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Hannah Ardent On Violence Vis-À-vis The Quest For Political Power Through Violence In Nigeria
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 3]
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Leadership in Nigeria has become a huge investment and a life insurance
scheme where one has to engage in many abnormal things to be secure in
perpetuity. And no Nigerian who has tasted the trappings of office has
ever left them without fierce and often violent pressure while those who
aspire to be there spare nobody and nothing on their way
The tragic
experiences of Nigerians in2003 elections are eloquent testimonies or
attestation that the Nigerian political positions are reserved for the
violent and where all actors in the political theatre are equally
violent, it is safely reserved for the most violent. Those who are in
office already do everything possible to perpetuate themselves in power,
unleashing violence on the people. They are tyrannical such that
anybody who tries to challenge them with regard to the way they are
ruling is in soup. The death of such politicians like Dele Giwa, Ken
Saro Wiwa, Bola Ige, Dikibo, Barnabas Igwe and wife of Anambra state
etc. will buttress this fact. With this, one would ask, where are we
heading to? What is the purpose of political power?
I should
think that the aim of political power in every government as Arendt
asserts is to enable men to live together, to promote happiness or to
realize a classless society. This meaning is no longer obtainable
nowadays instead people have understood political power as the best
avenue to make money hence resorting to all forms of violence in order
to acquire it.
In this write-up, I am going to philosophically expose
this quest for political power through violence especially in our
country Nigeria toeing the foot step of Hannah Arendt to prove that
power and violence are incompatible and that violence can destroy power
but not create it.
1.2 PURPOSE OF STUDY
As hitherto mentioned
above, man is by nature a political animal. Hence politics is not
restricted to special type of people neither is it a dirty game.
Instead, it is those who indulge in it that are could be seen as dirty.
Therefore, the purpose of studying this topic titled the quest for
political power through violence is to redress the above mentioned
status quo in which politics is seen as a game of do or die. To achieve
this, the youths who are veritable tools of violence have to be
re-orientated for they are gradually imbibing this method as the best
option for survival.
Again, I want to use this write-up to appeal to
the consciences of those whose hands are not yet soiled in politics to
keep it up. The fact that violence is seen as the order of the day in
Nigerian politics should not make them to join them when they cannot
beat them.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 3]
Page 2 of 3
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