By Angela Agoawike
“Every parent wants more for the next generation than they had. My mother dreamt of a better life for me. And I hope that my journey in life inspires Australians to reach for the stars.” – Anthony Albanese, newly elected Australian Prime Minister
Two thousand and twenty-three will be a year of reckoning for Nigeria. It is when citizens will exercise their civic rights to choose from among candidates, who will lead the country for the next four years to 2027. But first, the political parties must pick one person each from a plethora of aspirants to fly their individual flags in the 2023 elections. It is expected that such candidates will be known at least by the end of May 2022, in line with regulations of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the amended Electoral Act of 2022 signed into law by outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari.
As the horse trading continues on this quest by aspirants (all males by the way) seeking to replace the current president, all attention has been focused on party delegates whose enviable responsibility is to decide on their individual party’s aspirant fit to occupy Aso Rock come 2023. That is how it has always been – an opportunity for the mostly monetised delegates to vote, in line with which of the aspirants was able to meet their requirements, after which the party steps out with personalised packaging of messages of future bliss, accompanied with food and materials to appeal to individual voters around the country.
For the delegates, it has never been a case of what is good for the country, but rather, one of which of the aspirants best meets their financial needs at the time. They (delegates) rarely carry along the aspirations of the mass of Nigerians in casting their votes, thereby leaving the voters on election days, not necessarily with candidates with enough patriotism to work for the country’s unity through fair and equitable treatment and distribution of resources, but candidates that leave a great majority of the people choosing one of the lesser evils.
This, perhaps, may not be divorced from the reasons many Nigerians, especially the independents, are disengaged from the political process. A costly mistake, no doubt, which everyone pays for at the end of the day. For these independents (academics, business, and social elites), some of whom are looking for avenues to either better their lots or gain more influence, philosophy or scruples is neither here nor there as truly, the end justifies the means.
As the horse trading continues on this quest by aspirants (all males by the way) seeking to replace the current president, all attention has been focused on party delegates whose enviable responsibility is to decide on their individual party’s aspirant fit to occupy Aso Rock come 2023. That is how it has always been – an opportunity for the mostly monetised delegates to vote, in line with which of the aspirants was able to meet their requirements, after which the party steps out with personalised packaging of messages of future bliss, accompanied with food and materials to appeal to individual voters around the country.
In the past seven years, a lot has happened in the enclave called Nigeria. Terrorism has taken root, Unknown Gun Men (UGM) has become a new phenomenon, banditry, and kidnapping, have all found their ways into the country’s lexicon, while corruption has metamorphosed into billion parts (who now talks about millions?), just as Nigerians, old and young are daily looking for ways to escape from a country that is sapping them and giving nothing back.
For those that manage to escape, they still find themselves fully engaged with the deteriorating state of the union they left behind for the simple reason that they still care and have people back home still going through the stress that is living in Nigeria. For most of them, they do not seem able to truly escape the scorn they face as Nigerians, or the denigrating remarks that regularly accompany the response to ‘where are you from?’
A silver lining though, is that as the race for who replaces President Buhari in 2023 heats up, there seems to be an attempt to refocus the delegates into understanding that they are a privileged few that carry the aspirations of the majority of Nigerians including card-carrying party members not opportune to be delegates, and independents who are not affiliated to any political party.
For a nation which Electoral Act yet does not allow for independent candidacy, the electorate looks up to the delegates to pick candidates that have the capability of tackling the above menaces of present-day Nigeria – corruption, terrorism, banditry, separatism among others, and not candidates gunning for power either for the sake of it, or to fulfil life-long ambition of presiding over the affairs of the country.
The electorate owe the rest of Nigerians a duty of fostering on them as candidates, men whose source of wealth no one can vouch for, who in turn believe that by throwing a few millions here and there or enabling wicked people who have found themselves in certain positions to steal the country blind, they can bamboozle their way into a position that gives them the ultimate power and cover to continue in their ways.
More than 60 years after independence, and decades after the dismantling of a system that encouraged wealth creation in different parts of the country, utilising the economic maxim of comparative advantage, it is time for Nigeria to step back in time, bring back the spirit that was, and begin creating wealth for the future. It is good for the youths of the country; it is good for adults who have earnestly given their all and it is good for the country to enable it take its rightful place and stop being ‘a nation with great potentials’.