BY COLLINS OPUROZOR
Plutocracy is a monster. Government of only the wealthy. It tramples upon human dignity. It crushes the poor beneath the boots of the rich. It is a system that measures a man’s worth not by his character, his intellect, or his contributions to society, but solely by the size of his bank account. A rapist with millions becomes a respected figure. A killer with billions earns honors and privileges. A bandit with an overflowing treasury is celebrated and adorned with chieftaincy titles.
Yet a humble man of impeccable virtue, refined education, and sterling character is treated as absolute zero if he cannot flash a fortune. The god of plutocracy is money. Its sacraments are avarice, corruption, and perversion. Its temples are the offices of power where only the wealthy are permitted to worship. The Holy Scriptures warned us sternly and clearly that no man can serve two masters, that we cannot serve God and mammon simultaneously. Plutocracy chooses mammon every single time, without hesitation and without shame. It is a decadent system. It is morally bankrupt. It is spiritually reprehensible. And frighteningly, it is now knocking loudly and brazenly on Nigeria’s door.
The Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) has flung that door wide open. Senator Seriake Dickson, the party’s National Leader, appeared on Arise News TV just days ago. What followed was nothing short of scandalous and revelatory. He was confronted with explosive allegations that the NDC’s entire primary election process had been thoroughly monetized from top to bottom. Aspirants were reportedly asked to submit their bank statements of account to prove they possessed enormous wealth and a formidable war chest. There were further devastating allegations that party officials brazenly swindled aspirants of tens of millions of naira.
Dickson did not deny it. He confirmed it. He admitted on national television that his party was actively verifying the financial status of aspirants to determine if they were wealthy enough to become candidates. He did not flinch. He did not show remorse. He delivered plutocracy not as a rumor, not as a leaked document, not as an embarrassing scandal, but as a proudly stated party manifesto. We no dey give shishi! In one television appearance, the National Leader of a major Nigerian political party handed the philosophy of plutocracy to the Nigerian people as a governing creed. Let every Nigerian pause now and think. We no dey give shishi!
The consequences of this brazen confession are terrifying beyond imagination. The NDC has openly declared that money is the only qualification for public office in its universe. It has not rigorously screened its aspirants for genuine educational qualifications. It has not examined their moral pedigree or their track record of service. It has not interrogated their vision for the Nigerian people. Reports have since emerged that some individuals already penciled down as favored candidates by the party carry active and heinous criminal cases against them. We no dey give shishi!
Blood may be on some of their hands. Dark histories follow some of them like permanent shadows. Yet the NDC sees them as qualified candidates. Their crimes do not matter. Their alleged atrocities are forgiven. Their sins are washed clean, not by repentance, not by rehabilitation, not by demonstrated change of character, but simply and solely by wealth. This is the raw, ugly, unvarnished face of plutocracy in action. This is not governance. This is organized ruin. We no dey give shishi! This is a calculated conspiracy against the Nigerian people. A system that rewards criminals with political power because of their financial muscle is not a political system. It is a criminal enterprise masquerading as democracy. Ahiazuwa! Nigeria deserves immeasurably better than this abomination.
The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is thunderously unambiguous on this matter. Section 14(2)(b) states with unmistakable clarity that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” Section 14(1) declares that “the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a state based on the principles of democracy and social justice.” Section 15(1) mandates that “the motto of the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress.” Section 16(1)(b) directs the state to “control the national economy in such a manner as to secure the maximum welfare, freedom and happiness of every citizen on the basis of social justice.”
These provisions are not suggestions. They are not advisory opinions. They are not the wishful thinking of idealists. They are the supreme constitutional commandments of the Nigerian state, binding on every political actor, every party, and every government at every level. Any party that places wealth above welfare, money above the masses, personal riches above the collective rights of citizens, is not merely anti-poor. It is fundamentally anti-constitutional. It is a party at war with the supreme law of the land. By Dickson’s own proud and public admission, the NDC has declared war on Nigeria’s constitution and on the millions of ordinary Nigerians whom that constitution was designed to protect and serve. We no give shishi!
