Some of those who came in as ministers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2015 stepped into the ring armed with rusty gloves that took us back into a history we always like to forget.
If we talk of the dominant personalities, they are the same old faces. Those I saw way back in 1999 when we began the democratic session that has brought us this far are still with us; Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan, Olu Falae, Muhammadu Buhari, Abubakar Atiku, Bola Tinubu, Olabode George, John Oyegun, Orji Kalu, Bukola Saraki, Ogbonnaya Onu etc.
It is misleading to say they represent a receding age, as one newspaper writer noted the other day about the military elite. If we discern an existing era we must not be blind to the fact of a dying generation giving birth to kindred spirits. The old order only appears to be giving way: really it is raising a new crop of those who believe in, and practice, the old philosophy. So at the end of the day nothing of substance has changed. For instance you may not see an Olusola Saraki again. But you come across a Bukola Saraki who will always stand for what Olusola Saraki stood for.
It is the same with the political parties. The National Party of Nigeria (NPN) disappeared in law when it was proscribed in late 1983. But its spirit never died. The Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) didn’t die either. Indeed, one group is currently embodying it, not satisfied apparently with simply proclaiming the philosophy of late Chief ObafemiAwolowo in an earlier setting.
However, critics point out that the real tragedy of our politics is not that we didn’t have a change of characters as the years rolled by. There is nothing truly wrong in the long run if you have the same personalities who would move with the times. The point is that they must not drag the bad elements of the past into the present and the future. So the sad news is that those who stay in the saddle in Nigeria corrupt the system with stagnation either through senescent politics and policies brought from the dead past or through their entrenchment of Neanderthal institutions they symbolise.
When the politicians went on the hustings as the electoral umpire permitted them a few months to the first of the staggered poll in early 2015, these politicians sought to secure our vote by presenting their manifestoes. But as we have said above, their bouquets of “action plan” are tweaked documents. They are a menu we are familiar with. We consumed them in the past. They never nourished us. Instead they turned us into kwashiorkor children not growing and developing according to our age. We are rather under-growing and under-developing, long after the colonial precursor performed the hatchet man’s job.
What Nigerians want is power, authority streaming from the ballot box. They want to vote in accountable mandate holders, wielders of a sacred calling. Truly, that is what it is; the public office figure (elected or appointed) is set apart for exemplary sober conduct: a good leader is like a god on Mount Olympus, not given to the foibles of the common folk under him, yet bound to a life of service to meet their needs, even to the point of self-immolation.
Several centuries ago in ancient Egypt, the king looked across the room where he and his kitchen cabinet were mulling a looming famine. He sought a man of honour to manage the state and the agro-economy in the time of the prosperity that would precede the drought. He found none!
Today Nigerians are also searching for astute leaders to take charge of the vast riches, enormous human resources and unquantifiable potential of their country. There is a fatal disconnect between these great indices of potential profusion God has given Nigeria and the crippling poverty therein. The missing link is a leader (or leaders) to mediate between our wealth and our challenges. Affluence and poverty are strange bedfellows.
The Egyptian monarch did not get the leader he needed from among his people. But he created one through quite unorthodox means.
Nigerians must create their own leader and expect him to kowtow to them and their needs. We don’t need Frankenstein’s monsters as we have now. What those who went about doing during the campaign season, meeting journalists and announcing high-sounding manifestoes are giving us now isn’t what we need. We should let them know that a genuine leader is not denominated in naira and kobo, or in any other financial benchmark for that matter. Genuine leaders do not transact their business with the electorate on a cash-and-carry basis. Our dream leader’s chief armour and ammunition are probity and selflessness, amounting to complete surrender of self.
When that grand norm is settled, we want to tell the leaders of Nigeria of 2019 and thereafter that what we need from them is to top their agenda with a powerful and non-negotiable policy to address the issues of redistribution of the national wealth and youth and women empowerment. If you handle these adroitly, you would be taking care of insecurity and the future. A society prospers and declines according to how it treats its poor, youth and women.
Politics must be radicalised to let those who get our vote in 2019 know it isn’t what the leaders want that matters. What the people need should drive them and their passion to the level where they would be happy poorer materially but fulfilled in service upon leaving office than when they got there!
But I beg to ask somewhat like Pharaoh: “Can we (in 2019) find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is…so discreet and wise (honest, blameless, transparent, selfless, unquestionable integrity)?’’
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