Political kaleidoscope: In with the penny, in with the pound
By Tiko Okoye
The British idiom – “In for a penny, in for a pound” – is used to figuratively mean that if you’re involved in an activity, you might just as well give it your 100% attention rather than simply pay lip service to it or do it half-heartedly. A related American idiom – “Hanged for a sheep” – further expresses the thought more lucidly. It means that if you’re going to get the same punishment for stealing a lamb, then why not steal a sheep that’s bigger and more valuable?
In its proper context, the idiom is used to underscore one’s firm commitment to finish whatever you’ve started or are deeply involved in. It represents one’s intention to see an undertaking through, however much time, effort or money it may entail. It’s something you say to mean that you’re solidly committed to a particular course of action, even though it will most probably cost a ton of cash or burn up a lot of resources if you continue, not to mention the grave misfortunes that await you if you fail.
So why would any rational person choose to toe the highly-dangerous slippery slope given the full ramifications of failure?
First, many people in leadership positions can hardly be said to be rational. Once stricken by the bug of vaunting ambition, they practically lose every fibre of sanity and reason. Second, risk takers are fearless. As far as they are concerned, the dividends accruing to success are mouth-watering and well-worth taking the risk. 35th US President John F Kennedy so eloquently expressed it this way: “There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.”
Although the idiom is currently playing out around the world, I’ve chosen to focus on only five examples – two abroad and three in Nigeria – due to the shortage of time and space.
On 24 February 2022 Russian military forces invaded Ukraine in the largest attack on a European country since WWII. Despite the massive numbers of troops involved, Russian President Vladimir Putin dubbed it “(just) a special military operation” and gushed that his globally-acclaimed fighting men and women would rout their ‘rag-tag’ opponents within two days of fighting, effect a regime change, rid Ukraine of Nazis and return it to the old Soviet orbit. The Ukrainian invasion was aimed at terrifying the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) into perishing thoughts of extending NATO membership to countries in the old Soviet orbit.
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Nearly 24 months later, Russian troops are still marooned in their trenches in southern and eastern Ukraine. The inability to subdue Ukraine has demystified the once invincible Russian fighting machine and witnessed more European countries on its western borders rushing to become NATO members. With the additions of Finland and Sweden, the international border between Russia and NATO has stretched to multiples of thousands of kilometres – as different from multiples of hundreds before the invasion – and Russia is now less safe and secure. When you add an economy suffering the adverse effects of tough sanctions imposed by the West, one can readily see how Putin’s gamble in Ukraine has greatly diminished Russia.
Unfortunately, since Ukraine is just at its backyard, Russia cannot simply cut and run like it did in Afghanistan and like the Americans did in Vietnam and Afghanistan. So, Putin must now be saying to himself: “Oh hell, I blew it; but in for a penny, in for a pound, and I must continue this war to its logical conclusion, even if it means using nukes to bring the roof down on everybody!”
On 7 October 2023, Hamas militants launched a surprise deadly attack on Israel, it was generally expected that the reaction of the highly embarrassed Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) would be fast and furious. They predictably subjected the tiny Gaza Strip to merciless land, air and sea attacks and the steeply rising death toll of children, women and the elderly readily shared abroad in this social media age soon created huge PR challenges for both Israel and its major supporter, the United States of America.
At the most recent UN Security Council meeting, 13 out of the 15 members voted in favour of ceasefire based on humanitarian grounds and Great Britain, fully persuaded that the US would cast a veto vote, chose to abstain in order not to antagonize either side. It’s crystal-clear that the Israelis who had as many as six million Jews killed in Adolf Hitler’s gas chambers are hell-bent on institutionalizing a similar Holocaust memorial in Gaza. How this would rub off on the USA in a global village remains uncertain.
Still to be resolved is the question of what would come next after ridding Gaza of the presence of Hamas. Would Israel similarly occupy the Strip at what’s bound to be a very steep cost? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must surely be thinking: “In for a penny, in for a pound; I ordered the scorched earth military invasion and I aim to complete the work, even though it has become more difficult or complicated than I expected.”
A macabre drama is just to play out in Benue State. APC Governor Hyacinth Alia, a Catholic reverend father, is said to already be at loggerheads with the party leader in the state who just happens to also be the Secretary to the Federal Government. There can be no doubt that the cleric is experiencing what Chris Ngige experienced in the hands of his erstwhile political benefactor and godfather in Anambra State that caused him all kinds of problems, culminating in a PDP-facilitated removal from office by the Judiciary.
It is evident that the governor has adopted a “in for a penny, in for a pound” stance, but he must be told in no unmistakeable terms that the politicians in the PDP he’s now said to be romancing are cut from the same fabric. The blues would definitely be played after the reggae and he would still be required to grease the palms of the owners of his ‘new’ party with hefty sums of money at the expense of the hard-pressed masses. It is what it is.
The same scenario of finding one’s self between the devil and the deep blue or, as the Americans would say, between the rock and a hard place, is playing out between Peter Obi, the candidate of the Labour Party in the last presidential election, and the President Bola Tinubu administration. A healthy opposition is very critical to the well-being of any democracy, but it should be value-adding and not vicious, civil and not querulous.
In an apparent bid to brand himself as the leader of the official opposition, Obi never misses any opportunity that avails itself to castigate the president in a manner that’s belittling and condescending. He knows that he’s dangerously mixing the presidential system and the parliamentary system Nigeria practised in the First Republic because an official opposition doesn’t exist in the full sense of the term in a presidential system.
But Obi has no choice because he’s beholden to the predominantly youthful ‘Obidients’ and it’s very vital that he must keep the ‘protesting fire’ burning very hot or lose everything. He would most likely rationalise the path he has chosen by saying: “The next election is three long years away and youths all over the world are notorious for being fickle-minded; in for the penny, in for the pound; I must creatively navigate past the apparitions of Scylla and Charybdis and emerge unscathed like the mythical Greek hero Odysseus.”
And now to Rivers State where Governor Siminalayi Fubara is locked in a bruising bickering with his erstwhile political benefactor-cum-godfather, current FCT Minister and Fubara’s predecessor in office, Nyesom Wike. Members of both factions are reportedly defecting and counter-defecting across party lines. Fubara, as Commissioner for Finance in the Wike administration, willingly and cheerfully took a bullet for his master on several occasions, particularly when EFCC officials sought to coerce him to implicate Wike in questionable financial transactions. You can say what you will, but the fact remains that in the spirit of one good turn deserves another, Wike moved tooth and nail to make him governor.
Right now, the same Wike might feel justified in adducing, like American philosopher Eric Hoffer did, that “The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or betrayal or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.” God alone knows just how many times he has soliloquised to himself and trusted members of his innermost kitchen cabinet: “How can Fubara be so stupid, and where did I myself get it all wrong?”
I conclude with the poignant words of French writer and moralist Jean de la Bruyere: “There are two ways of rising in (any human endeavour), either by your own industry or by the folly of others.” Time will shortly tell – as it always does – just who’s wise and knows where to draw the line and who’s foolish and never appreciated where and when to discretely run away to fight another day, therefore enabling his opponent to ride him to fame.