2023 and ignorant candidates

When we look at Nigeria as it rides towards the next elections, the truth is that it’s not fair that the candidates around don’t really understand the enormity of the work ahead, how badly fragmented Nigeria is as a nation, that the deal structure which never has been really federal is disjointed.

Do the candidates whether for the office of governor or for the ‘unhallowed chambers’ of the presidency understand the plight of millions of Nigerians? While we do the drama of cost of cooking gas and gas flaring, solid cooking fuels (which creates respiratory ailments), inadequate sanitation, and substandard housing is at a peak, people lack access to proper drinking water within a 30-minute round trip walk. While we take pride at our 200millionplus population figures and fight amongst ourselves which ethnic group or faith has the higher number, millions are multi-dimensionally poor people having at least one undernourished person in their homes.

These candidates do not know that across the nation we need to de-commodify education, which includes strengthening public education and preventing the privatization of education in the manner we have gone about it. No candidate, not even those that are teachers are promoting or discussing our education. They are not talking about how a ‘would be’ great nation can bridge the electricity and digital divide. Build publicly financed and publicly controlled high-speed broadband internet systems with spaces open for private players to thrive.

Candidates that do not know how to make water available beyond commissioning boreholes; leaders, governments and candidates that have no blueprint for education, for schools, for transport, health and hospitals, that have elevated mediocrity, that see public office as a gift and not responsibility, will 2023 see any difference?

Prince Charles Dickson PhD

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