2023: Let’s speak the truth

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER

info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com

If you have been following all along on the journey to the 2023 elections, it is a season of many dramas currently in Nigeria. While the seriousness of the electioneering processes and the need to finally get it right shouldn’t elude us, we cannot altogether fail to enjoy the mammoth side attractions of the ongoing drama cum comedy that best describe the acts of many politicians, political parties and their supporters. The many acts and doings of the “Obedient” like others, could be described as nothing less of an uncoordinated stage act, and while we all know where it would end, we are condemned by rules to watch and sigh.

It is a grave error for our people to assume we can let go of the future and then expend all our energy on blaming the rot in the national system on some people who are holding sway at present. That is the first aberration that defines our recurring disposition as a nation and a people. When we submit that PDP’s 16 years and its atrocities were all in the past, when we acquiesce that Atiku Abubakar as the vice-president between 1999 and 2007 should be any index for evaluating his capacity to lead today and that Peter Obi’s below par achievements as a former governor were all in the past; and yet at the same time we are bent on looking for non-existing atrocities committed by another, then it can be concluded that we are a confused people.

Another anomaly in our entity is our chosen fixation on irrelevancy at the expenses of critical issues of national germaneness. Unbelievably, we have followed presidential aspirants around the country; to campaigns, town-hall meetings and many other fora, not to pick on what they have to offer, nor to constructively engage them to devolve their programs and projects implementation pathways, but rather, and surprisingly foolishly, to pick on their slips and errors, and then spend inordinate time making caricatures of ourselves on social media, when our nation begs for both serious leaders and citizens.

It is very unfortunate that we have failed to subject these aspirants to the real test of their respective capacities to provide real leadership to Nigeria and Nigerians. Rather, we talk about the age of Tinubu, make noises and assemble unprofitable social media gyrations that last till now about the physical strength of a man who from his itineraries in the past weeks, has been travelling the length and breadth of the country; from regions to regions and across the states, in person and rigorously sharing his plans with Nigerians. If that is not a clear evidence of physical strength, what else would be? Yet, we are quiet about the age of Atiku Abubakar and prefer to refer to a 62-year old Obi as a youth! 

We allowed ourselves to be sold the lies of a Tinubu’s fake university certificate; and the gullible people that we are, readily bought it all, hook, line and sinker. But now that it is no more in vogue because the subject matter has become injurious to the originator, the traducers, it is now cleverly avoided. We spent days making a joke of the “Recharging the Lake” speech. How despicable and belittling of a people who claimed superior intelligent capacity to stumble at knowing that the most appropriate response to a sick and dying lake is the recharging treatment.

Some weeks ago Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s response to the question of global warming was again picked as the joke of the moment. The ‘church rat’ metaphor; a very simple and concise representation of the global challenge as it affects our continent and our people, was never given the opportunity to land with the people. Rather than picking the substance of the superior intelligence, reflecting the helpless condition of the African people to accept the set global de-warming and climate change guidelines. Really, how do you stop an impoverished household from burning wood to cook? Indeed, it is a metaphor of the church rat or how possible do you make the church rat ignore the Holy Communion; the only food in sight?

The madness we have chosen to prioritise is crumbling us; it is taking away sanity from us, it is taking away all semblance of rationality from us. We prefer to ignore the realities of the past; pretending we can forge ahead without sorting who we used to be, forgetting there is no today without yesterday and we cannot have the tomorrow we want without factual recourse to our past. Peter Obi is now a messiah, without the Obedient caring about who the real Peter Obi is; the “Atikulated” are not interested in the recorded atrocities of their principal; it doesn’t matter anymore, yet they are busy unraveling the past of another and making news of unfounded propaganda about another. 

They rear up religious sentiments, forgetting the number of states in the country where both the governors and the deputy are of the same faith and the heavens have not fallen; they are careless about all the past when we have had same faith leadership in the country without us falling apart, but now, it is a great deal, and we have reduced our national progress to religious sentiments and affiliations. Very unfortunately, we are now telling our people that antecedents of contestants are irrelevant, that the deal is religion. Babarchi Lawal, a man who was humiliated out of office on corruption charges after investigations; a man who embezzled N225 million meant for the displaced poor people, that include Christians, is now a mouth speaker, the claimed fighter for Christians and the cause of Jesus Christ. A Yakubu Dogara who is still facing allegations of involvement in the stealing of $323 million from the very struggling country that houses Christians as well as Muslims is now fighting for the Christians. Yet, all that matters to us is the emotionally trumped up religious gyrations and not the men propagating the propaganda.

We have not seen the end of this madness; the campaigns will continue and the non-directional PDP and the Obedient paid error-seeking elements will continue to have a field day because there would always be oral slips and Nigerians would continue to get robbed of the chance to get it right. Eventually, we will pay the prices in our states for electing nonentities as governors, at the center, for allowing incompetent persons access to the federal legislative chambers on the back of our emotional and religion induced supports and votes.

We are not going anywhere until we take the full stock of how we got to where we are now. We all have agreed that government is a continuum, and as such, would continue to lay the foundation for the future and effect it for as long as our society is administered by elected leadership. 

There is a time for sowing and there will always be time for harvesting. We came into the new dispensation of democracy in 1999 with PDP setting the new pace for the future of Nigeria, planting seeds of fruits to be harvested in the future, that is, today. On many fronts, rather than preparing the country for greatness, they perpetuated actions and inactions that have become drags on the chances of the country to progress. Monetary wise, in the 16 years of PDP reign, crude oil was sold on an average of $100 per barrel. That was a time when the country, being in possession of huge resources, should have engaged in all-round physical infrastructural development and social welfare for the people of Nigeria, but no, those did not happen. What we saw instead is a nation borrowing to pay salaries of workers in the midst of oil booms and yet unable to pay salaries in as many as 27 states.

In 2015, PDP handed over a country in recession, a mono economy dependent on crude oil and yet without a functioning refining sector or plan to address the challenge; a country of over 200 million people without local production capacity. They handed over a nation without industry because all functioning national enterprises had been sold off and unbundled, while private companies were forced to close shops or relocate under the unbearable energy situation of the country. They sold us to darkness, ate up all the allocated resources to light up the country. Yet, a section of Nigerians is still supporting and hailing these people, the same devils who ruined our commonwealth

They serve us poverty, joblessness, and darkness and we are so willing to forget their past while condemning the man who is the architect of modern Lagos state, the one the entire world admires today. We chose to forget the past and want the ruins to be built in seven years while blaming APC for the woes created by the previous occupants of leadership and which the ruling party is salvaging. Did APC give Nigerians suffering in the last seven years? No, the party is building and it is a process. Though, some errors were committed in the clarity of correcting certain issues.  Change does not come easily.

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!