Portable is the stage name of Street-Hop rapper, Habeb Okikiola Badmus. He is crass in appearance and, ill-mannered with apparent gaps in thought. Exhibiting outlandish behaviour, he divides his hair into parts each with a loud colour that gives the appearance of a cockerel head.
The tattooed Portable who styles himself as the leader of the Zen Movement, is known for street fights, encounters with the police and failure to pay debts. Uncouth, full of antics and disrespectful to people, especially women, Portable’s philosophy revolves around money.
When I reflected on the disposition of various politicians in the country to either exhibit uncritical loyalty to President Bola Tinubu or build an anti-Tinubu coalition to defeat him in the 2027 elections, I concluded that they are engaged in the dog- eat- dog politics of Portable. Giving no regard either for the Nigerian people nor their future, many of our politicians either feel comfortable in the the Tinubu pool where they are being fed, or behave like orphans. For the latter group, their profession is politics and they live off government. Once out of power, they become quite desperate and would do whatever is necessary to get back to power and continue their parasitic existence.
The two wings of the political gladiators have the same programmes. They both agree and, are committed to fuel subsidy removal which has crippled the economy and imposed hyper-inflation on the country to the extent that there are Nigerians fighting to share food from the dustbin. On the issue of fuel subsidy, the basic difference between the two groups of politicians is in the style of implementation not in the policy itself. Similarly, they are adherents of the uncritical economics of Naira devaluation that has witnessed its water boarding since the pretentious and unfeeling Buhari administration.
They are also united in the continued imposition of unproductive and unprofessional electricity generation and distribution companies on the country. When the fraudulent ‘privatisation’ of the electricity sector was carried out in September 2013, there was a clause that this can be reviewed after five years. This is a dozen years later, no review nor reversal of that programme has been carried out. No major politician has campaigned for such review not to talk about sanctions. Neither those in power nor their allies who are temporarily out of power has insisted that government utilizes its 40 per cent shares in the privatised electricity companies to reform the sector. None has carried out sustained protests against the frequent and continuous electricity tariff increases. How can the mainstream politicians, whether in or out of government, claim they care for the people, when they do not even raise a voice for them?
If they claim their silence and complicity is because they believe in so-called market forces, they should tell us where such forces sanction fraud and unproductivity. The United States, US, is the biggest, strongest and most imperial capitalist country in the world. Yet, it occasionally reverses itself when the existence of the country is at stake. For instance, California privatised its electricity sector. But when it started turning out like the Nigerian experience, it revoked the sale and took back the electricity sector. Even in the face of the US running an America First policy which places the country’s interests above everything else, including the imaginary market forces, the Nigerian government and mainstream politicians remain committed to them. They remain faithful servants of the American and European international institutions like the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, alias World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the contraption called World Trade Organisation, WTO.
Is it that the Nigerian Government and opposition politicians are ignorant of the fact that the Uruguay Round of Talks, which was rechristened WTO, is a mere instrument to subvert open and equal trade amongst all nations as promoted by the United Nations? Do they claim not to know that the world body for free and equitable trade is the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD? Perhaps, the main challenge we face is that after decades of being subjected to mass illiteracy, uncritical education, religious, ethnic and regional manipulations, Nigerians see themselves as helpless. They have come to accept their state and, when pushed to the wall, rather than fight back, they allow themselves to be pushed through the wall. We have allowed ourselves to be so intimidated as to accept that criticism of officials or, even private citizens, amounts to cyber stalking which leads to prison.
On further reflection, perhaps our nationalists who fought for independence were too focused on the politics of getting the enslaving colonialists out of the country than examining the essence of the political independence they secured. So, the populace got an independence flag, a national anthem, and a neo-colonial political class without a deep thought for real power. Hence, the country has degenerated from a productive, and import- substitution economy to a wholly consumer nation with a parasitic political leadership. Gone are most of the factories. The old warehouses have become religious centres and we are no longer our neighbour’s keeper. Criminality festers as does insecurity. Even Generals with armed guards and, politicians led by columns of armed policemen, are no longer safe.
Corruption has become so endemic that when $52.8 million looted funds were returned by the United States, the ownership could not be identified, at least publicly. A vast estate in Abuja measuring 150,500 square metres containing 753 units of duplexes and other apartments was forfeited to the Federal Government with the identity of the owner(s) concealed. On February 5, 2025 the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, Musa Aliyu, revealed that government made full payment five times for an hospital that was never built. Not surprisingly, the identities of the criminals remain concealed.
As citizens, we cannot even make constitutional demands such as getting whosoever or whichever group in power to meet the basic constitutional requirements of guaranteeing the welfare and security of the citizenry. As a people, we have failed to make the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy as enshrined in the second chapter of our Constitution justiciable.
As Nigerians, we should not just fold our hands and wait for whoever is elected in 2027. If we do, it will be illogical to expect a change in our circumstances or a better country for our children.
The least we should do is agree on broad demands, or a Charter of Demands which all politicians, irrespective of colouration, must accept and implement. After all, the Constitution states clearly that sovereignty belongs to the Nigerian people from whom all power flows. We must not allow the lumpen politics of Portable to persist.
•Written By Owei Lakemfa
