Opposition politics in Nigeria

Politics, they say, is a dirty game I want to believe that is in Nigeria and probably some other African countries. Politics should not be a do-or-die affair. It is only in Nigeria you will have the president to be from a party and some governors will be from a different party and because of that, they will not be in good terms. The governors will see themselves as opposition and make life miserable for the president.

The Ekiti example is a point of reference. Governor Ayo Fayose has made himself the leader of opposition in Nigeria because even before the election that brought in President Muhammadu Buhari, he had been seen as one of the greatest enemies of the president having said he was too old and would not last as the President because he may die before the end of his tenure. But today, President Buhari is very much alive.

Then, people thought it was pre-election strategy to discourage people from casting their votes for President Buhari; but even after the election, Fayose has not stopped attacking the president, making a lot of derogatory statements just to discredit him and the APC-led governments.

I see opposition politics in Nigeria as making politics more dirty, because it is only in Nigeria that an opposition party will always find faults and even blackmail the ruling party. An example of this was the president’s speech at the Commonwealth Summit recently, where he talked about majority of the population of the country being young people years of age, some of who just want to sit at home and not go to school but want to own a house and ride cars because they believe Nigeria is an oil-producing country.

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Inasmuch as the president’s statement could have some of sense in it, as a lot of us do not want to believe, the opposition in no time reframed what he said and interpreted him to mean that Nigeria youths are lazy. We all know it was the work of the opposition. This has actually discredited the president among young Nigerians as the Nigerian youths took to their social media to show their grievances to the statement.

Opposition politics, if played well, will trigger the ruling party to work and meet the expectations of the people. It should not therefore be played in such a way that. The ruling party will always bring the opposition down and intimidate them or the opposition always look for every possible means to destroy the ruling party.

For a better country which we all claim to want, politics needs to be played fairly in a way that it will not affect the peaceful co-existence of people in the county and in our various states, irrespective of our political differences. The progress and development of our country and various states should be our topmost priority and not our selfish interests.

By Femi Oguntayo

Ekiti.