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Eze Onyekpere
Nigeria is perhaps facing its greatest challenge since the end of the civil war. It is the challenge of leadership, honesty of purpose and dedication of the leadership to the nation and its people. This discourse is set against the background of ongoing political party primaries for the selection of candidates to contest elections at all levels of leadership across the federation. This message will find resonance more with the youths and all persons of goodwill who love Nigeria and have the interests of its people at heart.
The message is straightforward. The youths have the largest voting power in Nigeria today. The old generation of politicians especially in the two leading political parties—the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party—do not have your interest at heart. Rather, they have taken callous but visible steps to destroy your today with a vow to make it permanent so that your future will be in ruins. Therefore, this is no longer the time for complaints and grumbling. This is a period of active engagement and preparation to shake off from the leadership table persons, political parties and their collaborators, who have contributed in no small measure to the economic, social and political decay of Nigeria. It is time to dust up the permanent voters’ cards in readiness to vote out irresponsibility, greed, imbecility manifested in the inability to exercise God-given faculties for the common good, economic sabotage, treasury looting, religious fundamentalists, etc. The two political parties contain the greatest agglomeration of these vices. For the avoidance of doubt, a few reasons why they must not be allowed near the corridors of power are detailed hereunder.
Let us start with the youth. Education is the bedrock for development and guaranteeing a prosperous and successful future for the nation and its youths. For the past couple of months, the Academic Staff Union of Universities have been on strike and students of all public universities have been at home. Moving a little backwards, the ASUU strike has become part of the education landscape since the return to civil rule, which the Peoples Democratic Party led for 16 years. This time, the major cause of the disagreement and strike is the funding of the universities. The Federal Government through its properly accredited representatives signed an agreement with ASUU and locked up the agreement in a dusty shelf, refused to implement the same and simply claims the government has no money to implement same. But everyone knows that the government’s position is a lie from the pit of hell. Simply put, the federal and state governments have refused to accord education and the future of our people the priority it deserves. There is money to satisfy the greed of a federal Accountant-General and his cronies who are alleged to have stolen close to N200 billion. Money in trillions stolen from the public treasury and reported in several Auditors’ General reports have not been returned to the treasury and the looters have hardly been prosecuted. Yet, there is no money.
The leading men and women of the two parties do not care because their children are not schooling in Nigeria. They are out of the country and, therefore, if Nigeria’s education collapses, they are not disturbed. The few who cannot afford to send their children overseas have sent them to private universities. This band of marauders in the two parties have presided over the indicator of over 15 million children who are out of school, have never been in school, will never be in school and as such lack basic literacy in the century and age of knowledge and of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The same government that currently anchors this irresponsibility through its ruling party fixed its presidential nomination forms at N100 million. Serving ministers and public officers rushed to buy the forms and no one is asking them where they got the money from. Those who bought the forms included persons who declared in their asset declaration forms that they had less than N100m upon assumption of office. Aspirants of the ruling party have been crisscrossing the federation asking their party delegates for support. Available information indicates they have been spending billions to bribe partymen to support their aspirations. Even the cost of doing legitimate campaign transactions such as travel, hotel and other logistics do not come cheap. Majority of the aspirants are government officials, who resigned from office about three weeks ago, whilst others are former government officials. Where did they get the billions of naira they are spending from? Your guess is as good as mine—public money converted to private use.
The main opposition party on the other hand fixed its nomination fee at N40 million. But their primaries turned into an obscene dollar bazaar where monies were shared openly and delegates who received such money have confessed and displayed them publicly. But the last time I checked, vote-buying and bribery were offences under Nigerian law and we still had a plethora of law enforcement agents who could have investigated and prosecuted this bunch of saboteurs whose proper abode should be in a correctional centre. The opposition abandoned the zoning formula it had been developed to ensure inclusivity and participation in public life at the highest level for all divides in Nigeria. Instead, they sang an insensitive hegemonic note where a party chairman and the presidential candidate all came from the same divide. And they expected others to follow on their unqualified and open display of nepotism and disregard for the rights of others? Again, a front-running aspirant of the ruling party failed, refused and neglected to visit a geopolitical zone in his quest for the ticket of his party? Just begging for the ticket and showing such open hatred and contempt for a people and still expects to be the President of Nigeria?
The ruling party presided over the murder and killing of young Nigerians over their demand for the sanctity of the right to life during the #EndSARS campaign. A government in power ordered troops to shoot, kill and maim young citizens singing the national anthem and waving the national flag. It was a sad and pathetic scene, which displayed the depth of the exceptional depravity of the ruling party and its leaders.
The greed and cluelessness of the current occupants of power have resulted in national debt in excess of $125 billion. Borrowing under the law is only permitted for capital expenditure and human development. Despite this humungous debt, we are still an infrastructure starved economy and our human capital is nowhere near being described as developed. So, what did we do with the proceeds of borrowing? It was to a large extent stolen and mismanaged. Things have gone so bad that we are servicing debts with over 96% of our retained revenue. What is the response of the ruling party—more borrowing. The extremely sad part of the news is that many of the persons orchestrating this borrowing ideally are no longer part of the working population who can contribute to debt service and repayment.
Action speaks louder than words. There is no need to appeal or try to stop these misfits in their adventure because they are hell-bent on destroying the future of Nigeria. Just stop them at the polls with your PVC. Reject them and all they stand for.
