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Two weeks after the lid on campaigns was removed, it is now clear that we are on the old road that shields candidates, masks their short comings, and makes emperors of nincompoops. We are in the season of choreographed sound bites designed to leave a sedated populace enchanted with empty bombast. We are in the season that leaves no room for voters to make intelligent decisions on which candidate best suits the interest of the country at this time.
Except Nigerians rise up to say a loud NO, our politics will go mad again; our situation from bad to never land. We will repeat the same mistakes we have always made; and end up, again, with a president who does not own the campaign promises made on his behalf by a coterie of well oiled media teams, opportunistic hangers-on and consultants. We will end up with another Buhari: ignorant, incompetent, clannish, religious and tribal irredentist, in a different hue.
Until Nigerians begin to ask vigorous questions of the candidates, grill them on their party’s manifestoes; know from them, for certain, how they intend to tackle and solve the myriads of problems which hold the nation and people hostage, we are more likely than not to make the same mistakes we have made over the last 62 years. We must not allow an empty headed ethnic, religious, economic and out-of-tune jingoist to happen on us again. We have no one to blame this time but ourselves. For, if we end up with a sick or out-of-tune pretender to the throne, we will be, of all people, the most foolish. We will be our own worst enemies indeed.
With Nigeria currently a crawling 62-years-old-infant on diapers, it is left to Nigerians to decide what is best in their interest. Putting primordial sentiments far away, they have to decide who to entrust the captain’s band, to lead the way out of the woods.
The forest of leadership incompetence is dark, thick and steep. Hence it is not enough for the parties to stage-manage mega rallies like we have started seeing. Tens of thousands of people are induced and mobilised along the old tactics of deceptive make believe. Let’s sell falsehood along the known fault lines: this is our son, our choice for you; this is our religious flag bearer and so on. Mega rallies designed to awe and overwhelm, which bear little or no consequence on how to get Nigeria out of the woods and working again. Soon, bragging rights will be “my rally is bigger than yours” and not my ideas of how to solve the problems of Nigeria is far scalable, more authentic, more achievable than yours. Basically, the rallies remain candidates ego massaging carnivals of dance and songs. Venues for back-slapping and empty rhetorics.
We are not going to vote for rallies or for spokesmen, or consultants, or for sexed up advertisements. If all things go well as envisaged, out of the trio of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and Mr Peter Obi, one of them will emerge as the President elect. This is the time to hold their backs to the fire, to grill them, to know for real that what they are promising is what they will be delivering. it is not enough for them to make bombastic promises of I will do this or I will do that. We need to know first, if what they are promising is what the country needs at this time. We need to know how the one who makes a promise is going to practically implement his promises; how much they will cost; where the funding will be got and how long it will take to carry out. Candidates must own their campaign promises.
When a candidate says he will get the economy working again, we must not rush to embrace him, unquestioningly. When they say they will create jobs for the youths, fix the almost nonexistent infrastructure, including providing reliable power supply, we must be skeptical. We have been fooled too many times. Unless we do our part, and do the homework now, it is useless to tie our fate to the promises of any of the candidates. Whether you are Articulated, BATified or OBIdient, you will be a fool, be as guilty as the politicians who have raped and raped you repeatedly with so much undisguised relish if your support is borne out of foolish, emotional manipulation. If your activism is to insult and abuse others and leave a proper interrogation of the candidates and their promises, you are one of the enemies of Nigeria.
Let’s be clear. It is not the turn of any of these candidates, as an imagined right. That is an insult on our collective integrity, taken too far. What arrant arrogance! Truth is : it is the turn of the brutalized and pauperized citizens. It is their turn to stand up and ensure that only the candidates who will meet the real needs of the people get their nod. If not they will still end up with, for example, buccaneer legislators who appropriate more than 25% of national wealth to themselves. The nation will witness another set of self centred National Assembly members, divorced from our common reality and grief, whose annual budget is five times what is voted for education and health. Yet they are only about 500 people. The same is true at the states, with an average of 25 legislators per state. Indeed, you only need to see the convoy of the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and their deputies; or the convoy of Speakers of the State Houses of Assembly, Commissioners and so on, to know that the presidency is not the only waste pipe of our economy; that we must broaden our vigilance.
What am I driving at? I am saying that the mistake we made with a Buhari, who never truly promised us anything (in fairness to him), should not be repeated. His associates hoodwinked us with promises they never intended for implementation. They told us what they felt we wanted to hear; what they knew we will fall for. As we have found out, they sold to us as a strong and compassionate leader, but ended up a wimp, who was incapable of articulating any of the policies outlined. The likes of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Bukola Saraki, Rotimi Amaechi, Governor Nasir El Rufai knew how to fool us. We expectedly fell for their trickery. Today, no one is holding them to account. One or more of them are even seeking elective office. They are dubiously distancing themselves from all the promises embedded in the “Change” they sold to us as the mantra of the Buhari regime. If we had grilled Buhari and asked him to give us details about the four policy pillars on which he rode to power, we would perhaps not have made the mistake of electing him. We would have seen him for who he truly is: a parochial but resolute religious bigot who his wife Aisha has now come out to expose as one who suffered from PTSD for years.
Let’s hold the candidates and their parties to account now. Let’s pick their promises with a fine comb; let’s sift out the rotten mangoes. Let’s ensure every one of them is clear headed, with well thought out plans and programmes borne out of a passion to reverse the downward slide in our fortunes these past many years. Let’s have the details of what they are talking about. Let them convince us they know the problems and how to tackle them. Let’s even go to the extent of compelling them to go through rigorous health checks. We cannot afford a repeat of the situation where two of our last three occupants of the office of president were health incapacitated, with one even dying in office. We must not be fooled to take a six seconds bicycle exercise by Bola Tinubu, or some lame dance steps by Atiku Abubakar as signs that they are healthy. We must get to know the true state of health of Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. Nigeria needs a president with a healthy mind, in a healthy body to shoulder the responsibility of governing it.
The top three candidates, we all know, are not our brightest and best. But they are what we have to chose from. That’s why we must be circumspect and pick the best. Marching for them, or even voting for any one of them is not enough. We must go for the one who is best positioned to tackle the humongous problems bedeviling the nation. We must get it right this time or there is the possibility that the nation could tip over into a political, economic and social implosion.
By Mideno Bayagbon