By Gbadebo Adeyeye
One thing is certain: we cannot learn anything new from a dope; and those politicians who believe that democracy is nothing but exploitation, are no better. That is why Abraham Lincoln warned, decades ago, that humanity should “beware of rashness; but with energy and sleepless vigilance, go forward and give us victory.”
To
many of us, we can say categorically that there is no strong assurance of
achieving any political victory in our country unless Nigerians join hands
together in 2023 to choose someone who is highly qualified for the office in
which wisdom, intelligence, good character, and guts are the requirements.
The reason is simple. In times like this, nothing is more important to hardworking Nigerians than a government that can defend its defenders and protect its protectors! It is true that a leader may not be able to solve all the problems of the future but he must be able to solve the problems of his generation. Failure to do that is a failure in the journey of life.
For
seven years now, the present regime has demonstrated that failure by doing
nothing to reckon with some of the black holes that threaten to swallow up our
entire economy. Before the country is finally suffocated by lame duck
politicians who think that poverty in Nigeria is just another casualty of
capitalism, we must again remember what Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all
of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of
the time.” That is why we must stop electing leaders who were charged with the
trust of holding Nigeria together but instead have become a misfortune to the
nation.
Although
we can blame no man and no policy for their failure, circumstances have forced
leaders with questionable capability upon Nigeria since 1999. For example,
while millions of innocent citizens are presently facing the grim problems of
existence and equal numbers toil with little income, the political hypocrites
in our midst are still denying the dark realities of this moment, claiming that
progress is taking place in the country.
Our
distress today is not from the absence of resources and we are not stricken by
any plague of locusts. Compared with many nations around the world, Nigeria has
so much to be thankful for in terms of resources. But we have failed to
reasonably utilise the resources simply because the custodians of our economy
are incompetent, thereby confirming Theodore Roosevelt’s observation that, “It
is not what we have that will make us a great nation, it is the way we use it.”
Despite
our enormous resources in Nigeria, it is worrisome that the incumbent regime
has failed the citizens for seven years—it has failed to provide good
education; security or help to turn citizens’ lives around. Today, our
education system is so bad that many Nigerian students cannot compete
successfully with their counterparts elsewhere, which simply means that a
Nigerian student who has spent four years in the university may return home
with no additional knowledge than when he or she left home. And, with the
annual population growth rate in Nigeria increasing more than five times higher
than the growth rate of developed countries, with millions of young children
suffering from malnutrition when per capita income of Nigerian families has
barely increased under the present regime, it is not surprising that Nigeria is
being warned about the likelihood of a catastrophic increase in poverty within
the next one year.
Racked by high inflation, a crumbling
infrastructure, gargantuan debt, and abnormal economic policies that have
halted the nation’s development since 2015, the question now is: what then is
the promise of change made by the regime of the President, Major General
Muhammadu Buhari’s (retd)?
It may be recalled that in his inaugural
address to Americans on March 4, 1885, then President Grover Cleveland advised
that “It is the duty of those serving the people in the public places to
closely limit public expenditures to the actual needs of the government because
this bounds the right of the government to extract tribute from the earnings of
labour or the prosperity of the citizens. And because the public extravagance
begets extravagance among the people, we should never be ashamed of the
simplicity which is best suited to the operation of a democratic form of
government and most compatible with the mission of the people.”
Continuing, Cleveland warned that “Those who
are selected to manage public affairs are still of the people and must do much
by their example to encourage consistently with the dignity of their official
functions. That plain way of life which, among their citizens aids integrity
and promotes thrift and prosperity.”
Unfortunately, in Nigeria, what our leaders
don’t understand is that the country is too big, too complex and too diverse to
be run in an ineffective style in the guise of a quasi-democracy. That is why
we cannot afford to have another lame duck commander-in-chief in 2023.
*Gbadebo Adeyeye is Proprietor, Crown
Heights College, Ibadan, Oyo State
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