When The People Are taken For A Ride By Kenneth Jude
What is exactly the place of the people in the Nigerian brand of democracy? Is it to dish out the now famed few grains of rice and infinitesimal cash in piecemeal to them when election time is close by?
What exactly is the value of the average Nigerian today vis-a-vis an elector in a democratic dispensation that is obviously wired to favour only the elite class?
In the political chessboard, are the hoi polloi just pawns used to advance the causes of the elite class who have fed on our collective patrimony for decades with dashing disregard?
As I pen this piece, the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC are conducting their primary elections to elect candidates that will be standard bearers for the party for the various elective positions come next year.
The process, as expected, has been touted as largely peaceful, especially in this part where all those anointed had their way, or so it seems. The much vaunted success has, again, been attributed to God. That same God!
But those who were sidelined by the agelong system and tactics are up in arms against the process and the outcome. The discontent has been taken to the social media. Complaints of non sighting of where the party forms were sold or outright disenfranchisement have filled the air. One aspirant who sought the PDP ticket for House of Assembly took to the social media the other day to lament how the Aniekan Akpan-led Akwa Ibom United PDP misled him and others into thinking they were serious about contesting the 2027 elections.
To buy the form in the first place was herculean, he said. To see the form seller was an impossible ask. To locate the office was akin to searching for Chelsea’s Pedro in the just released Brazil World Cup squad. After the back and forth, their aspirations did not see the light of day. The message was that only APC aspirants representing the one leg of the Akwa Ibom United family are the only aspirants that have been anointed to contest! Shocking? Not at all to neutrals who have watched how Aniekan Akpan and his acolytes has bastardised whatever remnants of what is left of opposition politics in Akwa Ibom with his liaison with the APC, yet posturing gingerly without shame as being the chairman of PDP. Posterity is watching.
What is happening around the country in the name of primaries have been mere coronation just as I said in my last offering here. Even more bizarre are some of the clips that we have seen on social media were a new method of arithmetic has been introduced. We watched with bewildering shock how, using the option A4 where counting jumped magically from 30 to 60, 90 to 200, 120 to 400 and lots more. That was the case in many coronation centres as the ruling APC dragged our nascent democracy further down the nadir.
Should we continue like this? To what end actually? Who will bail us from this quagmire? The elites who have been beneficiaries of this bizarre kind of politics are adamant to change. They can never support any form of reform that will not grant them unfettered access to power. So, until the citizens rise from their docility, say no to politics of the belly and insist on what is right, this circus shall continue with the ultimate beneficiaries being the same old foxes who have milked our collective heritage with impunity, leaving our treasury lean, helpless and hopeless.
To get it right lies with the citizens at all levels. Institutions must also wake up to their responsibility. No politician, no matter how highly placed or with deep pockets can rig his way to power without the active connivance of the people, the judiciary, security agencies, INEC and the likes. So, are these institutions manned by non living things? No. They are peopled by Nigerians who, when presented with the sacred mandate to help place Nigeria on the right track, sadly see it from a different lense. To them, it becomes their own turn to also plunder and enrich themselves to the detriment of a more just society where things are done the right way for the betterment of a vast majority.
After playing key roles in overseeing rogue processes from which incompetent leaders emerge, they later join honest Nigerians to complain of how tough the economy is, how their well qualified child was denied a job placement because they didn’t have “long legs”; how they were told to part with a huge amount before getting a job; how hunger has dealt with the average citizen who has been made to go through mental strain arising from poor economic policies that evince neither hope nor relief for long-suffering Nigerians.
Politicians know the only way to change this country and put it on the right track is through a well conducted election where the masses are given the opportunity to choose their leaders without coercion or intimidation in any form. They know that once the masses are allowed to vote with their conscience intact, and electoral officers, security agents are not bribed, it becomes almost impossible for some of them to make any headway electorally. Another tool used to keep the people helpless and subservient is hunger. Once you’re hungry, thinking rationally is difficult. So, clutching onto this, our politicians share a little of what they’ve amassed with the people during the electioneering season to keep them breathing. Once they get their wish, they return to factory settings. You can’t question who you did not elect, neither is the person answerable to you.
For instance in Akwa Ibom, some lawmakers that have been given the nod either through the ongoing coronation exercises or those that are waiting for their day, having got the blessings of the powers that be are said to have failed abysmally in the current positions they occupy. But they are warming up to retain their positions. They have secured the backing of stakeholders. And that’s all that matters! The people who initially threatened fire and brimstone over their return have taken a reticent chair. Majority of them have lined up to vote the same persons they clearly came out to say have failed. So, why reinforce failure? Fear of food? Alienation from the table? So, we sacrifice a greater tomorrow for the fleeting convenience of today!
We have allowed a few men who have made themselves demigods through our enablement to run roughshod over us for ages. Each time the opportunity comes for us to change the narrative, we succumb to filthy lucre; and so empower and embolden them to continue the assault on our collective intelligence. No administration has battered and dealt a blow on democracy like that of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Under him, every opposition party is in crisis. Only his APC is insulated from trouble. But this is the same man that stormed to power by whatever means in 2023 having been in the opposition right from his days as Lagos State governor with Alliance for Democracy, until the coalition of other parties that led to APC snatching power from PDP in 2015. If opposition was not tolerated as is the case today, I doubt APC would have found a fitting ground to upstage the then ruling PDP.
Democracy thrives on free choice and legitimacy. People should have the freedom to choose their leaders without intimidation. Those who win should do so based on legitimacy and not by ballot box snatching, thuggery and all manner of devious tactics. We can get it right if the means through which leaders emerge are devoid of manipulation. One popular presidential candidate in the 2023 election said that to earn the appellation “His Excellency”, then the process that leads you to bear the title should be excellent. Sadly, very few of our politicians care a hoot about how they emerge; all that matters is their victory at the end of it all. The nation can burn so long as their roofs are untouched!
As a nation, we must deliberately begin the process of repositioning Nigeria. Doing so will benefit the larger majority and not a few privileged lot who have access to the till. When there are jobs, it goes to them first. To the ones in their good books, they give them out. Others not connected to anybody apply with their excellent grades and qualification with their hopes placed in the divine. But then, we can make this country so good that the child of a nobody but with the right skillsets, gets a job based on merit and not because he knows anybody “at the top”.
When institutions are allowed to operate unencumbered by powerful individuals who want things done in reverse to their favour, we’ll begin a national healing process that will place us on the cusp of economic emancipation, technological and educational advancement. The power lies in my hands and yours. When we are ready, we will educate our aged parents in the village, the poor boy in the village who has lent himself to hard drugs, the impressionable girl in the village who has become a prey to randy men on the reasons they must not allow themselves to be used to advance the selfish gains of a few privileged politicians. We must tell them in clear terms that their inability to enjoy quality healthcare, education and other basic amenities is down to some of these people they venerate to the heavens.
That is the mind reengineering we need to prepare for a better and brighter future. We must build a society where people do not just gather every election cycle to be told lies and taken for a ride, but a people that will know their rights, ask the right questions and seek the right answers. Until then, we’ll sadly continue to witness this sad episode that has become our daily reality. An episode of shame. One where the people are treated as sub-humans by our leaders. We must deliberately put this anomaly to an end if we must see the light from this dark alley.
Is anyone paying attention?
Kenneth Jude is three-time NUJ Columnist of the year. 08065998880