Now imagine the picture if such a party ever gains power at any level in this country. See it vividly and see it clearly. State institutions become weapons of mass oppression. The police abandon their constitutional duty and become the personal enforcers of the wealthy. Ahiazuwa! They brutalise the poor and bow before the rich. The courts dispense justice only to those who can purchase it. Hospitals are built in wealthy enclaves while the poor bleed to death on the floors of collapsed public health facilities. Schools become elite preserves where only children of the privileged receive quality education, while the children of the poor rot in classrooms without roofs, without teachers, without books and without futures. The common man becomes completely invisible to the state, except as a campaign tool, a voting instrument, and a disposable stepping stone to be discarded the morning after elections. Government contracts flow exclusively to party financiers and their cronies. Public funds evaporate into private accounts. The gap between the wealthy and the poor becomes an unbridgeable and permanent canyon of despair. Children of the masses grow up without hope, without opportunity, and without a country that acknowledges their existence. Their futures are auctioned off before they are born. The streets fill with rage and desperation. Crime rises. Hunger spreads like plague. And at the very top, the plutocrats feast. They toast to their genius. They build monuments to themselves. The national creed, in the word of our own departed Socrates, Jimanze Ego-Alowes, becomes “Ahiazuwa”, not “We No Dey Give Shishi”.
Dickson went even further in that chilling interview. He announced that all groups and movements within the NDC have been dissolved and fully absorbed into the central party structure. All financial donations for elections must now flow directly and exclusively to the party. The party is now the supreme authority over everything. This is a dangerous and deliberate centralisation of power designed to eliminate all internal dissent and resistance to the party’s plutocratic tendencies.
It means the party machinery, built entirely on the philosophy that wealth determines everything, now controls every lever, every valve, and every artery of the organisation. No independent voices are permitted to breathe. No pro-masses movement can survive within it. No room exists for the poor or for those who speak for the poor. He also declared with chilling finality that if elected into office, every single government action will follow strictly and without deviation the party’s stated policy and manifesto. That manifesto, as he himself has confirmed openly on national television, is plutocracy in its rawest and most unashamed form. This is a clearly articulated blueprint delivered by the party’s own National Leader. Ahiazuwa!
The most painful and stinging irony of this entire situation is the identity of the people now giving oxygen to the NDC. The bulk of the party’s membership traces its political roots and ideological heritage to pro-masses movements. The first is the movement of Mallam Aminu Kano, who devoted his entire life, his comfort, his resources, and his very soul to the liberation and empowerment of the talakawa, the poor masses of Nigeria. His descendants became in part the Kwankwasiyya of today! Mallam Aminu Kano despised money politics. He saw it as the greatest betrayal of the poor. The second tradition is the Obidient Movement, whose entire political identity, philosophy, and mobilising energy was constructed around rejection of money politics. We no give shishi!
These two traditions once stood for everything that the NDC now tramples upon with arrogance and impunity. Ahiazuwa! Their members who now find themselves inside the NDC owe a solemn, urgent, and non-negotiable duty to God to initiate the total destruction of the party. They owe it to their consciences. They owe it to the memory of Mallam Aminu Kano. They owe it to the numerous poor people who mobilized and sacrificed under the Obidient banner. Silence is consent. Inaction is betrayal. Complicity is the worst form of hypocrisy. They must begin to speak loudly, immediately, and without equivocation. They must fight fiercely and relentlessly from within and make sure NDC is brought down completely. They must reject everything the NDC now represents, and if they choose to remain within its structures, they must tear down its very foundations before it tears down Nigeria.
History is watching every single one of them. History is taking careful notes. And history has never been kind to those who preached emancipation in the marketplace while sharing a bed with oppressors in the dark. The time to act is not next week. It is not tomorrow. It is now. So far as God watches over Nigeria, our governance shall never be reduced to AHIAZUWA!
