Essay
By Steve Nwabuko
AS Nigeria prepares to go to polls in the next twenty days or precisely on 25th February, 2023, it is pertinent to ask the following questions:
Why is electioneering a war game in Nigeria?
Why has Nigeria’s attempts at Democratic governance not produced fruitful outcomes since independence in 1960?
Why is Nigeria the poverty capital of the world inspite of it’s rich natural resources endowments?
Why is leadership failure a Nigerian phenomenon?
The answer to the above questions may be captured in four words: Predators, Prevaricators, Perpetrators and Spectators.
The several elections in Nigeria: 1959, 1963, 1979, 1993, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019 and the current 2023 may have gulped over a whopping five trillion naira in national election budgets but the leadership it has churned out is less than satisfactory in terms of growth, development and national cohesion.
What we rather have is a divided, distraught, degraded and demystified country along ethnic, tribal, religious and group interests that have vacated our unity in diversity in place of egocentric, regional and feudal fault lines that have kept Nigeria underdeveloped in over sixty three years of her independence.
PREDATORS.
By this is meant plunder for gain, leadership without responsibility, policies without accountability, might is right, gain without labour and earnings without productivity.
It is on record that the north has held political power in Nigeria in about forty seven years since 1960 and has turned out more vulnerable to poverty figures, education disadvantages, dearth of productive economic activities, dismantling of heavy investment projects and accommodation of strange insecurity ambivalences in form of bokoharam, insurgency, kidnapping for ransom and banditry, as well as exporting terrorism to other parts of the country through deliberate herdsmen attacks on agricultural fields and innocent citizens.
The northern political leadership machinery has managed Nigeria’s oil and gas wealth more than any other group to the point where oil is now a curse than a blessing and can no longer sustain national budgets and has reduced Nigeria’s living standards to it’s lowest ebb.
Between 1956 when oil was discovered in commercial quantities in iloibiri in Rivers state up till 2023, Nigeria cannot put its fingers on how much of oil it has produced and sold and it’s impact on growth and development.
Few Nigerians are richer than Nigeria and it is becoming a norm to celebrate Forbes billionaires of Nigeria extraction than to celebrate a Nigerian economy that works for all.
Major civil and government owned paramilitary learning institutions are spread across the north but research and development Initiatives are not flowing therefrom making those learning centers mere cosmetic havens of knowledge decay.
The big issues are:
How can one explain the high poverty levels in the north after holding on to power relentlessly?
What explanation may be given to the high out of school children in the north of about twelve million with all the institutions in the north?
How did insurgency find dominance in the north and rather than abate is spreading nationally?
PREVARICATORS.
Prevarication is to evade the truth and to be intentionally ambiguous.
As much as the north has held on to political power, so much has the -South (South west, South east and South south) lived in a manner to suggest accomplices to the facts of de-industrialisation, divestments, decay and destitution.
The commanding heights of Nigeria’s national economic institutions that failed over the years are in the South.
To wit:
Nigeria National Shipping line.
Nigeria Airways.
Nigeria Telecommunications limited.
Major Textile industries.
Major paper manufacturing industries.
Major Tyre manufacturing industries.
Major steel industries.
Major rail lines.
If government policies aided the dearth of these heavy duty industries, the South participated in the criminal brigandage and looting that exterminated live from those investments.
The north was able to hold on to power for as long as it could because the South would not organise itself to present a common front for power acquisition by the ballot box.
The north has perfected the art of breaking through the ranks of the South to pick a geopolitical zone to add to it’s kitty and form a government at the Federal level at the chagrin of southern electorates.
This occurs through formation of dubious mega political parties to acquire power without regard to serving the people.
Whereas the northern Governors forum has remained strong and undiluted, the southern Governors forum is a show of shame and game of betrayals.
After the Asaba, Delta state, southern Governors declaration of October 10, 2020, to the effect of President from southern Nigeria for 2023, the host Governor betrayed the resolution and is today a Vice Presidential candidate to a northern Presidential candidate.
For this purpose, South south Governors forum has disintegrated, South east governors forum is kept in abeyance due to irreconcilable differences and South west Governors forum can only meet to discuss how Amotekun will be deployed to fight territorial incursions from herders banditry.
The civil attempts by sociocultural groups like:
Afenifere, Ohaneze Ndigbo and Pandev to speak with one voice is mere communiqué based resolutions lacking political enforcement from southern political leadership.
