The current craze over who becomes Nigeria’s president come 2023 leaves one wondering if there is more to it than to serve. If the aspirants meant well for Nigerians why the rush to serve if indeed, they are coming out to serve?
It is an obvious fact that the years penultimate to elections are usually dominated by the politics of succession. Hence, one is not surprised that 2022 is bombarded with the buzzing noise of declarations. Sincerely speaking, it is the right of every citizen to aspire to any elective position obtainable, for without that, there would be no democracy.
However, the ways and manners the aspirants and their supporters are going about it leave much to be desired. The quality of personnel and their reasons for declaring to rule Nigeria is laughable.
As Nigeria prepares to elect its president come 2023, virtually every community seems to have a candidate to produce, in fact, by the look of things, even the incumbents may wake up one morning and decide to run for the third time.
Unfortunately, some of these candidates had some years ago said they did not believe in one Nigeria and now they are warming up to rule that same Nigeria. Those who once were clamouring for secession are now jostling to become president of the whole they would opt-out from. What a paradox? The question is how are we to trust these men who speak from both sides of their mouths?
We have on the platform candidates who could qualify for political prostitutes, moving from one party to another to gain access to the contest. That ordinarily depicts untrustworthiness.
Ola Rotimi in his award-winning book “Our husband has gone mad again” painted a picture of how corrupt politicians were preoccupied with embezzling national funds.
He satirizes the immorality of Nigerian political leaders in the person of Lejoka Brown, people of dubious and unscrupulous characters who could not organise their families well but want to rule others.
Imagine having men, some whose identities are shrouded in incredulous falsehoods, everything about their persons is shady from their parentage to age, and to their educational history.
We have men whose political careers are defined by the unflinching records of primitive accumulation of wealth and power. We have men who have been governor, senator, minister, etc; yet pushing to be president, simply because they have the freedom of ambition.
They are now promising us heaven on earth; just the way in 2015 they promised us a new Nigeria. And today, we now know better, we have a new Nigeria of falsehood. We have a Nigeria with pyramids of rice, but no food on our tables, oceans of petroleum, but a litre to cost more than N300, what a change, what a next-level of suffering we got.
The men who dragged us into this murky water of governance are here again telling us to align with them to consolidate on the hardship they initiated.
We entered a ‘one chance bus’ with them before in error, and are praying fervently that those who lured us into the bus would spare our lives at the end of the journey, being certain that our goods and valuables may not be secured. We now live on borrowing, a once rich nation, borrowing to survive. The house we built is collapsed on us!
Nigerians have not forgotten in a hurry how in 2015, many were preoccupied with the quest to remove Goodluck Jonathan out of Aso Rock. The zeal to crucify Jonathan was so consuming like the harmattan fire that many political power-houses had to decamp from the ruling party (PDP) and aligned with their partners in crime, some even declared intentions to run for the presidency just to scuffle his chances of returning to power, while some others choose to discredit him by calling him all sorts of names.
Read also: 2023: Putting weight behind the candidate of your choice
This is not to make excuses for the former president but to point out how our unguided quest landed us in a mess. Of a truth, things were difficult for Nigerians then, and most of the political office holders were guilty of corruption, but we did not take time to figure out whom to trust our country with to fix.
Taking advantage of the situation on the ground, the ‘Lejoka Brown’ of our time and his men promised us they will end terrorism (Boko Haram) attack in months, build for us one of the fastest-growing economies in the world with a real GDP growth averaging 10 percent annually. What do we have in return? Your guess is as good as mine.
We were also promised that there will be a ban on government officials from going abroad for medical treatment; what do we have? Those who promulgated the law are the ones contravening it. And they want us to support their ambition to consolidate abnormality.
Job creation was one of the assurances given to us then. In fact, to be precise, we were promised the creation of 720,000 jobs by the 36 states in the federation per annum (20,000 per state). Banditry is on the rise today, logically speaking because there are no jobs, hence, the bandits created one for themselves. Remember how they promised to remove the petrol subsidy and cut down the fuel price, instead, we are threatened with a fuel hike.
This is the time to say no to all this political insanity ravaging our land. This is the time to choose wisely who we trust the affairs of Nigeria with. Nigerians must rise to defend their fatherland with their votes! The labours of heroes past, shall not be in vain!!
