The meaning of insanity

Insanity is defined as the attitude of doing things in the same manner, while expecting different results.  An insane person will continue to hit his head on a brick wall, believing in all certainty that water will spring forth like it did in the days of Prophet Moses.  But when you tell him that such an event is unlikely, that he will only sustain injury, or death, by that constant repetition, a mad man is likely to think you, not him, are out of your mind!  By voting those hordes of PDP legislators in the East of Nigeria, and more frustratingly in the North, what our people have asked for is ‘more of the same’.  There is no way one should expect a legislator, who shared money and never visited his constituency for eight or twelve years, to suddenly change and do things right after so many years wasted in pursuit of his personal interest.  For sure, the only way of getting different results, is by changing people around, or by altering the circumstances in a marked manner.

One hopes that these same people will know that voting in their plundering governors, and a party that has held the country by the jugular, into presidency will mean that they will continue to live lives of penury.  I know many Nigerians have become ‘insane’ as a result of many years of want and poverty, and that many do not see their lives changing or imagine that Nigeria could be any different from what it is today.  But we should let them know the consequences of their actions and the life of servitude, inequality, waste, oppression, and international opprobrium that they have once again sentenced their children to.  Suppose we had entirely different people, with different orientations, going into the national assembly?  Should we not then expect such people to reduce the behemoth salaries and allowances being collected by our legislators?  But as it is, with a strong PDP influence still, and many old wheeler-dealers being returned from the East and North, one should just expect that business will continue as usual amongst the legislators.

Why would anyone sentence Nigeria to ‘more of the same’?  Are people not tired of how things have gone?  Perhaps majority of Nigerians are ‘enjoying’ and some of us are just crying wolf for nothing!  This is the way I see it; whatever you vote becomes your reality, your future.  If you vote for status quo, then your life will remain in status quo.  If you vote for change, then your life MAY see change.  Change is not guaranteed, but at least there is an opportunity, that if we do things differently, Nigeria MAY become a better place to live, especially if we see a difference in the attitude of our leaders.  What is more certain, is that if we vote for a continuation of governance the way it has been for the past decade in Nigeria, then we should not expect leopards to change their spots overnight.  They say you cannot give what you don’t have.  The PDP government is an elitist government.  It is the government of the businessmen, by the corrupt politicians, for their own benefits.  It is a government where ‘leaders’ see nothing wrong in treating the led like scum, and in confusing them while campaigning in order to secure their votes.  If we had a change, say a Buhari government, we could at least expect a more frugal government, where a modicum of discipline exists.

Or perhaps the victories recorded in the North were a result of massive rigging, as the CPC alleged when it was discovered that one million ballot papers were being printed in one of the printing presses in Abuja.  After all in the north, they do not have as many IT-savvy people and ‘poke-noses’ as exists in the South-West, where ACN swept almost all the stakes.  My own experience in my polling unit at Wuye, Abuja, showed some of the flaws of our democracy.  Just before me was a very old man, who could not make any meaning from the ballot paper he was handed.  One young man tried to help him, but then that was against the electoral laws.  If majority of Nigerians are poor and ‘uneducated’, especially in the realm of English education, then they have been disenfranchised once the ballot papers are printed in English language.  We can talk about inclusion of women in governance and such stuff, but no one is advocating for these poor and illiterate people (who are in the majority), to be carried along.  Even the blind should be able to vote unassisted.  In my polling unit, almost half of the votes were voided because the voters did not know how to handle the ballot paper.  This is a monumental waste of time, money, and emotions! Professor Jega should please note.

Other deficiencies of democracy reared their ugly heads.  If democracy is about the exercise of ‘enlightened self-interest’, in choosing one’s government, then it presupposes that the voter is ‘enlightened’.  But a hungry, broke, illiterate voter, is surely unenlightened.  So he could be bribed to vote for a criminal.  He then proceeds to elect a criminal based on his ‘unenlightened self-interest’.  The northern votes fell into these ‘democratic’ traps, or were simply rigged as usual.

Not so for the South West, where the Yoruba people are more ‘literate’.  They have done what is logical by effecting ‘change’, if only to see if it works for them.  It is a gamble, but a logical gamble.  One only hopes that it will not take that region into a cocoon, whereby they will play unproductive opposition politics.  Fashola’s government has shown however, that you can be in opposition and set the pace of governance by bettering the lots of your people.  His colleagues in the South-West should borrow a leaf from his book of governance.  He is also a frugal man, devoid of the vanity we see amongst many PDP governors.  A great man indeed, if ever there was one.

In the East, a sad tale continues to play out.  It seems that ideology cannot define the politics there.  Or that no one is ready to drive the process.  That is why they have voted for status quo there.  It would surely be insane, for any Easterner, to expect any difference in governance, from the same old PDP politicians they have sent to the National Assembly, or the PDP governors they will reelect.  It is instructive, that despite its own flaws, the Peter Obi government is perhaps better performing, and less ostentatious than the rest, and that is why Madam Dora the fox, the wiliest woman in Nigeria’s political history, tried to cling to his apron strings by dumping PDP for APGA.  Sullivan in Enugu is doing okay though.

All in all, I hope Nigerians will banish ‘insanity’ at the national level, and vote for CHANGE.  I hope we will do things differently, in order to get different results.