EVERY responsible and educated Nigerian that I know, who has lived maturely in Nigeria in the recent times, observed its politics, as well as sought and studied facts from her political systems and its functioning, has come to the same inevitable conclusion. That conclusion is that Nigeria, as the political entity that it exists and functions as, was set up not to be a nation in the true meaning of it; but rather, as a “mere geographical area” that is to be as easily exploited by the British or anybody else that they will be pleased to hand her over to and to continue to support in its exploitation. This is a fact that the great Obafemi Awolowo spoke about and did his best to undo, right to the point of his demise! A few others had only glibly spoken about it but would seem to not have had the courage or the political sagacity to pursue it as, or even better, than Awo himself did. But that fact remains with us. Unless we rise up and deal with it, all that we will be doing is to recycle these recycling political teams for our continuing exploitation as well as overall political degradation.
At each election now, one after the other, what we have been doing is to replace one useless or at least inadequate governance over the other; and in many of the cases, even worse governances! Since the 1999 of the present political dispensation, we have had one bad government after the other; and getting worse. The only exception to these are, at the federal level, was the replacement of OBJ with the terminally sick Yar’Adua and this latter’s rather short time in the place. At the state levels, the exceptions will include the Lamidi Adesina’s governance here in Oyo State, aspects of the Segun Osoba’s governance of Ogun State, the bold-face resistance of Bola Tinubu of the arm-twisting governance of OBJ which gave him the credibility over his much disputed integrity and honesty with education, qualification, NYSC records, etc, that trailed him from his political debut in 1999, until that very good fit took root in that his first term! Since then, he had graduated himself to the political godfather even beyond the notorious Adedibu of Ibadan and Emeka Offor of Anambra State. Some aspects of the Segun Agagu, Segun Mimiko and Arakurin Akeredolu reigns of Ondo State may also come into this picture of the good, as well as the development-strong reigns of Donald Duke of Cross-River State.
However, the master stroke of good governance in Nigeria in the current political dispensation must surely be the masterly, even if truly funny or bizarre overrun of the OBJ-Emeka Offor-Mbadinuju-Uba Dynasty ruinous politics in Anambra State! By that, he set the state on the path of the full recovery of itself, which continued with Peter Obi, so very excellently, and the current apparent “maintenance even if not even deteriorating”(Obiano) governance. Of course, there MUST be one or two good things that can surely be found in every government in this land, even with the very worst ones! But the above would seem to me to be the ones that we can very easily lay our hands on regarding the good aspects of our national governances since 1999. The rest of the nation and our states remain in this very appalling governances from which we must extricate ourselves, if we can ever hope to begin to reverse this rapidly deterioration political situation in Nigeria.Hence, while we are trapped in the present obnoxious political situation, we must develop the political voting principles to assist us in getting the slightest beginning of the reversal that we need!
Thus, I believe that these voting principles must be as follows: 1. All of us who will like to call ourselves educated and civilized must educate one and all politically, as well as ourselves, register to vote, actually vote, and do our best to ensure that our votes count; as safely and peacefully as we ever can. 2. As far as these corrupt partisan politics continue (especially as APC or PDP) we must not vote on the basis of any political parties but on the basis of the best (or the least evil!) of the individual candidates that are presented for each election, to whatever extent possible. 3. If any of these political parties or individuals propose to give us money to vote for them, we must insist that this is anonymous or secrete, collect our money (as much as they are ready to bargain to us!) that they had obviously stolen before as these bribery voting monies are, and go ahead to vote by principles as explored here. We have not only the right but moral duty to collect these our stolen monies from them properly bur ALSO to go and still vote correctly! 4. We must as a matter of principle vote out every government (federal or state) that has continued to perform in this on-going below par level (or even, mostly, worse). We may only vote back in, a government that has done excellently well, but not done “just well”! That is what happened with the Peter Obi second term in Anambra State.5. We must recognize that even if it is not our call or desire to get involved in elective politics in this country, the duty of political participation lies on us – not only as a social one, but also a spiritual and moral one. the pursuit of the common good through any inter-personal or group relations and working together is what politics is! It does NOT have to be partisan or elective; and anybody who wilfully refuses to do so will surely not “see the kingdom of God”, to talk less, enter it – irrespective of our individual religions, spiritualities or whatever metaphysical persuasions! 6. We must persuade and support all other persons with emerging elective or partisan political interests to merge their forces together (and to all extents possible, avoiding the already corrupted and other wise compromised politicians) and agree among themselves to provide us one credible one from among themselves for each election at all the levels possible in the country. Only in that way shall we develop credible alternatives to all these half-baked and half-educated people that we have been saddled with all these while!
Surely, God Himself will help us, especially, if we begin to do these essentials than throwing our hands in the air with fear and/or doubts as to whether anything good can come out of this country. Surely, we can; if we do what we all need to do, even if only just starting with it, even NOW! God bless Nigeria!
- Asuzu is Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Ibadan
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