By Seun Odetunde
The race has started again. Indeed, as far as Nigerian politics is concerned, the races have started.
The road to who occupies the Aso Rock come 2023 has begun as politricking politicians, who have spent the last three years drawing and shaping their tricks, have spread out their red carpets of propaganda.
Rome doesn’t rise in a day; so is it to every politician. So, they never waited till this 2022 before planning for 2023, though the scheming is just peaking now. Well, we have had some Lagos politicians coming to make the sound of a blank drum at this period but what’s the outcome?
On thy mark, set… Go Forward with Courage! Yes, that’s how one of our honorable ministers decided to go to the Olympic 100m senior boys, I guess the minister should have been made to oversee our sports ministry instead but he never underperformed in his present capacity. Well, that’s what his analyst put out and concluded and carved the ruse to deceive Nigerians, showing he is fit but I can’t remember the last time the popular Olympic Games were hosted at the Aso Rock! Honorable minister on the mic, tell us: why are you running?
“If my party gives me the ticket, many Nigerians know that I am the round peg for the round hole of Nigeria. I will fit in, and in two years, only two years, you would see the effect of my governance…” says one of the tricksters. But let’s visit history and see why he’s so full of himself to believe that he’s the triangle peg for the triangle hole. He was a former chief executive officer of a Nigerian state whose successor in 2019 said in one of the dailies that he was a failure. The double-dealer has been possibly in government for nineteen years consecutively. Hi lord, what has been done possibly by you for Nigerians for 19 years to have you imply you can be assigned for another two years?
In Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s book titled Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous: The Story Behind the Headlines, she notes that the country was heading to economy recession during the Goodluck Jonathan-led administration, ofwhich all the state governments were fully aware but they came to the public to tell us that the Federal Government was a failure. The governors and all lawmakers decided to fool Nigerians by telling us they would move mountains knowing well that the country’s economy was about to collapse. No single policy was drawn out as a campaign plan to solve the problem. The present government would have performed better if they had based their campaign on a definite plan of how to defeat the failing economy instead they were dishing out lies, impossible visions and one-sided plans. They were at best thinking within the box, stuck in the traditional ways of generating wealth for the country. When the global oil price finally reached the diminishing level, the country finally fell beyond repair, if I am permitted to say that.
The present government made a lot of promises without thinking of the cost implications. How do you vow to defeat the Boko Haram in your first year and yet it took you more than seven years and still counting only to tell Nigerians that you pushed them across the border, claiming they had been defeated. Ok! Let’s agree they have been defeated, well the death of Boko Haram has given birth to double wahala for our dead body like Fela said. We now have bandits, unknown gunmen working like the sorcerer in the movie Merlin. IPOB are there terrorising the East, herdsmen are causing trouble up and down Now, nowhere is safe except the state or federal house. No one can sleep with the two eyes fully closed even when the eyes are widely opened. Security is not guaranteed. What a pity!
My writing will be like a dirge if I continue with comparison between what the progressives promised and what they have achieved. Although though some undoubtedly infrastructure is in place, poverty becomes the epidemic. Naira has become weak and valueless and the grass is not greener even on the green side of the Nigerian flag. How do we solve this or where do we go from here?
TO BE CONTINUED
[email protected]
Twitter: @SeunAyo_
