Beyond the intellectual battle for Nigeria’s presidency

The battle for the presidency of Nigeria has always approximated the struggle for the soul of the nation.

This is understandable given the fact that Nigeria’s presidency is a superintending allocator of values.

The consistent and burgeoning groundswell of public desires, yearnings and aspirations for the elusive and illusive good governance has continued to heighten the dialectics of socio-political and economic interactions between the government and the governed.

The question of lack of fidelity to the social contract remains, very largely, unanswered, thus underscoring the bane of leadership failure.

This, notwithstanding, the Nigerian nation remains work in progress. The pursuit of nation-building is a leadership task.  Truth is, Nigeria has been unlucky in her quest, over the years, for transformational leaders that can maximally optimise her development potentialities.

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Since independence in 1960, the processes that had thrown up successive military heads of state and, presently, “democratically-elected” presidents have been manipulated by some cabals in furtherance of their narrowly-defined interests.

The problem of intellectual incapability about contemporary governance issues has discounted the march to technological breakthrough and economic greatness. The faculties to harness diverse latent capacities for economic growth have been shallow.

It is in this context that there is demonstrated commitment by  a new generation of young, not-too-young but certainly not-too-old Nigerians to inspire a revolutionary process of changing the old leadership guard and helping to entrench a new way of putting governance in the hands of a new leadership guard, imbued with the essential capacities to drive and sustain purposeful development administration by deploying, transparently and accountably, the instrument of public finance.

In the race for the 2019 presidency, there will be significant changes in the approach to and process of leadership selection.

Those changes will be forced on the system by a determined army of enlightened and educated young Nigerians who have already broken away from the past indulgence of political servility.  With the bulwark of their intellectual capacitation, they exemplify the hope of our nation’s redemption.

The new leaders in the wings are, therefore, necessarily aggregative of technological and economic ideas upon which to roll the wheel of national development. It is significant that they have strategically positioned themselves in parties other than the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

And to discount the strength and electoral fortunes of the two dominant parties which are sure-footed in presenting members of the old leadership guard as their presidential candidates, there is the possibility for the alignment of forces by political parties that custody the philosophical essence of a new Nigeria in the hands of the young and not-too-young but certainly not-too-old Nigerians to morph into a critical third force.

It is that third force that will provide the Nigerian electorate with a weighing scale to measure the worth and either accept or reject the ramifications of predetermined presidential candidates hoisted on the dominant parties by some egocentric power elite.

Beyond the political platform on which to launch their revolutionary stake in the presidential power struggle is the magnitude of the character and disposition of the expected consensus candidate.

If, at the end of the day, the effort to go into the 2019 presidential election on a common platform that will turn the political enterprise into a three-party race falls through, that would still not prevent the emergence of a third party that would benefit from the political correctness of the profile, credentials and antecedents of the candidate.

This is the intersection where presidential aspirants like Mr. Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, Professor Kingsley Moghalu, Mr. Fela Durotoye, Mr. Omoyele Sowore, et al, whose intellectual rigour is a matter of fact, come in.

These aspirants are not only young and energetic; they are also fecund and successful in their chosen careers and businesses, and therefore very prepared for the task of governance.

I am excited that any of them, who squares up with the candidates of the APC and the PDP in any presidential debate or at a colloquium for national conversation, will not disappoint.

This is one of the changes I expect to see in the forthcoming presidential contest. No presidential candidate should shun debates.

Nigerians should take advantage of the platform of debates to interrogate the intellectual capacities and governance ideas of each candidate.

Olawepo-Hashim, who was in 1988 elected as a member of the executive of the National Association of Nigeria Students (NANS) while in the University of Lagos where he studied Mass Communication, is an engaging interrogator of national and global issues, which obviously bolstered his sumna cum laude academic performance in Buckingham University, United Kingdom, where he obtained a Masters Degree in Global Affairs.

Professor Moghalu, who was one-time deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is also a passionate speaker.  His credentials are quite intimidating.

Fela Durotoye, acclaimed motivational speaker, and Omoyele Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters, by their sheer brilliance, can hold their own in the burgeoning contestation for the nation’s topmost job.

But beyond the intellectual capacity or battle for Nigeria’s presidency is the imperativeness to match the old leadership guards in their clever game of political brinkmanship.

The new generation of leaders jostling for presidential power would appear determined not to acquiesce to any form of cajoling to discount their weight and suck them into any alliance that would be counterproductive to the philosophy of Nigeria’s renaissance.

They have the critical mass of youths whose buy-in is capable of upstaging, for example, the applecart of the incumbent president in terms of figures in the presidential election.

Enlightenment and mobilisation become critical here and these require mega bucks.

• Ojeifo writes in via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com