When one looks at Nigeria as a country and its current socio-political dillema, one cannot but wonder how such a promising country managed to dribble itself into this sorry pass.
At Nigeria’s independence in 1960, most Africans looked up to her as Africa’s political and socio-economic path-finder and role model. Of course, given the country’s humongous human and natural resources, such expectations were neither misplaced nor exaggerated.
But as time went on, it became obvious that Nigeria lacked the calibre of leadership to match her economic and socio-political potentials.
The first set of national leaders that emerged after independence had the greatest opportunity to build a great Nigerian nation. A good number of them were brilliant and patriotic, but some of them lacked the breadth of vision and level of statesmanship required to build a modern nation.
Those were the ones among them whose thoughts and ideas did not transcend their narrow personal and ethnic advantages and hegemony.
Through political manipulation and electoral brigandage, they ran the First Republic aground until they were eventually kicked out in January 1966.
Unfortunately however, those who masterminded the military putch out of patriotism and a sense of national duty were not those that eventually took power.
How that first noble attempt by the military to midwife the birth of a truly modern nation failed was a story for another day.
Between 1966 and 1999, the country wobbled and stumbled from one amateur leadership to another. Future historians will record the ignoble roles of Obasanjo, Babangida and Abacha during the better-forgotten era of military dictatorship in Nigeria.
And so when the military eventually dribbled themselves out of the political turf and brought out the then incarcerated Obasanjo to become President under their hurriedly contrived democratic dispensation, most Nigerians thought that at long last, the country was on the path of development and progress.
More so that the new President himself had just escaped from the gulag of a fellow dictator who was bent on destroying him.
Most Nigerians assumed Obasanjo was then “born again” because of his traumatic prison experiences. He also declared himself a changed person and not a few Nigerians believed him. But alas, a leopard hardly changes its spots!
And so came the brand new President and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) .
Both President and Party only know how to luxuriate in the glories of power and not how to deploy power for the benefit of the people on behalf of whom power was held.
The PDP held power for sixteen unbroken years during which time billions and billions of American dollars were earned through the sales of our crude oil.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so goes the old adage. The leading lights of the PDP were not only corrupted by power, they also became power-drunk.
At a point, one pompous chairman of the party boasted that the party would rule the country for at least half a century. But thank goodness, that prediction never came to pass, the monstrosity was uprooted in 2015 though not until the party had wrecked havoc on our national politics, economy and even our social values.
During their reign, they mercilessly looted our national treasury. The more petro-dollars earned, the more the masses of our people were impoverished. The masses were not only deprived materially, they were also deprived mentally and intellectually.
Despite the huge foreign currency earned during their time in power, nothing was done to lay a solid foundation for the economy: Agriculture which used to be the economic mainstay was abandoned to atrophy, our roads became death-traps, the National railways remained the way Lugard left them more than one hundred years ago, both our education and health service systems were in tatters by the time they finally left power.
Before they finally left however, and quite unfortunately, they had succeeded in bastardising and corrupting virtually every aspect of our national life.
A preponderance of our youth or people of around fifty years of age who had known only the military and PDP regimes erroneously think a country cannot be governed any differently. Because that is the only way of politics and governance they ever knew, they naturally think that thuggery and do-or-die politics, looting of national or state treasury, embezzlement of public funds and such other heists that PDP symbolized are normal and the way things are done.
The results of all these abnormalities is that most people now believe that the shortest route to stupendous wealth in Nigeria is politics. Gone are the days when people entered into public life out of inner motivation and patriotic fervour to participate in finding solutions to economic and socio-political problems plaguing the society.
Such people were business men or professionals who left those engagements to pursue a political career out of a strong sense of patriotism. Today, such high-mindedness is very rare indeed.
Saddening still, Nigeria’s political space is currently dominated by bread-and-butter politicians whose sole aim is to embark on primitive acquisition.
Consequently, the popular refrain among the populace now is ” all politicians are thieves” or “all Nigerian politicians are the same” and other sentiments along that line.
Such negative characterization of the typical Nigerian politician is so widespread that hardly can any one in politics today claim to be different. That is one of the legacies of the PDP era of bastardization of politics and governance. That is what I have termed the albatross which the PDP currently constitutes to the Nigerian polity.
During its long hold on power, a whole generation had been misinformed and misdirected as a result of which they can hardly recognize a good politician or even good governance if they see one. They all have a mindset that every Nigerian politician is in the hustling to selfishly amass wealth for self and family.
Such Nigerians, and their number is quite sizable, no longer believe any promises made by any politician. Nor do they even believe that their socio-economic circumstances can be improved by any politician.
One of the consequences of this negative mindset of the general populace is what has recently manifested as votes buying and selling which became rife in the last Ekiti Governorship elections.
It was not as if this particular electoral malfeasance was nonexistent previously in our elections, no it was not. What was new at that election was the height to which it was taken at that instance.
The two leading parties at the Ekiti election, APC and PDP, did participate in that electoral marketing. But like I once said in this column, if APC had stayed aloof from the vote buying and allowed PDP to dominate the “electoral market” it was most likely the result of the election would have been different. To put it bluntly, the PDP would have won.
That would have happened despite the resounding failure of the PDP government in the state compared with the generally accepted sterling performance of the contending party when it held power in the same state.
That is one of the dysfunctional legacies mentioned earlier which the PDP’s sixteen years in power had stamped in the political psyche of a large proportion of the Nigerian electorate. Most of the people can no longer objectively assess or rate the performance of a government.
Most of them are used to eating cheap rice imported from Thailand or other such remote corners of the world, and if another government comes and tells them it’s not good for the national economy to continue to import what they themselves can produce, they are likely going to rebel against such policy especially if it entails the need to pay a little more initially.
That mentality explains why some are against Buhari now. They will tell you that during the time of Jonathan, the price of rice was so much and now in this time of “change” the price has become higher.
If you try to explain that the higher price they pay now is because the local rice industry which produces the rice they currently consume is still young and that when the local rice industry becomes developed, the market price would be much lower than the price of imported rice which they regarded as cheap.
Most times however such explanation does not sound well in their ears, because they are only accustomed to the past PDP government’s consumption syndrome. Even if the entire money earned from crude oil is spent on importing consumables, they are not bothered.
Today’s needed investment in roads, railways, ports, education or infrastructure can wait as long as cheap rice and foreign goods are available for them to buy for immediate consumption.
This exclusive focus on the short term is another PDP legacy which is now constituting another political albatross to our national advancement. One can go on and on ad infinitum listing the numerous cogs that the party’s long stay in power had put in the wheel of our country’s political progress.
But one can only hope that a sufficient proportion of the Nigerian masses would have the good sense and the requisite enlightened self-interest to reject the PDP when the time comes in a few months time.
With the party’s on-going regrouping coupled with their loud boasting of coming back to power, one is bound to ask the source of their self-confidence. Coming so soon after wrecking so much havoc in the lives of the Nigerian people!
2019 is truly going to be a year of our national destiny.
