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BY JEROME-MARIO UTOMi
In Nigeria, like in other countries of the world, it is a moral duty that
citizens should reinforce and not undermine the government effort; acting
in concord with daily political developments particularly under a
democratic arrangement. But contrary to this expectation, the vast
majority of Nigerians have in recent weeks demonstrated stiff difficulty
accepting political occurrences by allowing skepticism and, doubt trail
every scorecard coming from the government quarters, an act that have
understandably affected our national live and existence.
From the Senators jumbo pay saga to the abduction and subsequent release
of Dapchi school girls. From the technical defeat of the Boko Haram to
the corruption fight. Not even the recent award to the President Muhammadu
Buhari by the Martin Luther King family was spared of the doubt.
Virulent as the situation appears, such should by no means be tagged an
accident as discerning minds view it as a fall-out of the disheartening
government past actions.
Explicitly, the most fundamental obstacle responsible for this complexity
is that the masses have been led to a state of confusion, to the extent
that distinguishing between delusion and reality has become difficult. To
justify this position, democracy, at the global level is aimed at
providing good governance and in contrast, our homegrown democracy has
neither guaranteed social justice nor supported social mobility but
promoted hopelessness.
The second difficulty, however, seems not to raise so much dust like the
first but can only be ignored at a heavy price as it stems from the masses
new found knowledge that; time and the world do not stand still, that
change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past, or the
present, are certain to miss the future. This new frame of mind seems to
provide Nigerians with direction out of the present political pew,
safeguard common welfare while using a systematic scrutiny of government
actions.
Calculated political awareness meetings and conferences organized daily on
our political space by the Civil Society Organizations (CSO), professional
Bodies as well as religious Groups, with; fixing, reworking, repositioning
the nation as the central themes serve as the people college where these
political reorientations are created. And consequently, propel Nigerians
to question hitherto political settled answers as well as demand answers
to the unsettled national questions.
This development is made worse by the Nigerians realization that they are
still governed by people that do not feel the pinch the common man is made
to endure, or that the leaders have simply chosen to be compassionate by
proxy.
Looking at commentaries, one will again, discover that Nigerians are irked
by the fact that instead of our leaders providing us with the much-yearned
democracy dividends, they fractured our nations geography into a
polarized ethno-syncrasies and idiosyncrasies, all of which have led to
agitations of different sorts and capacities. These have further
disjointed the amalgams of the country and made the nation that was once
called The Giant of Africa now be referred to by friends and foes as a
wobbling tripod.
Apart from the above baffling development, another thing seems to stand
out; for close to two decades that the nation has had uninterrupted
democracy in our shores, our leaders have neither alleviated the real
conditions of the poor, the deprived, the lonely, the oppressed, nor get
into their lives and participate in their struggles. Hence, the masses
have refused to see anything exemplary or impressive with the government.
Other accompanying reason fuelling this Aki and Paw-paw(Nigerian
version of Tom and Jerry ) form of relationship, is that after about four
years of unfulfilled change by this present administration, Nigerians
are reacting stoically by positioning to enter 2019 with a new dream on
their minds, and head to the polls with a different mentality than they
had in 2015.
This new orientation conversed would be further shaped by recent fiscal,
sociological, political and communal happenings in the country; coupled
with the pockets of Ethno-cultural upheavals and misgivings from one
region against another or powerful personalities against each other.
Going by the current happenings, one can safely situate that different
strata, sectors, and sections of the country will be looking up to 2019 as
a year to settle various scores – both idealistically and holistically.
These state of affair have made 2019 a year with history and pregnant
with high hopes, and has equally necessitated the need for electorates to
develop an objectified oneness as well as an action plan that will aid
them in taking whole. Its a year for the masses and youths, in
particular, to team up and fight the common enemy called bad leadership
and its proponents.
This role, the masses have since learned is imperative as the strength of
a nation is a direct result of the strength of her leaders; as everything
rises and falls on leadership
Catalyzing the above process, therefore, Nigerians should not labour under
the illusion that things will fall into place by mere speeches but will
first require mind restructuring as once the mind is enslaved, the body
can never be free. They should also develop strategies for asking
solution-providing questions as well as perform the agenda-setting roles
for our present/future crop of leaders.
Again, observation has spotted that for a greater part of our existence as
a nation, we have had more demagogues than authentic leaders which have
consequently corroded our expected socioeconomic development. Hence, it is
time for the masses to create a climate where the truth is heard and
brutal force confronted.
For one thing, it will be of considerable significance to this present
issue that Nigerians continues on this standpoint of objectively
questioning the activities of our leaders as events that recently unfolded
points to the fact that there may be no end in sight to the crisis of
corruption and dearth of leadership; as we have recently seen some of our
leaders become a reality that we now worry about.
JeromeMario,Springnewsng,writesviaJeromeutomi@yahoo.com