ENGAGEMENTS BY Chidi Amuta Politics is in many ways like religion. It thrives on a foolish expectation of paradise perennially approaching but forever elusive. Take away the promise and prospect of eventual heaven and paradise and all religion falls flat.
You dare not tell a devotee that heaven may not come or that the promised virgins may not be delivered as promised! Politicians on their part are the eternal purveyors of an earthly paradise. The promised land of every political manifesto is a sort of fulfilled state, an ideal of the nation state only imagined by John Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. It is a place where all the yearnings, desires wishes and needs of the ideal citizenry are met by an ever compassionate state ruled by good men and women.
That is why every political realm quickly finds a slogan for its own definition of heaven on earth. Every active party man or woman is somehow an apostle of a new faith carrying the pocket book of a new theology, ready to recite you the catechism of the new Jerusalem. The arrival time of a political paradise used to be long.
It is now shorter because the electorate have become inpatient in a digital sense. People now want the fulfillment of political promises in real time which means almost instantly. Forget the election cycle.
Forget the generational vision and legacy crap. Bring us the goodies now now! Palliative rice and Indomie Noodles for all now. Helicopter cash transfers for millions right away.
Money for.