Eze Onyekpere
Countries rise and develop through the quality of the leadership as well as the meticulous demands of their citizens on the leadership. Citizens’ demands are usually for accountability and improving the software and hardware of democracy and development. In times of grave national crisis such as the current Nigerian mega-crisis, the quality of discourse is elevated and everyone conscious of the looming disaster on the horizon redoubles efforts to avoid the undue suffering and move the ship of state unto new pathways of economic, political and social renewal. But the Nigerian leaders and followers seem inexorably bent on meeting the disaster head-on. This discourse reviews the national crisis in almost all spheres of life and argues the case for a national rebirth through the positive use of the vote in the 2023 elections.
The beginning point is to assert that the world is not waiting for Nigeria to continue and complete its acts and omissions of folly. The world is moving on to new heights in technology and human welfare. Governance is improving and citizens are demanding and getting new rights of participation in governance. Space has been virtually conquered and new planets are being explored. We are currently suffering and constitute a good laughing stock in the comity of nations as we sleepwalk from one avoidable blunder to the next. So, if we decide out of our indecision to complete the agenda of becoming a people left behind in time and space, a perilous and shameful future awaits our next generations.
In recounting our self-inflicted challenges, where do we start from? The leadership because the leader leads. It seems extremely unfortunate that Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) does not realise that time is running out for his regime to display some redeeming features. The regime is stuck in the time warp of an administration that has just been elected into office. At every turn, the president converts what should have been national victories into national calamities. The example of the amendment of the Electoral Act 2010, which he has declined assent to on five different occasions is a case in point. The reasons out there in the public domain portray a very negative picture of a president, whose parroted integrity is a ruse and who holds the majority of the population in disdain. Otherwise, how do you explain the current refusal to grant assent?
Of all the persons, who have so far declared their intention to run for the presidency of Nigeria, it is clear that over 80% of them do not understand the depth and severity of national challenges. They appear to lack understanding of the crisis in education, health, economy, petroleum and energy, etc. All the noise about contesting for the presidency is a demonstration of the nominal right of every Nigerian to aspire to be president. The critical question of why the aspirant wants to be the president is missing or what the person intends to do with the presidency against the background of the national challenges is neglected. This approach to leadership selection is not only an exercise in under-development but a claim in certain quarters to a right to stupidity. For a person who mismanaged a state, some other public or private office or has no record of competence or nobility of intentions to insist on running for the office of the president is just a ridicule of the right to be voted for. In the usual Nigerian scheme of events, a charlatan will somehow emerge and continue the race to the bottom.
The resurgent fuel subsidy arguments moved labour to resist attempts at removing the proverbial fuel subsidy. What was the response of the regime? An extremely poor and negative response. A country that spent about N1.4 trillion in 2021 for fuel subsidy was slapped with a N3 trillion bill for 2022 and the supplementary budget for the vote is now before the National Assembly. What are the economic indicators that changed a N1.4 trillion subsidy to a N3 trillion subsidy? At the risk of sounding prophetic, the National Assembly will simply rubber stamp the request and grant the president approval to spend as he wishes. For a country that is already spending all its revenue on debt service, how will this be funded? Even if the funding is to come from crude oil swaps, is this a prudent way of spending available national resources? Why is the leadership bent on deepening the misery and suffering of Nigerians?
Insecurity has become such a national norm and way of life that both the leadership and the led no longer feel a sense of embarrassment over the daily killings. The reportage of the insecurity has become so casual and security agencies issue statements countering the figures of the dead and injured released in the media. Such statements like “only fifty persons lost their lives.” Such a large number of deaths are now qualified with the word, “only.” Discounting the civil war period, this is happening at a time of the highest level of expenditure on the security forces.
The education sector has been denigrated and moved to a very back seat. The year after year strike of the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities has featured in all presidencies since 1999. The demand for getting our priorities right and improved funding of the education sector has always fallen on deaf ears to the extent that, now, the population seems to blame ASUU for embarking on strikes rather than holding a clueless government accountable. Pray, for those blaming ASUU, it will be better to interrogate and fault any of their demands that leads to a strike. It appears that in education and in other sectors, we have reached the stage where we blame the victims and question why they should not continue to live with the oppression. A government that squanders public resources and refuses to fund the basics in education gets off the hook while the union that questions the official irresponsibility gets the blame.
In all of the foregoing, the followership including the media is culpable. The 2023 leadership challenge is not being framed in terms of the qualities and competencies needed for the challenge. Rather, it is about the ethnic background and religion of the candidate. It is about which of the two decadent parties— the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party—should produce the president. Even the youths whose future has been made bleak by the thieving band of elites have started taking positions for social media and other warfare for the political marauders.
It is up to Nigerians to decide to change the narrative as we approach the 2023 elections. The new narrative should be about competent and credible leadership dedicated to harnessing our national resources towards development. Our vote should do the magic.
