OPINION:(my fellow Nigerian part one) NOTE: this is the opinion of the writer and do not neccesary reflect as the opinion of Nigeria: my beloved countries editors Written by annonimous. FELLOW NIGERIANS PART ONE! Fellow Nigerians, are you still in doubt that the race towards the 2015 Presidential election has started in earnest? Please, perish the notion. The campaign has crept in on us like a thief in the night but it is now in full bloom. Never mind the feeble groans and grunts of INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, who is only allowed to bark but cannot bite in reality. He enjoys my sympathy as a decent man who has landed a job bigger than him. All the bungled elections have only been righted by apologies and promises of better operations in the nebulous future. There is not much he can do in a nation where leaders wield the power of God and Satan at once.We have less than one year to go and by now we ought to engage in sensible discussions and dissection of what to expect. This is more so because, Nigeria has become a besieged nation with the level of unprecedented wars of attrition going on in different parts of the country. In the North, we have Boko Haram running wild without restrictions. In the South, we have audacious kidnappers and militants kept at bay with billions of Naira in gratification. The ruling party, PDP, has been at the centre for 15 years. By next year, it would have spent a total of 16 years and billions of dollars to boot. Not much has shifted or changed or improved since that fateful day on May 29, 1999, when the military handed over power to one of their most trusted bosses, General Olusegun Obasanjo.The more we spent on power, the bleaker our lights became. The more we spent on roads, the more they were riddled with giant potholes or face total collapse, or as the mighty Ministry of Works sometimes puts it, “Road Failure”! The more we pumped into supposedly educating our kids, the faster their education deteriorated and they became semi-illiterates. The fatter our defence budget has grown, the bigger the assault from criminals and terrorists has exploded. Not many communities can boast of drinkable water. The army of our unemployed youths is the biggest on the continent, not on account of our huge population but because we have refused to downgrade the exorbitant lifestyles of our professional politicians, whose permanent employment we only seem to be concerned about. We can go on ad infinitum reeling out our litany of woes but it has become a cliché and a bloody waste of time, energy and resources.In any normal democracy, the people would have long voted out PDP, as a grand protest against a malfunctioning political party and an under-performing government that has kept that long in the saddle of power with little or nothing to show for it. More useful and purposeful governments have been sacked and discarded in other climes for less. But ours is a peculiarly abnormal situation. We are all guilty of operating in the jungle and it has become almost impossible to see that hope in the horizon. Not that the opposition parties have done much better but they have offered some glimmer of hope in truth and reality. It would be uncharitable not to salute the modest efforts of some of the wiz kids who form the nucleus of APC today even if they are not perfect. Collectively they are likely to push Nigeria forward because of their cosmopolitan outlook. PDP has refused to jet out of its ultra-conservative cocoon. If it had made that extra effort to give something little back to a country that gave it so much there would have been perhaps no major opposition today. But the party was comfortable in its fool’s paradise and never dreamt a day like this would ever come. The recklessness of our leaders is what has again drawn Nigeria closer to the abyss. In the middle of this terrible mess, Nigerians are just hoping that something or anything at all can still be salvaged and repositioned before it is too late. It has become too obvious that Nigeria is precariously sitting on tinderbox and a lot rests on how we conduct or misconduct ourselves in 2015. Our survival would depend on how sober or desperate the contenders choose to be. On the part of most Nigerians, all we can do is pray and watch as events unfold. Saints are not going to descend from heaven to rule over us. It behoves us to find some of the manageable demons who can perform better than the incompetent ones we’ve been stranded with. Such is the reality of our sordid predicament. Where do we then go from here? As things stand today, President Goodluck Jonathan has virtually been drafted and adopted as the PDP flag-bearer. I don’t see and can’t picture any other candidate emerging from the shadows to upturn this particular applecart. The President himself has assumed the role of an unchallenged candidate by going all out to dare his would be opponents to an early duel. Notably he is not challenging anybody within he is own party. He knows they have all accepted the inevitable! It is the opposition he brazenly confronts. What do you think about the writers opinion and points?
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 09:07:41 +0000
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