One thing is certain: we cannot learn anything new from a dope; and those politicians who believe that democracy is nothing but exploitation, are no better. That is why Abraham Lincoln warned, decades ago, that humanity should “beware of rashness; but with energy and sleepless vigilance, go forward and give us victory.”
To many of us, we can say categorically that there is no strong assurance of achieving any political victory in our country unless Nigerians join hands together in 2023 to choose someone who is highly qualified for the office in which wisdom, intelligence, good character, and guts are the requirements.
The reason is simple. In times like this, nothing is more important to hardworking Nigerians than a government that can defend its defenders and protect its protectors! It is true that a leader may not be able to solve all the problems of the future but he must be able to solve the problems of his generation. Failure to do that is a failure in the journey of life.
For seven years now, the present regime has demonstrated that failure by doing nothing to reckon with some of the black holes that threaten to swallow up our entire economy. Before the country is finally suffocated by lame duck politicians who think that poverty in Nigeria is just another casualty of capitalism, we must again remember what Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” That is why we must stop electing leaders who were charged with the trust of holding Nigeria together but instead have become a misfortune to the nation.
Although we can blame no man and no policy for their failure, circumstances have forced leaders with questionable capability upon Nigeria since 1999. For example, while millions of innocent citizens are presently facing the grim problems of existence and equal numbers toil with little income, the political hypocrites in our midst are still denying the dark realities of this moment, claiming that progress is taking place in the country.
Our distress today is not from the absence of resources and we are not stricken by any plague of locusts. Compared with many nations around the world, Nigeria has so much to be thankful for in terms of resources. But we have failed to reasonably utilise the resources simply because the custodians of our economy are incompetent, thereby confirming Theodore Roosevelt’s observation that, “It is not what we have that will make us a great nation, it is the way we use it.”
Despite our enormous resources in Nigeria, it is worrisome that the incumbent regime has failed the citizens for seven years—it has failed to provide good education; security or help to turn citizens’ lives around. Today, our education system is so bad that many Nigerian students cannot compete successfully with their counterparts elsewhere, which simply means that a Nigerian student who has spent four years in the university may return home with no additional knowledge than when he or she left home. And, with the annual population growth rate in Nigeria increasing more than five times higher than the growth rate of developed countries, with millions of young children suffering from malnutrition when per capita income of Nigerian families has barely increased under the present regime, it is not surprising that Nigeria is being warned about the likelihood of a catastrophic increase in poverty within the next one year.
Racked by high inflation, a crumbling infrastructure, gargantuan debt, and abnormal economic policies that have halted the nation’s development since 2015, the question now is: what then is the promise of change made by the regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s (retd)?
It may be recalled that in his inaugural address to Americans on March 4, 1885, then President Grover Cleveland advised that “It is the duty of those serving the people in the public places to closely limit public expenditures to the actual needs of the government because this bounds the right of the government to extract tribute from the earnings of labour or the prosperity of the citizens. And because the public extravagance begets extravagance among the people, we should never be ashamed of the simplicity which is best suited to the operation of a democratic form of government and most compatible with the mission of the people.”
Continuing, Cleveland warned that “Those who are selected to manage public affairs are still of the people and must do much by their example to encourage consistently with the dignity of their official functions. That plain way of life which, among their citizens aids integrity and promotes thrift and prosperity.”
Unfortunately, in Nigeria, what our leaders don’t understand is that the country is too big, too complex and too diverse to be run in an ineffective style in the guise of a quasi-democracy. That is why we cannot afford to have another lame duck commander-in-chief in 2023.
