By Jerome-Mario Chijioke Utomi
Nigerians are particularly not happy that the All Progressive Congress (APC) led federal government which lavishly promised Nigerians change and were voted to provide good and qualitative leadership; elected to bring the nation’s economy out of the woods and were chosen to bring democracy’s dividends to the people.
But instead of providing the lavishly promised and highly expected leadership, they visit the masses with cluelessness and utopia.
Instead of reviving the comatose economy, they threw it further down into recession and instead of bringing dividends of democracy, they democratized poverty, institutionalized unemployment and governmentalized hopelessness and frustration. They are not authentic leaders but political demagogues.
It is, therefore, expected that after about eight years of unfulfilled change, the electorate should be excused if they enter 2023 with a new dream on their minds, and head to the polls with a different mentality from what they had in 2015 and 2019 respectively.
The new orientation would be shaped by recent fiscal, sociological, political and communal happenings in the country; coupled with the pockets of ethnoreligious upheavals and misgivings from one region against another or powerful personalities against each other.
It can also be safely deduced that many different strata, sectors, and sections of the country will be looking up to 2023 as a year to settle various scores – both idealistically and holistically.
Recently, the talk has been about making a point and calling for a change to the current dispensation through mild aggression, in the form of protests, rallies, sit-at-home and heated public comments.
Though 2023 will again accord Nigerians the chance to make a change through a legitimate and democratic means, tension is already up and has again heightened by the realization that the nation is still being governed by people who do not feel the pinch the common man is made to endure, or that the leaders have simply chosen to be compassionate by proxy.
In fact, a glance at the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) communiqué further lends credence to assertion.
It reads in parts; Mr President is unwilling, from his recent comments discountenancing the proposals for state policing, to participate in reviewing the structural problems of tackling insecurity in Nigeria.
While urging Mr President to reconsider his position and consider decentralization and restructuring of the security architecture as the most viable solution, together with proper arming, funding and training requirements for security agencies, the PDP Governors noted that the management of our oil and gas resources, the administration of federation account remittances have remained opaque, confusing and non-transparent.
In addition, the transition to NNPC Ltd under the Petroleum Industry Act has not been properly streamlined to ensure that the interests of all the tiers of government are protected, consistent with the 1999 Constitution.
Today, it is no longer in doubt that the political leaders have fractured our nation’s geography into polarised ethnosyncrasies and idiosyncrasies, all of which have led to agitations of different sorts and capacities. These have disjointed the amalgams of the country and made the nation that was once called the Giant of Africa now be referred to by friends and foes as a wobbling tripod.
Also, these developments have made 2023 a year with history in that it’s a year of elections, a year for another session of politicking when elections into various offices from the Presidency down to the state Houses of Assembly are billed to hold.
Most importantly, 2023 is bound to be a year in which the people’s action and decisions will shape their political destiny and determine their socio-economic future.
Obviously, the year will be pregnant with high hopes and has equally necessitated the need for electorates to develop an objectified oneness as well as an action plan that will aid them in taking whole. It’s a year for the masses and youths, in particular, to team up and fight the common enemy called bad leadership and its proponents. If the masses can achieve these, every other thing including restructuring shall be added unto it.
This role is pivotal because the strength of a nation is a direct result of the strength of its leaders. Everything rises and falls on leadership. This remark is visibly evident in the qualities of leaders the nation have unfortunately blessed herself with since May 2015.
The result of these political miscalculations led us to rhizomes of excuses thereby turning the country into a nation of narrative rather than action. The scorecards of the present crop of leaders have visibly advertised them as being clueless, lacking in creativity and outright lack of propensity to perform.
To exit this vicious circle of mal-performance, the people need reprogramming of their mindset as once the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. To make the reorientation work, early preparation is key as once remarked he that arrives first and take a position is at ease while he that arrives late labours.
2023 may be far but viewed from political pragmatism, it is just a stone throw. So, this is the time for the citizens to start asking solution-providing questions as well as performing the agenda-setting roles.
This is not the time to start waiting for the visitors called politicians whose visits occur once in four years and that are the electioneering period. Also, the masses have in recent elections voted based on vanity without recourse to their consciences.
To arrive at the Nigeria of our dreams, it is time to say no to this illicit incentivizing by these politicians now that the nation prepares for another round of political ultimate search come 2023. Voting based on pecuniary inducement or stomach infrastructure should be discouraged.
To make 2023 bear the anticipated political result as proposed, the people need the moral force to activate a shift in paradigm. Part of this needed strategy is the admission of the youths into their political school and calculations. The youths have watched for too long the political drama involving their nation from the political gallery.
Again, enthroning upright personalities as our leaders is important as leadership is about vision and is also about creating a climate where the truth is heard and brutal force is confronted.
My imagination tells me that all we have been having were not leaders but sets of opportunists that appear from the political moon, feed us with what we want to hear, win the election and that ends the political oratory and relationship till the next election year.
We obviously need to take this step as we have previously seen some of our elected officers become the reality to worry about as they became visibly determined to work across purpose with us while some of them consumed by the vertical pursuit of self-aggrandizement.
Allowing this trend and expecting a different result is tantamount to insanity. For us, as a people, to break out from this vicious circle of worries and poverty, the time to cause a real change is now.
Utomi Jerome-Mario is the Programme Coordinator (Media and Public Policy), Social and Economic Justice Advocacy (SEJA), a Lagos-based Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). He could be reached via [email protected]/08032725374.
