2015: IDEOLOGIES OR ACCOUNTABILITY

With the registration of the APC by INEC last month many reactions and counter reactions was left after its birth. Unlike many commentators who perceived the registration as a triumph of democracy, I will beg to differ. This is because, irrespective of various quarters who accused the PDP, and by extension the presidency of wanting to thwart the registration, I couldn’t see any reason why INEC would not register the party, for it’s their job to do so, as long as the party has met all of its requirements. And in a country with over 40 political parties, to be further pruned down to a manageable size, INEC will have to explain succinctly to Nigerians why APC shouldn’t be registered, even as it has over 10 governors, more than 120 National Assembly members and quite a large number of state and local government officials. So I reasoned that unless we have retrogressed back into the military era, where our constitution is toilet paper, INEC cannot fathom a reason of not registering APC.

But this is not my concern for today; this article today was provoked by articles which dwell on the probability if an ideology exists on which the APC was built upon. Not wanting to sound pessimistic I have always doubted if any political party in Nigeria was built upon any ideology, interest definitely, but ideologies no. So I chuckled when I read articles advocating and preaching that politicians develop, or more simply, adopt an ideology. I believe it was Uncle Sam Nda-Isaiah who hinted that when the APC eventually succeeded in wresting power from the PDP, what next would be their agenda? Misters Adesanmi and Igwe re-echoed same concerns, though differently, they implied the same message, which has opened the fact that it now seems glaring that Nigerians are becoming faintly aware of the issues before us; that the PDP no matter how you choose to look at it is not one of them, but the caliber of politicians we have bred over the years, right from independence.

The silent question of whom we are to trust, have arisen in many public fora and social media, without a corresponding answer, this has made many to acknowledge the fact that the musical organ has no defects but the inability of the player to play it. Nigerians have been dealt with right, left and centre by politicians, who have promised heaven on earth, but have only succeeded in fueling the fire, throwing into the gutters their manifestoes which they used in seeking for offices. In other climes, manifestoes are held as contracts or covenants, whereas ours is considered as mere speeches to fulfill formalities, this is why most of our elected officials don’t take time to study our problems, evaluate them and then proffer solutions. In other climes we see how presidential debates are been conducted and how same effects their poll ratings, but in Nigeria, aspirants choose debates according to the extent they emasculate the queries. But what gets me irked the most is their continuous repetition of answers to our social ills, like corruption, high illiteracy level, high poverty rate, intermittent power supply etc. as all they give can be summed up to mean; strengthening anti-corruption institutions, increase budget in so, so and so areas. These we have heard multiple times, and they know as we also that it has not been working and will not work so why the reprise? Are they aware of our “selective amnesia” as Steve Nwosu of the Daily Sun puts it, and we would continue to be swayed by their amplified baritone voice?

I will bother you with something I learnt in the last US presidential election; Romney thrashed Obama in the first set of two debates, which saw his poll rating go up by over 4%; petrified Obama and his team went back, did their home and upturned Romney’s edge at the second round. Now, have our politicians borrowed any leaf from this? I doubt it, because our last presidential debates, which gradually evolved into a mockery, showed that all aspirants, except Mal. Ibrahim Shekerau (former governor of Kano state) had no iota of statistical representation of the issues bedeviling this country. His argument towed the intellectual line, and he received wide applause from Nigerians, but this did not translate to votes, because majority of the Nigerian community believes only in the statistical figures of Naira which would line up their pockets.

Mr. Shekerau, also a graduate like our present President, went through the pain of identifying various problems and attaching a fiscal number to it, and also proffering evaluative ways through which he intends to address them, but the others from Jonathan, Buhari, Utomi, Ribadu and others all towed the accustomed line of improving budget and stamping out corruption. Apologies if this sounds disrespectful, but truth be told we all witnessed it. And for those who think I am holding brief for Mr. Shekerau should disabuse it from their minds, for I have never met, spoken or written to him before. I would have love to, for he is the kind of person we can hold accountable for his words and not those who dish out vague sentences. My hope is that come 2015, let the media inform Nigerians and the aspirants on the rules of debates, the value of manifestoes and the importance of statistics, so that we can know when someone is lying, have lied or trying to cover a lie. In my view that’s accountability.