Polls 2023: Aspirants and their motives

Against the backdrop of the wide spread argument that leadership failure has been the bane of the Nigerian society, the forthcoming general polls exercise of 2023 offers the country the opportunity to address that malady. Expectedly, a flurry of declarations of intent by aspirants who are desirous of occupying various leadership positions at various levels and others who are mere pretenders hoping to be counted among the serious, has been witnessed across the length and breadth of the country, with each aspirant offering to deliver one political goal or the other. While the aspirants may be falling over each other in their promises, the real determinant of any aspirant’s performance in the contest for power – and even when elected into office, is the motive that drives such individual aspirant’s ambition in the first place. 

Motives for contesting political office range from sheer self-aggrandizement to altruistic intent of serving the public to effect change in a community, just as they include the despicable cases of those whose enterprise is only for serving the parochial interests of sponsors as mere ‘errand boys’. In the ongoing parade of aspirants, it behooves Nigerian voters to read and decode the motive of each aspirant, no matter what it takes. That is if the age-old lament over leadership failure must be addressed come 2023. 

 The imperative for Nigerians to read and decode the promises as well as offerings by the various aspirants is defined by the disturbing mismatch between the complement of existential threats facing the country, and the backdrop of pronounced detachment of most of the aspirants from the real issues of the day. For too long, the citizenry have cried out over the daily detoriation in the state of affairs in the country with the situation manifesting in the collapse of governance in various parts of the country, worst case scenarios of insecurity featuring some of the most horrendous circumstances which occasion regular massacre of whole communities as well as brazen killer-attacks on public institutions and facilities. 

Needless to state that Nigeria is at war with itself, and therefore needs a drastic as well as comprehensive sequence of responses to tackle the hydra headed challenges. Meanwhile, hardly has the outing by a wide cross section of aspirants demonstrated their appreciation of the country as one in a state of war. Yet for all practical intents and purposes, Nigeria is in a state of war. Who is fighting with her and over what is the issue, as the process of self-immolation continues unimpeded.

In the context of development discourse, a nation lapses into a war with itself when it is confronted with self-imposed social contradictions and paradoxes. That is when what should be is not, and what should not be dominates the public space. From all indications, Nigeria is by all indices, squarely in that condition presently. So degenerated the country into the state of meltdown, that the issue for now is not that of identifying and naming the challenges. This is just as there runs a surfeit of strategies and theories aimed at proffering credible solutions. The missing link therefore is the paucity of political will to do the needful. 

Against the backdrop of the foregoing, what the country needs now is a robust contest of ideas aimed at mustering the political will by the train of aspirants to justify their bids to be trusted with public office. Rather what we are seeing is the parade of ego massaging forays, even by many who have nothing to offer the public interest. For clarification there are aspirants who are seeking office from a sense of entitlement as if the country owes them a favour. Meanwhile a deeper peep into their circumstances reveals a history of past conspiracies to appropriate the public largesse into their private pockets, and which resources are being deployed presently to further emasculate the same public. Instead of hiding their faces in shame for past crimes against the country they are out to seek the opportunity of hurting the country more. In a similar vein are aspirants who are simply the visible collaborators in a cartel of public treasury looters, and who see their enterprise as their due, and as of right. 

However the point should not be missed that 2023 presents a new regime of factors that make the citizenry no more helpless to effect the desired changes to rejig the country’s public space. Among the factors that remain at the disposal of the citizenry to checkmate aspirants with suspect motives are firstly the information revolution which spawned the all-powerful social media. Courtesy of the advances in social media usage, power actually now rests with the people and not the political class. With about 53% of Nigerians now on the net through various social media platforms, the country now has enough internet penetration that patriotic actors can actually use to stall suspect aspirants, by sifting the chaff from the grain among aspirants. Secondly the imperative of demographic change in society whereby a younger generation of Nigerians are now around for whom the country they met is a failure, are as angry as ever and is leading them the question the status quo.

Whether the status quo comprising the aging elite and their younger generation collaborators are reading the times correctly, may largely be in doubt, given the trending suspect motives of most aspirants comprising the old and young.