THERE have been swift reactions to Nigel Hughes’s declaration of the PPP’s government involvement of the deaths of 1200 Black youths. Nigel even included the Henry cousins who were murdered in September 2020. Why is Nigel pushing an Afro-centric narrative seeing that he is contesting the presidency in a multi-racial country?

The normal reaction is why he would want to come across as looking into the interests of African Guyanese only when multi-racial votes are a requirement for any party in Guyana? Before I move to the story of Nigel Hughes’ politics, a brief reference to the killings of Afro-Guyanese during the Buxton mayhem and the Henry cousins is necessary.
I have done an enormous amount of investigative journalism into the violence of Buxton, which is available on the internet so I am not going to touch on that except to say 1200 Africans were not killed. It was much lower than that and many of those dead people were actual killers who murdered a substantial number of East Indian people. The Henry cousins’ incident is part of Nigel’s election campaign, but their deaths had absolutely nothing to do with ethnicity and politics.

Now back to Nigel’s politics. After the attitude of both the PNC and AFC to Nigel during the years 2015-2020, he decided to quit politics. My direct knowledge of the politics of that period informs me that the PNC top brass did not care to have Nigel around after 2015. Nigel knew, too, his colleagues in the AFC leadership were not interested in his complaints about governance. The last straw was the backstabbing against him at the 2016 retreat at the Convention Centre and he resigned from both the AFC and politics.
From 2016 to December 2018, the date of the no-confidence motion, Nigel was low profile and still kept the multi-racial credential he emerged in politics with. But that died in 2018 when he announced his bizarre mathematics that 34 is the majority of 65. From thereon, Nigel was no longer interested in Rodneyite politics and multi-racial politics. This was not the Nigel Hughes I knew.

Then came the 2020 election and, with the acquisition of power by the PPP, Nigel ended his marriage to politics. What he did after 2020 was to marry the activism of African extremism. He became enmeshed in the politics of African entitlement and African demands.

He was happy to be part of the exclusive African-based bandwagon of David Hinds, Tacuma Ogunseye, Rickford Burke, Mark Benschop, Lincoln Lewis, and their acolytes. He also echoed violent vocabulary when at a Buxton forum he exclaimed if the PPP do not want to come to the table, “we will force you to come.”

That was the new direction of Nigel. Since 2020, I haven’t seen or spoken to him. Personally speaking, I thought he was far more politically enlightened to be part of pot-pourri of Africanised misplaced politics. By some strange psychic logic, he wanted to return to politics and to lead the AFC, and indeed he became its leader.
How did that come about? I think Nigel was persuaded to re-enter politics and lead the AFC because his advisers felt there was need for a credible opposition party. Nigel himself was thinking along those lines, so there was a conversion of his ideas and those of his advisers.

But Nigel is no unintelligent human, far from it. Nigel knew that he had gone so far across the river of race that in the process he lost his multi-racial credibility and only one option faced him – use the songbook of the PNC to stay in the game. And that is his game and will be his game until the election.

From here on Nigel is going to deliberately shape his politics linguistics to preach Afro-centric themes. There is no other game, there are no other choices, there are no alternatives. If he is going to resurrect the AFC and put it in parliament with five or six or seven seats, he has to use the PNC’s songbook. He has to sound like Hinds and Burke, Ogunseye, Benschop and PNC leaders.

This explains the exclamation of 1200 dead African youths. We will hear from him on themes like state discrimination against Africans, denial of employment and possibly a return to the apartheid narrative. All of this is intended for African Guyanese to say: “Nigel is more effective than Aubrey, let’s give Nigel a chance” since Nigel knows there will be no PNC- AFC pre-election coalition.

This is what is going to happen in November. He will be soliciting the votes that would have gone to the PNC. One thing is certain; if he does not steal a few seats from the PNC, he would be left hugely embarrassed and once more he will resign from politics.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.