By Lasisi Olagunju

MODERATOR: We take this space for ‘The Sick Nation Debate’, a town hall exchange between two political tendencies recommending themselves to our sick nation. Today’s edition is between the ruling APC and a budding coalition which, for now, uses the ADC label. We start in alphabetical order.

APC: Alphabetical order? No. A good debate should be between equals, or at least between near mates. Ambition Disguised as Change (ADC) is a perfect example of an oddity, a horror movie in rehearsal. ADC looks new, but acts odd and old, arrogant. It has no pedigree in morality. It is a sheep; it has no head to lock horns with my ram.

ADC: I think we should start this with some measure of decorum. But you can’t give what you don’t have. You have just announced yourself as a cocky cocktail of disaster. A drug called APC was banned in 1983 or thereabouts for being injurious to our health. I remember you as an alliance of purveyors of death: APC Elerin – three-in-one. Imagine a drug that advertised itself as a painkiller, it turned out that it was actually a kidney killer. Its full name was Aspirin-Phenacetin-Caffeine. Now, that is the name you are throwing about with pride as a slogan of expired hope. You should be known for what you are: Ailments, Pains and Catastrophe (APC).

APC: On 29 October, 2006, a passenger plane crashed near Abuja. One hundred and four people were on board the Boeing 737-200 which was travelling to Sokoto. There were seven survivors. Alhaji Muhammadu Maccido, the then Sultan of Sokoto, was among the dead. You know the name of the airline involved in the unfortunate crash? ADC. Again, a foremost professor of political science named Claude Ake, was killed in an air crash on November 7, 1996 in Lagos. You want to know the culprit airline? ADC. I can go on and on. So, each time you pronounce your name, those are the incidents Nigerians remember. May we not board a plane destined for a crash. May it not happen again.

ADC: You share no name with an airline but you have hijacked and crashed the country. In ten quick years, APC has worked Nigeria into the mortuary. My current mission is to take our country back from you, a band of buccaneers who have abducted the country and its destiny. I wonder why you are not ashamed that your record of destruction is phenomenal. Everywhere you touch, disaster drops.

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APC: Your coalition is DOA – dead on arrival. Yes, there are challenges today. But, you know Bertolt Brecht?

ADC: Yes. German playwright and poet; 1898-1956. What about him?

APC: Brecht once asked a question and answered it himself: “In the dark times / Will there also be singing? / Yes, there will be singing / About the dark times.”

ADC: We are already singing about your darkness. You are death hanging a stethoscope. With APC, every dose is a bout of deadly side effects. You came very popular in 2015 but everyone who embraced you with the innocence of patriotism has landed in a dialysis clinic. There was a celebration of democracy last week. You heard what your man, the president told Nigerians who told him that things are bad? “I am not here to make you happy” was the message of hope from your Renewed Hope exponent. Your party came popular ten years ago. And in those ten years you have shown the world what it means to be a popular poison. A textbook definition of dictator. There was Idi Amin, there was Bokassa, there were Hitler and Mussolini. They all waltzed in into the world’s infirmary popular like the drug of death, APC. What ended the romance? Regret. From the desert to the coast, APC has made the sick sicker.

APC: But we started this journey together, ask Atiku, ask El-Rufai and Amaechi.

ADC: Just don’t go there. Now we know that you are a capsule of band A bandits. We did what we had to do in 2015 because it was the best at that point. Imagine you joining hands to build a hospital only to finish and discover that what you have is a shrine for suffering; a nursery for pain. That is the reason we abandoned the curious combination called APC and opted to have this without the deadly ‘P’ element. The ‘D’ in our name represents deliverance. We will give health and deliver our people from your evil.

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APC: The ‘D’ in ADC actually represents disaster. “Barbarous invaders” is what Zulu king, Shaka, called dissidents like you. And he said more: “A wild collection of desperadoes do not compose a nation/ However numerous their numbers.”

ADC: Since you know how to quote from Mazisi Kunene’s ‘Emperor Shaka the Great’, you should also add this line from that epic: “The greatness of a people lies in the richness of their lives.” With your wicked policies, you’ve ruined the world and damaged the heavens. We are coming to detoxify the polity.

