People often talk about how smart Nigerians are.
It is a hard point to argue: in a fair contest, the Nigerian often acquits himself admirably. That counts several times more if he is on a soil other than his own. He is quick in adaptation and swift in application.
If that is the case, you ask: why has Nigeria grown increasingly pathetic? Why have the smarts of its people not transformed the country?
And why, furthermore, is it that rather than position itself by next year’s elections to reclaim hope, Nigeria appears to be embarking on a journey of no return?
In that election, the frontline parties are again the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the amalgam of strong regional parties cobbled together in 2014 to defeat the PDP.
And flying the PDP flag will be Atiku Abubakar, who was Vice-President to Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007), and has run for the presidency from every corner ever since. To confront him, APC has chosen Ahmed Bola Tinubu, its National Leader and a former governor of Lagos State who claims itThese are two well-known Nigerians, but while they may be popular within their political parties, they are reviled on both sides of the Nigerian border because of the question of character. Is it simply a coincidence that they have emerged flagbearers of their parties at a time that Nigeria is desperate for a man of character to assume its leadership?
My answer is: No. For 16 years, the PDP had rigged and lied and plundered with ruthless impudence. As a fitting extension of that arrogance, at the end of his eight years in office President Obasanjo even tried to snatch an unconstitutional third term out of thin air for himself.
Obasanjo, who now positions himself as a statesman and the very personification of democracy, failed. Nonetheless in his conceit he personally imposed on the PDP for the 2007 election the flawed presidential ticket of Umaru Yar’Adua, who was defined by poor health, and Goodluck Jonathan, by lack of preparation.
In case anyone—from Obasanjo to Jonathan—has forgotten, it was the stench of the PDP’s performance from 1999 to 2015 that gifted the presidency to one Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. People wanted CHANGE, and Buhari promised to deliver it. Yes, there was a lot of propaganda deployed by Buhari and his APC, but it would have meant nothing had the PDP not clearly constituted itself into an army of occupation and exploitation for 16 years.
Astonishingly, Buhari and his APC have proved to be far worse. A president who promised leadership has produced only words. A president who promised C-H-A-N-G-E to a country desperate for it delivered instead, COMPROMISE.
Few leadership failures in history have been as spectacular as Buhari’s, and the very measurement of his failure is the production by two of the leading parties as their presidential candidates, of Mr. Tinubu and Mr. Abubakar: two men best defined by their character questions over the years.
What is worse than Buhari’s deficiencies as a leader is that he enters his final year in office attempting to sell a story about how successful he has been. Seven years after he assumed control, he now blames Nigerians for having “short memories.”
At the recent APC Convention, for instance, he spoke about what he said he inherited: “A nearly dead economy in spite of oil being over $100 per barrel for many years, vast areas of our country under insurgents’ control, salaries, wages, pensions unpaid for months in many states. Problems were left unattended or ignored. Infrastructure left to decay. Internationally, we were despised.”
Think about that: a man who would rather die on a London hospital bed than live in a Nigerian one complains of infrastructure being left to decay. His APC was raising billions in presidential nomination forms from a thicket of candidates while university students stayed home because their lecturers have been on strike for months. It is strange that Buhari knows about being despised internationally but nothing about being a frontline hypocrite.
And hear his punchline: “Our APC government has changed all that. Our response to any new challenges, whether banditry, kidnapping, insurgency has been prompt and head-on.”
So “successfully” has Buhari tackled insecurity that Nigerians can barely travel by road or rail between towns; in 2015, they could. Poverty has reached unprecedented levels. So successful has he been in tackling corruption that the party primaries were scandalously, brazenly and openly compromised.
And so successful has he been in confronting corruption that men of questionable character have the best shot at taking over from him.
Remember: in no election since 1999 has a man with this kind of reputation been elected to Nigeria’s presidency. All those who rotted did so openly after they assumed office. That is why they were able to declare anti-corruption principles on the campaign trail, as Buhari did in Sokoto in September 2014.
But so “successful” has Buhari been as a “man of integrity” that on the campaign trail between Atiku and Tinubu, combating corruption can only be a subject of comedy and laughter, not policy.
This is why the emergence of these two men is such a serious left turn for the people of Nigeria.
That is unless they each declare their assets and the source of their wealth before they commence campaigning and commit to pre-election debates and press conferences at which no questions will be off-limits. If not, should one of them win the election, it will be the first time that a nation’s challenges will be handed over to a man who is one of those very challenges.
Anyone who has eyes can see that Buhari’s accomplishment is in compounding the problems he met in 2015 and adding several more. It will take superhuman effort to clean the Augean stables, but it is not impossible as long the Nigerian voter carefully chooses his leader.
This ought to be straightforward now as the character and track record of every candidate is already known. If Nigerians are really smart people, they will refuse to be bribed, befuddled or borrowed.
This is why Nigeria’s most important political problem is not bad leadership, but bad followership. Never has it been more important to sweep aside the pretenders of both political parties and politicians than today, and bad leadership ought not to happen to smart people through the ballot box.
This time, voters must refuse to turn left into the darkness. It is in your hands to save yourself and your future, dear Nigerian. Arise…Get involved…Organize…Stay involved…Refuse to be bought or sold! Remind everyone wherever there is an ear that no smart person sells himself into slavery.
This column welcomes rebuttals from interested government officials.
• @Sonala.Olumhense
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