By Chris Nwedo
For a truly positive society, Nigerians must treasure productive political leadership with capacity to reactivate holistically the dysfunctional economic and political infrastructures and ensure quality social service delivery as against the clandestine predispositions to tribe and religion as premises for good leadership.
The instantaneous impact of the synthetic insecurity is the mass killing fields most parts of Nigerian states have become. There are massive abductions, endless murders and kidnappings for ransom across the states that seemed to have overwhelmed the hypothetically compromised security agencies. Many communities in northern Nigeria have been decimated as the numbers of Nigerians displaced by the ridiculous violence are incredible. Incredible too are the large numbers of orphans, widows and widowers who became victims of the plight-full situations.
The exchanges of food for votes explained lucidly the fact that Nigerians have become agonisingly impoverished to the point that it is now a discretionary move to barter one’s future for a bag of rice and vegetable oil. The logic is ‘eat now, for the future is boundlessly uncertain’. The American dollars given to delegates as inducement to conspire and endorse the highest bidders as electoral candidates is because Naira, the national currency, is unprecedentedly disparaged and rendered valueless. The fall of Naira due to intentionally bad economic policies is reinforced by incompetency of Economic Minister and the Nigeria’s Central Bank (CBN) Governor. The irony is that the same Governor that is presiding over the agonizing demise of Nigeria’s economy is aspiring to become the president of Nigeria in 2023 and he is talking tough and insistent on combination of his electoral campaigns and the work as a governor of Central Bank concurrently. The first victim of the unprecedented impunity is most likely the sensitive electoral materials that were kept at the CBN. Unfortunately, the Apex Bank governor is, allegedly, sponsored by faceless elements claiming to be from Northern Nigeria. The governor was encouraged to pay as much as 100 million naira as fee for expression of interest. There are endless groups of these faceless northern elements moving around encouraging, endorsing and re-endorsing politicians from Southern Nigeria for 2023 for presidential candidacy. This unholy expedition is progressively becoming an obsession for millions of idle northerners who do not consider kidnapping and ransom taking righteous enough.
Ridiculously, all the former and last-tenure governors in the South have been endorsed, countered endorsed and re-endorse for presidency by these unprincipled northern groups. For the right-thinking citizens the silliness of the madness is the unsolicited payment of 100 million naira expression of interest fee for Goodluck Jonathan by an alleged Miyetti Allah group. Recall that the former president through his spokesman rejected the offer and denounced the motives behind the moves to draft him into 2023 presidential contest against his will and without consultation.
The actions of these ‘crooks’ progressively exposed the political disorientation and helplessness of many Nigerians. The polarisations of Nigerian citizens are hurting profusely. Some sections of the polarity vested themselves with robes of king makers and are vainly moving around giving invalid political anointment and living by extorted funds. Today, the most injurious experience of the pains of bad leadership is the fractionalization that offers no benefit to anyone. Fractionalisation is a negation of elementary integration, cohesiveness and one-spirit crucial for evolvement of a national society compatible with common interest of the various components.
In the past few decades, Nigerian society was allegorically infiltrated by hypocritical leaders who seemed to be stealthily feeding the people with poisonous doses of prejudices, detestation and mutual resentment. The negativities denigrate our common fraternity as Nigerians. It credible to say that Nigerians have unconsciously became easy preys to clusters of political predators that go every length to ensure that we are disunited and destabilised. When Muhammadu Buhari failed several times to win presidential elections he grabbed ethno-religious slogans that made his failures looked as injustice to the north and its Islamic folks. Thus, in 2011 presidential election, so many Nigerians were victims of the illogical violence and massive destruction of properties. Many were ruthlessly slaughtered as thousands were displaced and dispossessed. The orgies of vicious violence were ignited by insistence by some treacherous politicians that Buhari was robbed of his victory by the Christian south. It was against this calculation that susceptible northerners were conscripted and empowered to kill, maim and destroy properties belonging to the perceived enemies.
Nigerians are about to be on the same agonising path again as Bola Tinubu in Oyo state recently said that the denial of his ‘entitlement’ to succeed president Buhari is traitorous conspiracy against Yoruba race. He argued that he had an agreement with Buhari that he, Tinubu must be his successor. It is the earnest prayer of many Nigerians that the inflammatory ethnic undertones of the claims do not become reasons for another political violence if Tinubu fails to become president come 2023. Our politicians do not remember their region, tribe or religion until they become victims of their nefarious political subversions. The sneaky ‘predators’ typically use religious and ethnic bigotries as effective weapons for dividing, weakening and ruling the folks. The false leaders know how to criminally induce and mobilize susceptible people to protest against political positions/ appointments unfavourable them using the primordial emotions. This is why election seasons in Nigeria outrageously begin and end with spiteful violence and terrific fratricide.
