As the last bugle sounded on that May day in 1999, there was hope that chains and jackboots would forever pass into oblivion. As expected many cried and danced as the sound of the bugle receded into the hills beyond the Promised Road ahead. The nation was alive with the cry, “the soldiers you see today, you will never see again;” a cry with the familiar refrain taken from Moses.

Indeed, the hope our people had wasn’t misplaced, at least, to the extent that the bugle and jackboots have disappeared. Not the chains though. Beyond hope, there was the promise which the silencing of the bugle – a symbolic reference to the end of tyranny and the beginning of the march of freedom – heralded. So, our people, having lived through the hellhole of tyranny, were expectant that life would be good, freedoms would flourish, the rule of law would become the “be-all and end-all”, the nation would return to its grand narrative; a narrative grand in its telling that recognises the nation’s collective narratives. Much as our people were expectant, they were also convinced that fidelity to democracy would mark the rebirth of our nation.

Drawn to the mirror, the image of the reality our people glimpsed was mistaken for the promise. The soldier who stood in front of the mirror and the agbada-wearing politician that stared back should have warned our people of the confidence trick: the anti-democrat presented as a democrat in the mirror and the sad spectacle that would emerge with the return to civil rule. The hard truth, here, is that our people persisted with their expectations, wrongly balancing their expectations with reality, and becoming victims of their undoing. Even if they were not discerning enough as they looked at the mirror, the inverted image of the man in the mirror should have warned them of what was to come. Maybe, it didn’t. Maybe, it did. They didn’t heed the warning. Maybe. They didn’t hark back to memory to recall how the man standing in front of the mirror morphs from stationary bandit into a roving bandit, while christening himself “Executive Chairman this, Executive Governor that, Distinguished Senator that and Honourable this”. Mancur Olson is right: “These violent entrepreneurs do not call themselves bandits but, on the contrary, give themselves and their descendants exalted titles”.

READ MORE: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/10/02/notes-on-tyranny-by-abdul-mahmud/