Recent talks about PVC in Nigeria cannot be about polyvinyl chloride, a rubber substitute for coating electric cables, but of the Permanent Voter Card that will empower enfranchised Nigerians to vote in the coming general elections, most of which will hold in 2019.
Nigerian youths, unofficially reported to be 60 per cent of Nigeria’s population, have got President Muhammadu Buhari – who is seeking an opportunity to prove that he never said they were lazy – to sign the ‘Not Too Young To Run’ Act.
Sections 65(1)(a,b), 106(b), 131(b) and 177(b) of Nigeria’s Constitution, respectively, set the age to contest for Senate from age 35; House of Representatives, 30; State Houses of Assembly, 30; President, 40; and Governor, 35.
But the ‘Not Too Young To Run’ Act, which reduces the age for both House of Representatives and State Houses of Assembly to 25, and President to 30, retains that of the senate and state governors at 35. This makes it a half-way house.
A friend and journalist, Dare Onasanya, has an eerie perspective on Nigerian politics. He thinks that government, the Independent National Electoral Commission, politicians, even clerics, must urge Nigerians to collect their PVCs and also scrutinise political party delegates who choose candidates for elective positions.
Sections 65(2b), 106(d), 131(c) and 177(c) of the constitution, respectively, provide that a Nigerian can contest elective offices of the National Assembly, state Houses of Assembly, President and Governor, only if “he is a member of a political party and sponsored by that party.”
The constitution makes no provision for independent candidates. So, there can be no candidates for elective offices outside of political parties. Yet, the calibre of most delegates who choose candidates during political party primaries is sometimes laughable.
A statistician may stretch the concept of central tendency to argue that if youths are 60 per cent of Nigeria’s population, they will likely make 60 per cent of electoral choices as delegates at party primaries.
That can be most dangerous if young delegates, who have no jobs, are swayed by the ‘stomach infrastructure’ considerations of a nylon bag of rice, N1000, or ‘aso ebi’, like the impulsive and hedonistic Estragon in Thomas Becket’s hilarious play, ‘Waiting for Godot’.
It gets worse if delegates to party primaries are not mentally equipped and they cannot critically assess the manifestoes and the candidates presented to them by manipulative party leaders as they cast their votes.
A high school classmate and journalist, Sola Ogunbajo, says: “These ‘politricktians’ are nominated, seconded and ‘passed’ by the low down, low beat illiterate people, such as vulcanisers, pepper sellers, butchers, welders, bus drivers and conductors.”
While Ogunbanjo has no intention to denigrate these otherwise patriotic Nigerians, he must be concerned that delegates with low economic status and intellectual capacity can be easily compromised by a wily political class.
The proponents of America’s democracy prescribed a modicum of enlightenment and civic education so that the citizens can optimally function under its complex and intellectually demanding governance system.
America’s founding fathers expect political party delegates to emerge from an enlightened citizenry that understand the issues at stake and can intelligently chose candidates that can competently work for the people.
If the intellect of Nigeria’s political party delegates, those who choose candidates that will run for elections, is not up to stuff, the electorate will be stuck with mediocre candidates that the Yoruba would call “gbaatueyo.”
If you attend the primaries of some political parties, especially at the ward and local government levels, you will be exceedingly disappointed at the calibre of delegates that have the strategic responsibility to choose candidates who will run for political offices.
The political party primaries sometimes include some somewhat “enlightened” individuals known as “super delegates,” most of who are current, or past, holders of political or party offices. But regrettably, you cannot expect too much from them; they have vested interests, and were themselves nominated into the offices that they occupy, or occupied, through the same faulty process.
One such ‘super delegate’ is former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was nominated as military Head of State and a ‘civilianised’ President, by military colleagues and their civilian cahoots. He was privy to the ‘selection’ of former Presidents Shehu Shagari, late Umaru Yar Adua and Goodluck Jonathan.
The irony is that he has been in the lead of those who castigated these former Presidents. He is now using his purpose-built Coalition for Nigeria Movement to unseat current President Buhari, whom he openly rooted for during the 2015 Presidential Election.
Nigerian citizens, especially delegates at political party primaries, need to put more thought into deciding who they help to emerge as contestants into political positions in the polity. It is time to seek out more men of goodwill, with high morals, technocrats with competence and sagacity, to step forward to brave the stormy, some say putrid, waters of Nigeria’s politics.
Let the professionals, who make up the middle class, stand up and contest the political space with the misfits that are currently holding court. Karl Marx, the communist political thinker, says that the middle class is critical to political and economic advancement.
International politics scholar, Hans Morgenthau, argues that good governance balances a nation’s human and material resources for national power. To put it in the language of economists, governance would be the allocation of scarce resources for the benefit of all in a political realm.
Somebody once said that all it takes for evil to reign is for good people to sit still and do nothing. The scriptures, which say that righteousness exalts a nation, add that it is only under the rule of the righteous that the people can rejoice.
You should not wonder why Nigerian musician, Isaac Kehinde Dairo, asked rhetorically in one of his evergreen songs, “Of the king that reigned and there was peace and the one who reigned and the times were troubled, which one shall we embrace?”
The best way to right the past wrongs and up the game of politics is for more enlightened citizens to join politics at the grassroots level, especially as delegates at political party primaries, in order to assist their kind to assume high political office.
As you know, like begets like. If politics at the grassroots is left to ne’er-do-wells who lack the capability for the critical thinking that is necessary for deep political engagement that is necessary to raise the level of Nigeria’s competitiveness in the global comity of nations, it would be tragic, indeed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasts of Israelis that drive the global ICT industry with a “confluence of big data, connectivity and artificial intelligence… (that) revolutionizes old industries, and creates entirely new ones.” Nigerian political party delegates must choose leaders that can deliver a Nigeria that can even surpass that.
But you must commend the redeeming efforts of some religious groups, like the Lagos State Chapter of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria that is goading Christians to vote in 2019. Kolade Segun-Okeowo has taken it further by using his Believers In Politics Christian platform to seek election into the Ogun State House of Assembly.
But he should ask his Christian brethren to become delegates in his political party, so they can influence the primaries in his favour.
Twitter @lekansote1
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