APC: The best chef in world’s history is the mouth; its vegetable soup is the champion. You are simply jealous that I do to perfection everything you can’t collectively handle: headaches, body aches, heartbreaks. I tackle them. All. I deliver immediate results.

ADC: Our ancestors warn that “If you give bad food to your stomach, it will drum for you to dance.” You are that bad food in our stomach and we are flushing you out. You cure nothing. You deliver pain and death. Slowly and arrogantly, you wreck vital organs. Like Phenacetin, the ‘P’ in the banned drug, you flaunt economic and security Armageddon as trophy. Horror is who you are.

APC: What you are doing is what Sun Tzu, author of ‘The Art of War’, said 2,500 years ago: “the noise before defeat.” ADC is a plane with lots of announcements, no flight. Any person who entrusts their life journey to you will end up stranded, disappointed and depressed. What you have on the label is not what you really are. You are the killer pill that must not be in our regimen.

ADC: I am convinced now more than ever that you should be banned like your namesake, the bad drug. You are actively leading the nation into bankruptcy and you shamelessly do peacock preening. I heard the president talking about his record of achievements. Like the lizard that jumped down the Iroko tree, he is praising himself, marking his own script. Who does that? Did he see Nigerian beggars deported from Ghana? Nigerians go to Ghana to do street begging. Haba!

APC: Dear ADC, begging did not start with us or with this president. You’ve been around for a long time, taxiing the tarmac endlessly. You are like your other name, Aide-de-Camp, an orderly with royal ambitions. I advise that you stop wasting your time and money. If you become broke, we won’t open the vaults for you. The best you can ever get is to be a miserable attendant, a courtier, the ragged guy holding PDP’s umbrella. You know placebo?

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ADC: Is it not better to be placebo than be poison? You are poison, we are panacea. You remain an expired brand, snobbish, haughty and petty; you kill. Daily, you work hard at transforming headache into paralysis. Agony Promoting Confederation (APC) is your full name; the other one I call Permanent Defection Platform (PDP). You claim to be cures but you are no drug, you are an epidemic. I am the light of the nation; I am coming as a breath of fresh air.

APC: You are a chattering bird, you can never build a nest. I am sure, ADC, that if you do not crash the state, you will excel in flight cancellations and flight delays. May Nigeria not suffer you.

ADC: PDP’s carelessness and bad behaviour dragged us into APC’s darkness. Now, APC is drugging us into coma. Yet, you say you are the best option. What you want is a trauma cycle but we won’t allow you. Whatever it will take, we don’t care, we are stopping you and your arrogance. You can say whatever you like. ‘The End’ is the end of cinema. That end for you is the next election. If the calabash won’t let us open it gently, we will smash it. We will match you grit for grit, intrigue for intrigue; madness for madness.

APC: May madness not be our portion. Our people are not suicidal. They know that you, in particular, you are too desperate to give health. You can say whatever you like. This country was critically ill before I was introduced into its treatment in 2015. Today, the patient is stabilised and singing our praise. The president was in Katsina some weeks ago. You know the verdict of the people? Mounted on billboards were great words of thanks. He was in Lagos for sallah. You saw how big men, including the elderly prostrated to have a handshake with the president. The people say we are doing what they expect us to do. When the righteous rule, the people rejoice. Nigerians have never been happier than they are. Even the Financial Times of London said so: “Nigeria is in better shape than at any time in the past decade.” When a patient says “No Complaint”, what else is there for the doctor to do other than to keep the drug that cured them? Go to the far north, the dominant slogan there this moment is “Ba Korafi”, it means “no complaint.”

MODERATOR: Thank you, our promise makers. And thank you esteemed listeners…

ADC: Mr. Moderator, you can’t stop this at this point. APC cannot roam freely the 419 way, relabelling expired hope as renewed hope and going away with it. It deserves a response…

MODERATOR: I am sorry, we have to go now. We’ve come to the end of the maiden edition of The Sick Nation Debate. We hope to keep the conversation alive and going. We will meet again. When? Well…