Disappointingly, many Nigerians have become unconscious victims of deceitful thinking that Nigeria can move forward and everyone feeling good when their kinsmen are occupying highest positions in the land. Those thinking along this line create the impressions that they have been preconditioned and conned by double dealing politicians who use them as tools and bargaining chips for private political profits. Bad politicians in Nigeria are known to employ deceitful and clandestine ideologies for illegitimate advantages. They subvert common interest. The tricksters have ways of becoming active and philanthropic at election seasons when they smartly tribalise and emotionalise their personal political fortunes or misfortunes. If it is true that we become better when we have our tribal or religious affiliates in power, by now, Nigeria as a nation must have started functioning properly and fulfilling her basic responsibilities to the citizens but reverse has remains the case. Nigeria has become denigrated and tainted as the ferocious egotistical political wars continue relentlessly. Truly, the political sectionalisation has neither saved the sectionalists nor the gullible folks who swallowed the sectionalists’ fraudulent propagandas hook and sinker.
It is yet to be proved that any section of Nigeria has become better for the reason that they have the president, and most political positions absolutely in their favour. For instance, the ordinary Yoruba frankly gained nothing for the years Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was in power, and categorically powerful. It was unknown and impossible to prove that the average incomes of the Yoruba people improved in anyway during the ‘absolutist’ rule of Obasanjo and none of the cities and villages attracted nor had basic infrastructures and living conditions improved as a consequence of direct link with the former president.
More so, it is irrefutable that South-western states were entangled in irrepressible political crisis when Obasanjo was in charge. In the Yoruba land, then, was an astonishing proliferation of ungodly political godfathers who made life problematic for the people and most of the states unstable and ungovernable. It was at the instance of ‘the son of the soil’ in Aso Rock that politics in the South-west became manifestly do or die. Expected fraternity among the states of Ekiti, Osun, Ogun, Oyo, Ondo, Kwara and Lagos were sacrificed on the altars of various fiercely competing political interests and deeply entrenched private projects.
Kwara state for instance, was symbolically confiscated and rebranded by Olusola Saraki who administered the state capriciously. The ‘demi-god’ anointed his sons and daughters as authoritative superintendents of Kwara. They were free to determine political, social and economic trends of the state. In fact, Saraki families were factually the sole proprietors of Kwara and the citizens literally work hard to live in the empire. On the foundations of this experience, can it be said that after fighting for Obasanjo to be the president, Obasanjo impassively handed them over to Saraki’s dynasty without recompense? Not until 2015, Saraki’s children were still holding on and dictating the directions in Kwara. It is true that if any citizen of Kwara died fighting for Obasanjo to rule Nigeria the death is suicidal, horrible and indefensible.
Oyo state then was under an egotistical grasp of late Lamidi Adedibu who was expressively supported by Obasanjo to scuttle politics of equity and justice in the state. Before his demise, Adedibu made sure that his words were laws in Oyo, he imposed political candidates and use violence to ensure that the candidates were victorious. Many Yoruba citizens suffocated and died under the watch of Obasanjo as endless groups of godfathers in Ibadan politics held sway. The acclaimed strongman of Ibadan politics, late Adedibu battled his estranged ‘godson’ and former governor, Rashidi Ladoja to political demise with the overwhelming support of Obasanjo. Adedibu’s illegitimate activities in Oyo were bolstered by imprudent actions of the then State House of Assembly who recklessly threw way Ladoja ‘unconstitutionally’ via impeachment to please Adedibu.
Throughout the regime of Obasanjo, Lagos was under heavy chastisements as a result of inflexible political skirmishes between the then governor Ahmed Bola Tinubu and Obasanjo. Zero allocation to Lagos state from the Federation Accounts were supposedly strategies of Obasanjo to asphyxiate Lagos. If this zero allocation was really meaningful, it was that Obasanjo coincidentally subdued the Yorubas of Lagos many of whom must have staunchly toiled to make him the president. However, these are limited instances among myriad of proves of the Obasanjo implausible predisposition to the home land.
It is really hard to understand what regular Yoruba citizens gained when Obasanjo condoned treacherous ‘godfather politics’ in the South-west. The ‘godfather politics’ as seen, particularly, in Oyo and Kwara states were antithetical to the collective interest of the Yoruba people but it was permitted to thrive productively by Obasanjo who had incomparable opportunities of extirpating them. However, I must state for the records that clannish sentiments in national politics are the wares treacherous hypocrites merchandise for subjective political profits. They sell the idea that it is ‘our’ turn and ‘we’ must have it willy-nilly. It is those who foolishly invest uncritically in the wares that truly die vainly and culpably.
