that bring up the cud and those that have a cloven hoof: the camel, because it brings up its cud, but does not have a [completely] cloven hoof; it is unclean for you.
And the hyrax, because it brings up its cud, but will not have a [completely] cloven hoof; it is unclean for you;
And the pig, because it has a cloven hoof that is completely split, but will not regurgitate its cud; it is unclean for you.
You shall not eat of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.”
Chazzer Fissel has been explained before in the second entry, here :
A further note on the pig and pork concerning verses 4 – 8, the Stone edition Chumash note reads as follows:
“The next four verses give cases of animals that are forbidden because they have only one of the two required signs of kashrus. Homiletically, Kil Yakar notes that in listing the non-kosher animals the Torah first gives the kosher sign, instead of simply explaining that the animal is not kosher because of the sign it lacks. This suggests that the presence of a single kosher sign makes it worse. The presence of one sign symbolises hypocritical people who always try to publicise their occasional good deeds or virtuous traits, instead of concentrating on eliminating their shortcomings. It is such dishonesty that stamps them as “non-kosher”
This concept has entered the Yiddish idiom which describes the hypocrite as a chazzer fissel , or “pig’s foot”, because the pig tends to lie on the ground with its feet forward, displaying its cloven hooves as if to mislead onlookers into thinking that it is kosher.”