2023: The issues on the table

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER  

info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com

By now, every Nigerian who pays attention to politics and political developments across the states and the country at large may be lost in choosing what direction to take; democratically who to camp with and support. The waves of deceptions flying around as part of politicians traditional campaign messages of lies coated in sweet melodies and truth resembling propaganda are overwhelmingly on the citizens and with increasing difficulties in making the right and compatriot decisions on who to vote for in 2023 and who to jettison as fakes.

The crowd renting, the attendant-bought-receptions and endorsements of presidential candidates across the country obviously have been sending confusing messages to millions of undecided and uninformed electorate. The same crowd, in the same location, and at different times, flooding the streets for different candidates contesting under different platforms and ideologies. It is unfortunate that it is next to impossible to use street followership to measure and submit popularity and acceptability in the country. It is difficult to establish which crowd is organic and which is paid; even the ones who claims to be riding on ‘not paying shi-shi,’ the new nationally elevated slang purportedly for not paying for support and votes, are now being caught red-handed on cameras distributing money and their followers fighting and scrambling for shares of promised payments for rallies attendance.  

Despite the wailing and struggling economic realities of the country, and the much needed sustenance of capable and reliable leadership to move the country forward from 2023, the atmosphere remains concentrated with attempts by all and sundry to deceitfully access the apex seat of power in the country. It has gotten to the point that the words of politicians cannot be taken for a pinch of salt; they have altogether become irredeemable liars, untrusted fellows, who would do anything ignominious and distasteful to get to power. They would say anything, run anyone down and destroy anything to reach their political destinations. Imagine forging INEC letterhead and signatures to create fake letters to discredit another candidate and deceive the public; Isn’t that deplorable? 

We thought it would be different in 2023; that men would increasingly love the country, but unfortunately, the same act and play of 2015 and 2019 is being replayed and even at a more disastrous dimension. Recall rather than giving the electorate the opportunity to choose based on positive and constructive argument presentations, they fed the citizens with propaganda and lies surrounding the then APC candidate, Muhammadu Buhari’s education certification, his health challenges, his religion and ethic affiliation, and many more; the media discuss nothing but non-profiting irrelevant topics, but for the superior submission of many, and the doggedness of millions who still knew the truth and chose to stand by it regardless, it would have been a different outcome for the country.  

Now, 2023 is at the corner, electioneering is in top gear and politicians are at it again; what do we do? How do we separate the fakes from the real? What are the issues we want to hear as discussions? Those are the pertinent queries and the ones that must be enforced on the system and every actor playing on the field.

Beginning this week, I want to attempt to walk around selected five germane national issues that would be needed as tools for picking who will lead us next after this current dispensation. The selected issues include, but are not limited to who and who contribute to the destruction of Nigeria, what part(s) do the contestants play in the national rising unemployment, deindustrialisation and gross devaluation of Nigeria national currency, who is competent or not by measurable antecedents to lead a multi-ethnic system as large as Nigeria, what load of corruption is hanging on the necks of these contestants, and finally, the possession of the capacity to unify Nigeria. 

On the burner and a very critical discussion, the electorate must force on the contestants the need to list all those who were part of the order that destroyed the country over the last decades, and the extent of their individual and collective contributions to the national ruins. It is a fact that the country lost its capacity to self-develop because men and women who ought to propel the development chose to do otherwise; rather than supervise the growth and development the country is capable of, they all at different times and seasons have only concentrated in taking advantage of the country and its wealth to enrich themselves and build sustainable empires for themselves. 

At this point, we must lay bare the past of the three major contestants; Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. Who are they and what has been their contribution or otherwise to the destruction or the building of the national order since they joined politics? About a week ago, in an interview on ARISE Television, a minor argument apparently ensued between the vice presidential candidate of PDP and Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party; Peter Obi had glamorously submitted that PDP was majorly responsible for the huge dilapidation of the Nigeria systems and infrastructure. This is a submission that larger population of Nigerians of the stock of APC who have been stating it since 2014 and the emerging “Obidients” as the followers of the Labour Party candidate are called, subscribe to because it is evidentially true. Nothing short of that could be said of a party that superintended the country for sixteen years of economic surpluses and relatively huge peace for more than 75 percent of the period, but could not boast of presentable infrastructural development in road construction and the likes, that had the opportunity to resolve the national energy challenge but rather usurped the money allocated for the same for personal purposes, sold off national enterprises under the guise of rejuvenating them for efficiency and effectiveness only for them to all die off leading to unbearable mass retrenchments and growing national unemployment.

Peter Obi was right on point with PDP, and Abubakar Atiku was all involved from the beginning to the end, being directly in government in the first eight years as the vice president and the overseer of most of the destruction, and later in active politics. However, the response from governor Okowa, the vice presidential candidate of PDP created a new turn and angle to the discussion. Okowa asked how can Peter Obi who was a senior member of PDP until some months ago, and who had occupied very strategic positions in the party all through not be part of the system of the party that destroyed the country. Yes, Peter Obi was in it all through, was at various times adviser to presidents under PDP again and again and was the vice presidential candidate of PDP in 2019. If Obi knows the party had destroyed the country, then it is also a personal confession for him that he was part of the system that ruined Nigeria. 

That argument on ARISE Television may be very short but it is the reflection of the truth that Nigerians deserve to be equipped with as we approach 2023. Similarly, in the build up to the 2015 and 2019 elections, PDP in an attempt to salvage its dented image came out to apologise to Nigerians for the wrongs they had inflicted on the country; for the unbridled corruption that paralysed the country and much more. It is very unfortunate that Nigerians chose to stay blind to these realities, and prefer playing politics of “belonging” to doing the right things to save the country.

These people wherever they ported to; whether in the Labour Party or still in PDP are the same old stock that brought Nigeria on its knees and cannot be trusted any longer with the commonwealth of this country.

Then, there is a third contestant, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC; where is he in the list and permutation of individuals to be held responsible for the woes of Nigeria? He was in power for eight years between 1999 and 2007, but of the opposition flock. For the state he governed, there is no need of talking about growth and development as it is obvious that Lagos state is in a world of its own since the era of Bola Tinubu and has continued to assume even greater development on the force of the developmental blueprint he created for the state. He left all elective positions since 2007, and since then, has not occupied any political position, elected or appointed, though he has been more involved politically and strategically more than any other individual in the country.

Till now, it has been impossible to evidentially accuse him of involvements in acts and misconduct that derail the growth of the region where he governed, or of the country as a whole. There have been a bundle of recurrent politically motivated accusations that failed to see the light of the day. There were arguments that he has pocketed the wealth of Lagos state, but the submission doesn’t rest with rational thinking. How can a state doing so well as Lagos, having an IGR that swallows that of over 80 percent of all the states of the country.

Trying to be as objective within the ambit of provable realities and records, the recurring self-confession of the major opposition parties to the involvements in the destruction of Nigeria is enough takeaway for us for now, as to what Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi parts were in the destruction of the nation Nigeria; and until we can produce evidence of atrocities against the candidate of APC, it would suffice that his contributions to the new Lagos revolution and the impact it continues to have on the national outlook would remain one of the major speaking points about Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, regardless of all naysaying, lies and fabricated propaganda against his person.

We will continue from here next week.

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA !