As Ezekwesili quits the race

I took some interest in the emergence of Mrs Obiageli Ezekwesili as the presidential candidate of Allied Congress Party of Nigeria not because she is the first woman to have reached that level in the quest for that exalted office in Nigeria but more importantly because I have reasons to believe she is not just in there to hug the limelight. I believe she entered the race because she is serious about offering our country the kind of leadership she believes it urgently requires, not merely to move it forward, but to re-position it in the comity of serious-minded nations.

I have followed her since she announced she was running for president in October last year. I am willing to bet that not a few men chuckled at what they perhaps regarded as her vain ambition, foolishness even, for not knowing that this is not just a man’s world, it is the world of men with deep, and I mean, deep, pockets. And godfathers, of course.

Indeed, she clearly faced some obvious disadvantages. Bank managers do not rush to answer her calls because her pocket, or wherever women keep their money, is not bulging with Naira, dollars, sterling and Euro. Her party is new and, therefore, largely unknown. It is one of the new political parties registered by INEC last year and qualifies, in my view, to be numbered among the mushroom parties whose candidates for elective offices in February and March this year will end the race as also-rans. Well, a brief time on the podium of fame is still fame.

No one can question her qualification or experience to be president. Ezekwesili is a chartered accountant with masters’ degrees from the University of Lagos and Harvard University. She came into public lime light when President Obasanjo appointed her as the pioneer head of the new budget monitoring and price intelligent unit, famously known as due process. She must have done well in that office because she earned the nickname, Madam Due Process. Obasanjo set up that office as part of his anti-corruption efforts. She must have been right for the job as a co-founder of Transparency International, the global body that monitors corruption in all countries and issues its annual report in what is known as the Corruption Index. This is where we know for sure every year what impression the anti-graft war has made on corruption in our country. She moved from there to head two ministries – mineral resources and education.

Perhaps, what has impressed me most so far is Ezekwesili’s spirited activism on the sad fate of the young girls kidnapped by Boko Haram from their school at Chibok, Borno State, in 2014. She is one of the moving spirits behind the #BringbackourGirls movement to pressurise successive Nigerian governments to rescue those girls from the insurgents and re-unite them with their grieving families.

Impressive, you might say. But did these achievements give her the courage to throw her head tie into the ring? It is the question that intrigued me and made me perk up my ears. I am not that naïve to entertain the unrealistic hope that she had a fighting chance at being elected president on February 16 and thus do what Mrs Hilary Clinton could not do in God’s Own Country. She derived her relevance in the race from her own appreciation of her poor chances to dislodge Buhari from Aso Rock. But as I see it, her decision rests on a personal philosophy of leadership defined by two important words: courage and conviction. The courage to offer herself against the overwhelming odds and the conviction that sitting on the fence with her impressive resume would do more for idleness and less for national development.

I confess that I entertained the hope that her decision to along with those of the other fresh faces in the race would help to change the narrative of our national politics. People like her brim with ideas. Ideas drive human societies, human progress and development. I am hungry for young men and women of ideas that would challenge the rest of us. Men like Kingsley Moghalu, for instance. I am tired of the national shuffle of one step forward, two steps backwards. Tribe or ethnicity, regionalism, religion and corruption have held our national political narrative hostage for too long and stifled creative approaches to those problems that continue to follow the nation like the shadow. We need men and women who can help the nation break out of this mind-destroying narrative and offer new perspective on problems as a country of 198 million people. I saw Ezekwesili as a pioneer in this regard.

At an interview with legendary Christiane Amanpour of CNN shortly after announcing her ambition, she said, “It (Nigerian politics) produced dismal results such that today Nigeria is the world’s capital of extreme poverty. It is totally unacceptable. What I intend to do is to disrupt this and build a nation that is based on prosperity, stability, cohesion and equality of opportunities for our people.”

I underlined dismal results. The phrase resonates. All politicians are boastful. I would be surprised if Ezekwesili did not find it necessary to make some agreeable music with the sound of her chest beating. At an interview with Premium Times, she said, “I am the candidate that reflects the ideals of any Nigerian who is fed up with failure. I am the candidate who speaks to the issues that matter to the young people and women and these are the segments of our population that are the most afflicted by the failure of governance. I am the candidate who has got the capacity to use knowledge as the basis of campaigns on issues of governance.”

At the beginning of her quest, Madam Due Process promised to shock ‘BUTIKU.’ Her name for the two frontline presidential candidates, President Muhammadu Buhari and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar. Instead on January 24, she shocked all of us. She pulled out of the race. Blame what she called “the country’s electoral environment sequel to the 2019 presidential debate of Saturday, January 19, 2019.”

I believe she gave up her quest because she had expected the political environment to change and be more welcoming for younger people or fresh faces like her. That Buhari and Atiku were absent from the debate told her in no uncertain terms that this country is not yet ready to listen to new voices; nor is it in a hurry to change the political narrative.

I am sad to see her go. I wonder if her courage failed her. I can understand her frustration with the system and our collective commitment, in words and deeds, to keep oiling the status quo. Her next move is to join other political parties and work for a “broad coalition for a viable alternative (that has) become more than ever before, an urgent mission for and on behalf of Nigerian citizens.”

Has the system crushed her? Ye gods.