The excitements that trailed the presidency of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) rapidly regressed to unfold stubborn brands of political indiscretion in the Niger Delta region. For instance, the presidency under GEJ must take the horrible blame for political and social destabilisation of Rivers State under Chibuike Amaechi. Political skirmishes evolved and intensified in the Niger Delta with the first ever president from the zone. The vicious political struggles between GEJ and Amaechi should not be allowed to reoccur anywhere again in Nigeria. The obstinate political battles between the titans for idiosyncratic gains vastly and mutually harmed GEJ’s presidency and the Rivers state collectively. Many citizens were the innocuous victims of the dim-witted power tussles then. Rivers state was dangerously polarised along the battle lines. The intractable war continued in various brands of APC| PDP crisis after political failures of both GEJ and Amaechi in the 2015 elections. The former president was from Bayelsa but most Bayelsans have no significantly improved infrastructure and welfare traced directly to the presidency of their own son.
I have not come across any record of what late President Musa Yar’adua did for the north in general and Kastina in particular before his death. We may concede he could have been helpful to his people if he had the privilege of completing his tenure. It is notable that the current president Buhari is a preponderant liability to the north and Nigerians in general. He destabilised the north, incensed the south and ignited the nation with economic hardship, social upheaval and implosive insecurity. The north has never been at war with itself as it is today. Notwithstanding the appointments heavily slanted in favour of the north and the Islamists, the region progressively deteriorated with overwhelming insecurity. No state now is safe in the north. Kastina, the home state of the president is endlessly in the news on accounts of intense violence that has killed so many and displaced more than 13 thousand indigenes according to official records. It is said that 13 local governments in the state have become uninhabited due to violence. Recently the governor blamed violence for lack of performance. The governor was said to have asked the residents of the state to acquire weapons in self-defence as the state became abandoned by Buhari-led Federal Government. These are chronicles of expressive evidences that the north gained nothing for conspiratorial insistence on Buhari.
Since 1960, Northern Nigeria had the greatest advantages of political headship of Nigeria but the region stands out as the most impoverished and stifled. Northern Nigeria has tens of millions of its citizens chained to overpowering ignorance, abject poverty and distressing brands of religious fundamentalism. The religious fundamentalists have chosen terrorism as a productive way to be active. The have murdered many innocent compatriots on the pretexts of blasphemy. In May 2022, Deborah Yakubu an undergraduate student in Sokoto became one the victims. Deborah was stoned and roasted alive. The horror was incredible. The north has today remained a region where lawlessness and criminality thrive unchallenged. Regrettably, all the nooks and crannies of the society are dotted with magnificent religious houses that have turned out to be tools of the region’s very narcissistic oligarchies. The oligarchies are freely using both their illegitimate wealth and tight control of religion to oppress and prevent qualitative and quantitative development of the communities.
It is plausibly argued that former presidents/ heads of state from the region only strengthened the suppressive northern elites’ institutions and upgraded the economic and social statues of their families’ dynasties and personal fortunes, and therefore totally nothing for the masses.
In a nutshell, it is detrimental to follow the frolics of those who feed gullible Nigerians with poisonous sectional prejudices, those who incite the susceptible folks to fight and die in vain. These political charlatans polarise Nigeria and insinuate religious and ethnic conflicts as strategies for the subjective political advancement. It is disillusioning that no section of Nigerian geo-political zones has its problems resolved because they are more prominent or dominant in government. Experiences show that select groups of elites are the ones naturally uplifted in such arrangement while the ordinary people suffer further complications of poverty, marginalisation and defeat. It happens that people in government use the new positions to enlarge their gains, reward family members and political affiliates with abundance, while the rest of the folks are denigrated.
For a truly positive society, Nigerians must treasure productive political leadership with capacity to reactivate holistically the dysfunctional economic and political infrastructures and ensure quality social service delivery as against the clandestine predispositions to tribe and religion as premises for good leadership. Nigerians need to be interested in responsible political arrangements that support and commend excellence, productive enterprise, freedom of expression and security indispensable for fruits of positive governance to germinate and grow. Productive or diligent national drivers are the indispensable need of contemporary Nigeria. Accidental factors such as tribe, religion and/ or gender of the drivers should be out of the question so long as the drivers are meticulous and understand the accurate roadmap to the destination. Tactlessly Nigerians have chronically tolerated expendable qualities such as tribe, religion or gender to determine the choices of the drivers. It is painful and most unhelpful that we honour treacherous politicians in the same community they committed most of the atrocities, and by this means rewarded and encouraged those determined to get us ruined. We have now a new opportunity in 2023 elections to endorse politicians with modesty and capacity for productive services.