PERPETRATORS.
The perpetrators of backwardness and inaction in Nigeria are two fold:
The three Arms Zone(Presidency, Legislature and Judiciary.
The Political class.
The current Presidency is adept in nepotism, cronyism and divisive tendencies.
The President once told a UN chief Scribe to concentrate international aide to one section of the country.
It went further to ensure that all important positions in the country’s security architecture are occupied by one section of the country and diverted most development projects to a section of the country leaving other sections of the country with utter neglect and disdain.
The Legislature failed woefully in its oversight functions and the ninth Senate could be referred to as a rubber stamp senate in approving unrestrained foreign loans for the President and turning it’s eyes away from oversight functions.
This same ninth Senate like others before it has failed to produce a clean copy of the amended 1999 constitution which has failed legislative compliance.
The Judiciary on it’s part has had it’s fair share of ridicule when the Chairman of the Code of Conduct Bureau was involved in open fisticuffs with a citizen.
The same Code of Conduct Bureau chief complained why they discharged and acquitted Tinubu certificate forgery and assets declaration case without due diligence and connived with political hatchet jobbers to sack a sitting Chief Justice of Nigeria.
The body of Supreme Court Justices once wrote a petition against their colleague which forced the retirement of the Chief Justice of Nigeria.
The Political class hugely consisting of APC and PDP, have unashamedly taken the lead in making Nigeria’s democracy since 1999 a caricature and a benchmark for criminality.
With humongous remuneration and little efforts to show for their take home pay, Nigerians are worse off.
The current tango between the APC Presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu being accused of narcotics dealing in USA and the PDP Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar allegedly involved in forming a Special Purpose Vehicle to fleece the nation of funds through contracts awards, shows how inadequate, inefficient and subversive the two big parties have become in presenting questionable characters for the office of President of Nigeria without proper screening and career investigation.
What is happening within the Nigerian political class is that the worst of politicians across board have been foisted on the rest of us through a criminal selection process.
SPECTATORS.
This speaks to the docile, dehumanised and overwhelmed citizenry.
The citizens of Nigeria have not lived up to their status as harbingers of political power in a democracy.
They have always been tricked, trifled, tossed about and thrown under the bus by politicians through filthy lucre and deceitful political patronage.
Politicians have turned the citizens into thugs, touts, canon fodders, hoodlums, ballot box snatchers, gun wielding enforcers, in an election process where the citizens ought to be the king and not the servant due to tokenism and dirty money.
Recently, the Office of the Citizens* was inaugurated by Dr. Oby Ezekwesili to help teach Nigerians their rights to determine their leaders through decent electoral practices.
*The docility of Nigerians gave room to vote buying, monetisation of the election process, gifts for votes, rigging, killing and falsification of election results.
The power of franchise has been replaced with the purchase of power.
THE NIGERIAN NIGHTMARE.
The outcome of the 2023 elections is a nightmare of sorts because the incoming government must face some herculean tasks trying to unknot critical issues like:
Removal of fuel subsidy.
Tackling national insecurities.
Managing a debt profile of about seventy seven(77) trillion naira.
Handling high cost of living.
Managing a dwindling foreign exchange regime.
Stabilising the value of the currency.
Addressing the age long energy(electricity) crises.
Diversifying the economy.
Reunify a battered, bruised and beleaguered people.
Moving Nigeria from consumption to production economy.
Tackling rot in the education sector.
Redeeming the dilapidated health sector.
Reinventing infrastructure.
Fighting corruption.
Putting food on the table of Nigeria citizens.
Both APC and PDP have taken turns to address above issues between 1999 to 2023 when they had the opportunity but fluffed it.
Will Nigerians allow these two discredited behemoths in APC and PDP to do another yeoman’s job in leadership ineptitude in voting them to power again in 2023?
Does the 2023 elections offer a chance for Nigeria to break away from an inglorious past?
Is a new Nigeria possible with the outcome of the 2023 elections?
Can Nigeria survive election manipulation or fraudulent election results rendition?
Are the citizens ready to shun violence and money and vote their conscience by electing a credible President?
Are the security agencies ready to defend our democracy?
Is INEC prepared to prevent Nigeria from implosion by offering best practices and transparent election?
Predators, Prevaricators and Perpetrators are pretenders to power because real power is held and exercised by Spectators.
God bless Nigeria.
KN
Tags: INEC Steve Nwabuko
