Nigeria: The Uncharted Road to 2019

The time is here, finally, the much-awaited Presidential election. In less than 10 days, Nigerians would decide for themselves between a frail, old, lifeless, self-proclaimed 76-year-old or another fortunate pluck of the old stock. Both of them, two sides of the same coin, are chips off the same old block.

Our united inability to learn from Nigeria’s history is the reason we are still recycling the one set of rulers (for they are not really leaders) from 1966 till date. Lamentably, history as subject is entirely has been thrown out of school curricular in Primary and Secondary. It is for this reason the
much younger folks have no idea about how Buhari under the Buhari/Idiagbon military regime arrested and detained people at will and indefinitely. He jailed innocent journalists including Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson (though they ironically and tragically campaigned for him in 2015); Buhari abolished civil rights allowing his government to summarily try and execute some Nigerians in the near-jungle justice. After Buhari was overthrown, Mohammadu Gambo then IG of Police, opened the prison doors of 15 Awolowo Road on Public Television, revealing people in various stages of undress and malnutrition that were kept in cells without trial. This same Buhari would now have us believe that he has gone through some mysterious transformation and has become a democrat, no my dear, he’s still very much the same; you can see it for yourself in the circumstance as of El-Zakzaky, Sambo Dasuki and a number of others, all granted bails by competent courts. It is impossible for one to change their character. Even if they try very hard, the leopard cannot change its spots. The snail may try, but cannot caste off its shell. Buhari is a dictator, trained as one and lives as one.

The root of the Nigerian problem is Political; the things that have held us back include an infective and corrupt state and a society where citizens cannot use their talent, ambition, ingenuity and Institutional degrees to better their lives. All economic impediments we face are from the way Political Power in Nigeria is exercised and monopolized by narrow elites. So also, the nation’s structures are unproductive and unsustainable as well, making restructuring which the north resists inevitable.

The so-called “leaders of tomorrow” are frustrated in view of the ASUU Strike of which only very few know is a deliberate move by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to win elections.
Millions of student voters registered in school are at home which means they wouldn’t be participating in the FeBuhari 16 elections, the people who would, are the 13.2 million out of school children mainly in Northern Nigeria.

Graduates are at home. Undergraduates are at home, I mean. Where are we headed? What hapened to the promise by the APC to create 3 million jobs? Instead, there are 21 million jobless Nigerians today, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). What about the economy? The indices are clear that our economy is now more vulnerable to both local and external shocks than it was four years ago. A man who doesn’t know the year he was elected President has promised to eradicate poverty when statistics show that about 87 million Nigerians are now trapped in abject poverty. Have you for once asked yourselves how he will do this and a definite time frame within which this would be achieved?

Disappointingly, the supposed Giant of Africa is crawling whilst other smaller nations like Ghana are moving forward. Look at Rwanda and how Information Technology is super-charging
their economy. Ghana on the other hand has made significant changes in poverty reduction. In fact, Ghana is the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve the Millennium Development Goal 1, which is the target of halving extreme poverty. Ghana is currently a middle-income
country and enjoys almost 24-hour interrupted power supply! Industries in Nigeria are now relocating to Ghana and many Nigerians are now relocating to Ghana for the opportunity of a decent living.

We have strayed too far in the wilderness of grand expectations with nothing to show for it. We are Nigerian citizens not orphans without hope for a second meal. We voted these people in egalitarianism. We have the right to replace them for their underwhelming performance.

Political revolutions of the PDP and APC changed nothing. So, why should we take reins from those they’d disposed and re-create a similar system? Why shouldn’t ordinary citizens acquire real political power and change how things work? It happened in England, France, the United
States, Japan, Brazil, even in Botswana. Why not in Nigeria? 2019 offers us again, a golden opportunity to decide where we are going as a Nation.