Essay
By Steve Nwabuko
AS Nigeria inches very close to the 2023 general elections in the next seventeen days or precisely on 25/02/2023, the shape of the power struggle has been reduced to three structural power bases namely: The Political class, The Labour Unions and The Electorate.
Never in the history of Nigeria’s political adventure since 1960 has this class struggle delineation been so glaring as now due to:
failure of Leadership at all levels since 1970;
division, disunity and mistrust along ethnic and religious lines, and state capture, plunder, massive corruption, mediocrity and nepotism that have sawed open the fault lines that hitherto preserved our national diversities which once held us together.
The political leadership from 1970 to 2023 brought Nigeria to it’s current level of retrogression, regret and reprehension.
THE POLITICAL CLASS.
The political class always play foul in leadership selection process that results in the flawed processes which attends to the emergence of the Presidential candidates in each election cycle using their dubious monetised indirect election or delegates jamboree.
Alhaji Shehu Shagari was not prepared to take up the mantle of leadership in 1979 elections and running against a more competent and highly cerebral candidate like Chief Obafemi Awolowo and we witnessed how the outcome of the 1979 election was manipulated in favour of Shagari using the instrumentality of twelve-two-thirds arithmetic to terminate Awolowo’s challenge and ratified by the Supreme court.
The military brushed aside Shagari’s government which they installed by 1983.
In 1999, the military began another transition program that saw Dr Alex Ekwueme superbly primed up to win the PDP Jos convention, which Party he with his colleagues of G-34 group formed but was quickly torpedoed with a conspiratorial candidate that emerged in chief Olusegun Obasanjo, through the (Peoples Democratic Movement, a Special Purpose Vehicle retained by Atiku Abubakar) who was quickly freed from jail and crowned as President of Nigeria in 1999 as against a towering and highly cerebrally competent candidate in Dr Alex Ekwueme.
Dr Alex Ekwueme’s loss at PDP 1999 Jos convention masterminded by the PDM marked the emergence of Atiku Abubakar in Nigeria’s political limelight since 1999 to date as he was rewarded with the Vice Presidential ticket to run with Obasanjo.
It is for this purpose that the South east do believe that Atiku Abubakar is the major obstructor of Igbo attempts at clinching the Presidential ticket from 1999 to date.
In 2007 elections, President Obasanjo preferred Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua above a more competent and healthy Peter Odili, a former Governor of Rivers state to pick the PDP presidential ticket and he went ahead and won the election.
Yar Adua’s exit due to death thrust Goodluck Jonathan to the throne who was a greenhorn and largely inexperienced in States craft.
By 2015, Jonathan’s inexperience saw him out of office due to combined elite conspiracy that formed a mega political party, APC with tendecious ethnic and religious cleavages that defined their faux pax.
The ousting of Jonathan and replacement with President Mohammadu Buhari has brought Nigeria to it’s current pariah status of crass incompetence and gross Leadership ineptitude.
As if unmindful of the consequences of a failed state status, the two big parties, APC and PDP, selected as their Presidential candidates: Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar, both of whom are currently challenged with moral issues that are in the public domain and for which Nigeria’s Political leadership image remains embarrassing and grossly disproportionate to international accepted standards.
The combination of dubious politicians and their retired military acolytes constitutes Nigeria’s shameful political class.
THE LABOUR UNIONS.
There are several unions that make up the Nigerian Labour Union which on its own is on the 2023 ballot as represented by the Labour Party that has Peter Obi as it’s Presidential candidate.
The Nigerian Labour Congress as the apex body of the Labour Unions has not thrown it’s weight supposedly behind the Labour Party’s momentous campaigns nationwide by means of:
Organised road shows.
Public colloquial.
Mass voters mobilisations.
Failure to turn fuel scarcity into campaign issues.
Failure to grill and drill INEC on PVC collection delays.
Lack of articulate Labour reforms and economic direction blue print for an imminent Labour government in Nigeria.
The inability of the Labour Union to field candidates in most appropriate elective positions seem to have given room for some Labour unions to be working secretly for the the big parties as an option.
The Nigerian Labour Congress is yet to activate it’s political machinery for election success talk less of physically canvassing for votes on a door-to-door basis for the Labour Party.
THE ELECTORATE.
Eligible Nigerians with PVC have the power to vote in a competent party into power based on:
Manifesto of the Party.
Capacity of the Presidential candidate to deliver.
Track record of the Presidential candidate of choice.
Aptitude and latitude of the Presidential candidate to have an idea of problems of the country and show grasp of the solutions that can wheel out the country from the doldrums and self inflicted misgovernment.
The power of the electorate to install a government is constitutional, inalienable and not discretional.
The citizens have the right to vote and be voted for, defend their votes and challenge any infractions in the voting process.
Election is the citizens right to form a new government from a mixed bag of political parties jostling for power.
Rather than unite and elect a competent party and personality into office, the citizens by their overbearing craze for fiduciary considerations allow politicians to use money, ethnicity and religion to split their ranks and balkanise the numerical voting strength of the electorate into patterns that permit judicial intervention in authenticating the valid verdict by court processes.
In the end, it is the electorate that is responsible for electing a bad government into power.
Can Nigeria get it right in 2023?
Can the electorate prevent the political class from snatching power from behind the scene?
Is the Labour movement in Nigeria for real and capable of standing up to the shenigans of the political class in leadership struggles in Nigeria?
Is Labour Union an alternative government or can Labour Union by acts of profundity organise itself and use the electorate with comprehensive leadership plan win election in Nigeria?
If politicians can form mega parties with few individuals at its top echelon and hoodwink the electorate with lies and cash, can’t Labour Union use it’s interconnectivity profile, numerical strength, national spread, organisational clout and grassroots interface to contest and acquire political power in Nigeria?
Safe for Dr Julius Ajure, the Labour Party chairman, which other known Labour leader has mounted the political podium behind Obi/Datti presidential ticket to canvass for votes from Nigerian electorate?
Where have all the Labour leaders of yore disappeared to and absconded from essential duty of political struggle for power and form a Labour government for the first time in Nigeria?
If Obi/Datti Presidential ticket fails to win the 2023 election, it means that the political class has had it’s way again, the electorate has remained docile and the Labour Union have learnt nothing in the dynamics of change management, leadership and power acquisition as agent provocateur.
KN
Tags: Steve Nwabuko The Labour Unions
