By Lanre Aminu
LEGENDARY British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government- except all the others that have been tried”. Upon reflection, this view bears eloquent credence when juxtaposed with discoveries that some undesirable characters rode to power through popular mandate to unleash a most ferocious attack on the very democratic tenet that served them as ladder to great height of power. Alice Chasan, Editor, World Press Review declared that “Without information, we grope in the dark”. No nation can be truly free when its people lack the tools to choose a leader or assess the government and its policies in the context of the world community. The Holy Book says, “ My people perish for lack of knowledge” Democracy holds a lot of promise for humanity when the electorates are truly informed, the ownership of government by the people: after all, it is defined as government of the people, by the people and for the people. However, some misfits, thieves and charlatans have often escape detailed scrutiny through a combination of factors such as when the citizenry feel disenchanted or are impoverished in reasoning; they simply are swayed by sentiments.
When such a scenario plays out, it is not about the capacity or ability of the preferred to live up to expectation, it is about the electorates cutting its nose to spite its face. Feeling emasculated by reforms, public interest becomes the sacrificial lamb. Such is the case of our beloved country, Nigeria today. It is a statement of fact that the Nigerian political system is such that it is the era of instant gratification where politicians dole out cash or other souvenir and are not subjected to background checks. In Nigeria today, politics and cash are synonymous. Redounding kudos must go to President Buhari for approving the naira design by the CBN to reduce the malady of vote buying in the forthcoming general election. Long ago, in the distant past, the pull to public office was service, our politicians spoke and wrote beautiful prose to articulate position on any and every issue, arguments were made with great points. The leading lights then were prepared but not any longer. Ultimately, we lost good governance for politics and politics becomes an all comer’s affairs. The trajectory of Nigeria remains pathetic and uninspiring. The electorates abdicated its responsibility because of poverty of both the mind and the pocket. The foregoing explains the undemocratic manner of emergence of leaders in Nigeria which is our bane as a nation and which has made visionary leaders to elude us for so long. Consequently, today, our beloved country, Nigeria is stuck in the mud of underdevelopment because it hasn’t been led by its best politicians since it became an independent country. A country’s development is intrinsically linked to the quality of its leadership. In view of the above, the question agitating the mind of this writer is: For how long are we going to continue like this?
Not a few will agree with this concerned citizen that, as we draw nearer to the forthcoming general election in February and March, 2023, the call to save our country, Nigeria has become louder, clearer and unambiguous. As a foremost writer and human right activist, I have being giving my best to my state, Osun nay Nigeria. I do believe that a man or a woman’s greatness is defined not by the amount of wealth he or she has acquired, but the impact of service to God and humanity. In the light of the above, as a former media aide to some former governors and other public office holders belonging to the two major political parties, APC and the PDP, I have vowed to give an honest, fair, neutral and unbiased assessments of the two major presidential candidates, Atiku and Tinubu and recommend the most suitable person to the electorate in deference to the saying which goes thus: “Never worry about who will be offended if you speak the truth. Worry about who will be misled, deceived and destroyed if you don’t”. Many of us are too afraid to speak about the oppression we suffer because we fear further persecution. I am one of the few, the courageous and the unbowed who will rather forfeit the short-term political gains rather collude with arbitrariness of power, reign of pain, agony and impunity. In the next few days leading to the election, we shall embark on aggressive enlightenment and education of the youths through the print, electronic and the social media.
My position is that elections should be won on issues considered important by the people, not on some mythical claim to primordial differences, i. e. the issue of ethnicity and religion. That is pure indulgence in triviality. We should be concerned about building a Nigeria where a George W. Bush junior would be judged by his own suitability for the same office that his father held, whether or not the latter is a success story, without any body asking if the office of the president is the birth right of one family: a country where a Hillary Clinton could end up holding the same office that her husband held for eight years. It serves a better purpose than make statements that smacks of arrogance and promote divisive tendencies which suggests that the major criteria for holding the office of the president by anybody from the South is entitlement(it is the turn of the South, “Awa lokan/Emilokan” syndrome). We the electorate from the South should not allow ourselves to be swayed by such sentiment and triviality if we ponder over the fact that: What did we as a region collectively benefit from Obasanjo’s eighth year presidency and Jonathan’s five year presidency? It took a president of Northern extraction, late Umaru Yar’Adua to redress the injustice meted to Lagos by a president from the Southern region, Obasanjo. It also took a president from the South, Goodluck Jonathan to build Almajiri schools in the North.
When the French President, Emmanuel Macron was given his acceptance speech, the first set of people he thanked were those who voted to save the Republic. In view of the above, what should be paramount in the minds of every patriotic Nigerians, irrespective of our ethnic and religion differences is the need to vote to save this republic. The stage we are now is not just electoral politics, but liberation politics. And we need men of great courage to lead the mass movement and get Nigeria out of the woods. It is a battle without gun, but we have to stand up and retrieve the soul of Nigeria from the forces of backwardness. We need a broad minded Nigerian, a leader who does not see Nigeria from ethnic prism, a leader that will truly belong to all, a leader that will not have a sacred cow, a leader that will rise above ethnicity and religious divides, a leader that will see Nigeria as his constituency, a leader who has sympathy for the poor, a leader who believes in the devolution of power and productivity, a leader who abhors injustice and corruption. That is the leader Nigeria needs at this moment. It will be foolhardy for anyone to say Tinubu poses any of the qualities enumerated above. Not a few will agree with this writer that the only presidential candidate that fits this bill amongst the three major contenders is Atiku Abubakar, Waziri Adamawa. To butress my position in Atiku Abubakar, here what a veteran journalist and Vanguard columnist, Dele Sobowale said of President Buhari and Atiku Abubakar, in his column, titled “The President we have versus the president we need (3) in Sunday Vanguard newspaper of February 4,2018: “ Great nations have achieved their greatness by having leaders who are a step or two ahead of their people. Buhari was at first uninterested in restructuring because it serves his personal purpose to have four more years running Nigeria as it, so he is against it. By contrast, we have other leaders, even Northern leaders who have exhibited the flexibility of mindset required to rule a multi-ethnic, multireligious and multi-interest country like Nigeria. Permit me to bring some excerpts from a publication which i came across recently- RESTRUCTURING AS A PATHWAY TO UNITY AND DEVELOPMENT- The Atiku Abubakar files. “None of us is as great as all of us. We must look beyond our individual ambitions and interests. It(restructuring) is about country and its current and future citizen” Place that statement side by side with that of a leader who is telling fairy tales of how he helped others, including Buhari to become leaders and as result, it his turn. Atiku Abubakar’s 5 point agenda says it all.
- Aminu, Convener of Oodua Youth for Good Governance, writes in from Alagbado, Lagos.
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