With the forthcoming general polls billed to commence as from February 18th next year, the country has barely one year to prepare for the attendant regime change at both the federal and state tiers of governance. To appreciate the impact of the dispensation, are the following facts. While a new President and Vice President as well as Senators and Members of the House of Representatives will be elected for the country, as many as 28 out of the 36 state governors seats will also be up for elections. This is in addition to the election of hundreds members into the 36 state houses of assembly.
However, going by the course of pre-election conversations, Nigeria may witness the emergence of a new crop of leaders, without any significant promise of transforming the country. Placing this eventuality in another frame, Nigerians may vote in 2023 for nothing other than more stagnation that may exacerbate the presently depressed state of affairs. Even as such an outcome remains unpalatable, the prospects of reversing it may prove untenable as the attendant flow of discourse which drives the build up to the polls, has so far featured a disturbing surfeit of hollowness. This is even as some more impatient aspirants have elected to beat the gun by announcing their ambitions earlier than the rest of the field, what they are telling Nigerians hardly addresses the burning issues of the day. The narratives from most of them border on self-praise and conspiratorial maneuvers, just to seize power at all costs.
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It does not take the attribute of clairvoyance to enumerate the ills of the country especially with the daily grind of privations affecting all and sundry. Hence while the challenges facing Nigerians in all nooks and corners are well known, the strategic approaches towards resolving them have been in deficit and therefore constitute the missing link. It therefore is nothing other than disturbing that from the look of things, a wider cross section of aspirants are yet to come to terms with the specific enterprise of availing the country with insights of a new social order as expected of them. Rather what is trending in the calculus of who takes over governance at the various tiers, is who represents which zone of the country.
Hence the critical issue of who qualifies for public office now depends not on proven or perceived competence and acceptable promise in office, but on which side of a map an aspirant hails from.
Take the case of just one topical individual—Bola Tinubu, the former governor of Lagos State and a national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). While the country has been assaulted for some time with series of praise songs for him as the man whose tenure as President will be the best thing that will happen to Nigeria, not many Nigerians including a wide swathe of the elite can pinpoint the specific expectations from him on each of the burning issues of the day. All that the country is regaled with are tales of how he turned the fortunes of Lagos State around during his tenure as two time governor between 1999 to 2007. Not much is said or heard of what he intends to do if elected President of Nigeria come 2023 and into the future. As it is with Tinubu so it is with virtually all other aspirants, except perhaps for the newly elected governor of Anambra State Charles Soludo, who in apparent deference to his antecedents provided deep insights into what to expect from his governorship tenure which is due from March this year.
The question now is whether it is fair on the country to be saddled with another generation of elected leaders without even the slightest inkling of what to expect from them? Is it not a case of self-immolation for the country to welcome a new set of leaders to lead it through a tunnel without even a bearing of what to expect? Yet, this is exactly what the country is heading for in the present circumstances.
Meanwhile, the blame cannot be placed on the aspirants alone for not providing full voluntary disclosures of their intents when in office, for the obvious reason of issues surrounding the cut-throat competition that typically trails tussles for power. However, since the country needs to have a mark-up in quality of life with any succeeding generation of leaders building on the dividends of their predecessors, the forthcoming regime change needs to be guided to ensure that another opportunity of changing Nigeria for the better, is not missed come 2023.
Two dispensations remain of utility to the country in this respect. In the first place is the need to facilitate the activation into full operational mode, of the complement of dedicated institutions who are designated to manage elections. This is where the ongoing rigmarole over the assent by President Muhamadu Buhari of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021, constitutes an affront on the country’s electoral future. It remains the primary facility for providing checks and balances to promote rectitude in the electoral enterprise, and help society make the right choices of leaders. That is also where the process of cleansing the electoral process remains sacrosanct as it constitutes a filtration exercise that will avail Nigeria the best of human capacity in the most suitable persons occupying public office.
The other dispensation is the need to extract commitments from aspirants on what to expect from them through public opinion engineering. This is where the conversations with respect to the polls need not be shy of whatever details that will further public good. In the content of the conversations with respect to the polls, Nigerians are interested in not only what the aspirants may claim or say. Even details on their personal circumstances remain fair game. As the banks execute the ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) exercise, Nigerians should also insist on ‘Know Your Aspirant’ (KYA).
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