THE NATURE OF OUR GAME

Hi folks! Pleased to welcome you to MATAKAPRO LIVE! However, before we get down to brass-tacks, rethinks it is a good idea to tell you what this page is about. It is an EVERYTHING page with nearly all options on the table.

We might sound irreverent, sometimes but it will all be done in the best possible taste. And if you are a sucker for intellectual humours, then you have got it made. You are in the right place!

We shall be periscoping society: lifestyle, trends, entertainment, the global economy, geopolitics and a myriad other facets or components if you like, of everyday life laced with a considerable dose of intellectual humour. So if you are ready now…..

POLITICS AS RUSSIAN ROULETTE

WHEN I LOOK AT POLITICS IN THE THIRD WORLD, what immediately comes to mind is Russian roulette, a dangerous, deadly game where one loads a bullet into one chamber of a revolver, spins the cylinder and then pulls the trigger while pointing the gun at one’s own head.

It is a nefarious practice that originated from Tsarist Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries and there is one in three chance that you will die playing this suicidal game. However there is also a 66.7% chance, (4/6) chance that you will live, depending on which chamber the bullet is lodged when you pull the trigger, it is crazy.

Like politics, Russian roulette is perfectly legal and there are even more striking similarities between these two mind-bending life and death games, including the offer of a one-way ticket to the great holiday camp in the sky where you can take a permanent vacation in the company of your ancestors, unconcerned with the mundane anxieties of the rat race and the Corvid 19 virus.

Think Third world. And if you think nobody you have heard of ever died from Russian roulette, check this out. Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter Ivan ‘JP’ Cole on June 11, 2016, apparently killed himself while playing Russian roulette.

Now if you live in the Third world, you must have known or heard of some politician in your town or country who was rubbed out by a murderous opposition party boss or his hitmen during an election.

The point we are trying to make is to situate properly the clear and present danger engendered by partisan politics in the Third world. So if you can muster the nerve to play Russian roulette, then you would, without a doubt, make a great candidate for partisan politics in the Third world. Because politics in the Third world is a cold-blooded, dog-eat-dog game where the winner takes all and the losers if they are still in one piece, whine in abject impotence.

In a place like Nigeria where politics has morphed into a billion-dollar industry, the level of desperation during elections is to say the least, frightening and sometimes precipitates escalating levels of mayhem with losses in life and limb.

Politics here, you see, is very lucrative and almost everyone wants to join the gravy train. Here you find a politician, perhaps a legislator or some political appointee, who didn’t know where his next meal was coming from a couple of years ago now living large with a palatial home done in marble, a fleet of posh cars and a retinue of fawning personal or special assistants at his beck and call. So come the next election, he is ready to, at least, maim a few opponents to ensure his tenure on the gravy train.

REVOLVING DOOR

Here in Nigeria where you have two frontline parties amidst a forest of mostly nondescript shoestring parties, it has become most challenging to be able to tell the bonafide members of one party from the other. Senator John P, for instance, might be a member of the main opposition party in the morning but you would find that by the close of business for the day, he would have dumped his party and would be wearing the ruling party’s hat and colours.

BLAME THE SYSTEM

It is tempting to want to knock the fickle myopic politics of these guys but methinks the main culprit is the system which is engineered to reward only the winners. The losers find themselves in a political and economic black hole till the next election cycle. So because most of these politicians are enamoured of the naira or the dollar sign as the case may be, they tend to gravitate to where they reckon their bread would be better buttered.

Blame the system. And perhaps the electorate too. The problem seems to be the mercantile, materialistic mindset that has taken root in the polity over the past few decades. I am beginning to think that most Nigerians are unduly intimidated by money. They see a fraudster, a conman or a rougue politician living in a big house and driving a big car and they start deferring and kowtowing to him. This mode of interpreting material success has grown to become a default position with most Nigerians.

I guess this is a consequence of the poverty mentality that the politicians have nurtured and encouraged in the electorate over the years. I figure the politicians’ game is to keep the electorate continually marginalized and impoverished so they can easily be manipulated. Election season comes and these clever politicians bomb the supine and mostly naïve electorate with bags of rice and table salt, gallons of cholesterol-free cooking oil and an unprecedented flow of crisp banknotes.

WHO’LL BAIL THE CAT

I guess some of the electorate are beginning to see the light and are getting frustrated with the system. They are patently desirous of calling the politicians’ bluff, look them in the eye and reject the crumbs and peanuts they customarily offer when they need validation from the electorates. In their hearts of hearts, they feel they should vote for the best candidate and not for the highest bidder. But it is easier said than done. You can’t fight the system on an empty stomach or can you?

One Response to “THE NATURE OF OUR GAME

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *