Nigerians to politicians: We are tired of empty promises

With the wind of declarations, endorsements and lofty promises blowing across the country ahead of the 2019 general elections, Nigerians across the wide spectrum of society have said they are tired of being taken for a ride by political actors who spew out lies in the name of promises in their desperation to garner votes.

They also advise politicians and political parties to always keep to the rule of engagement by fulfilling their campaign promises after the electorates must have fulfilled their own part by voting for them.

Nigerians who spoke with BDSUNDAY said that despite the lofty promises that have been made by politicians since 1999, neither the citizens nor the country has fared any better.

“From the point where we were in 1999 to where we are now, only a liar can tell you that Nigeria as a country has moved an inch forward in terms of development. The Nigerian citizens are the worst hit. It is only the politicians and their cronies that have bettered their lives in all these years through our collective patrimony,” Anthony Ike, a political affairs analyst, said.

“And things are moving from bad to worse. So for me, I have made up my mind that no member of my family will vote in any election in 2019 and no amount of sweet promises can sway me to change my resolve,” Ike said.

Speaking about failure of government to fulfill its campaign promises, Martin Onovo, a trained petroleum engineer and former presidential candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP) in the 2015 general election, said that the ruling party has failed on that front.

“We have their published promises, one of which is three million jobs a year, published and signed by their national chairman,” Onovo said.

“Three million jobs a year, you should have nine million jobs. But instead of having nine million jobs, officially, they have lost nine million jobs which is a deficit of 18 million, the nine million that they promised and the nine million that were lost. So, it is not only they didn’t fulfill their promise, they went further to destroy. That’s why I say that the government is fighting to destroy this country,” he said.

“Again, they promised you two new deep seaports. Where are they? They promised you four million new homes in four years which is one million a year. Where are they? Have you seen any? They are still talking about getting a location where there’s not even budget. So, it is deceit; sheer deceit. The government of the day is very self-defeating, extremely unpatriotic and to say that their performance is catastrophic is mild,” he further said.

Ayo Opadokun, a former secretary of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), said that Nigerians had been docile for so long and that as a result they had been taken for a ride by their leaders.

Warning Nigerians to refuse to be pawns in the hands of desperados in political offices, Opadokun said: “My submission is that we have been fooled for too long and it is high time Nigerians stopped their docility. Nigerians need to understand that no society will ever develop having a docile people that do not ask any question.

“People must ask question; people must stand up to speak truth to power. People must stop engaging in this unprincipled, opportunistic collaboration with successive people in transient office. That is what has been happening to us and for which reason they have taken us for a ride.”

In a February 25, 2018 interview with a national daily, Ayo Adebanjo, elder statesman, said the Buhari administration has performed poorly, adding that even those who supported Buhari in 2015 had come to that realization.

“His integrity is gone. He should know that, except those who are still ‘chopping’ (eating) under his government. All those who thought he had integrity have seen that none of it is there. When a man who has integrity authorizes his AGF to go and meet a criminal in a strange land and then reinstate that criminal…it’s a pity!” Adebanjo said.

“It is not in dispute that Nigeria and Nigerians need a new intriguing third force in Nigerian politics as experience has shown that the two dominant political parties, namely, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that have each had a shot at the centre, have not only failed Nigerians woefully but marvelously considering the myriad of problems plaguing Nigeria,” Iyoha John Darlington, conflict management and resolution expert and spokesperson of the Green Party of Nigeria (GPN), said in a December 2017 interview with Daily Trust.

Before now, many prominent Nigerians have been expressing similar sentiments. Many, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former military President Ibrahim Babangida, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, emeritus Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Rt. Revd. Emmanuel Chukwuma, Anglican Bishop of Enugu, among others, have recently taken a swipe at the Buhari administration for its many failed promises, urging the president to perish the thought of gunning for reelection and retire peacefully at the expiration of his first term in 2019.

In June last year, at a news conference to mark his 58th birthday at the Holy Cross Cathedral in Lagos, the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Most Rev. Alfred Martins, said Nigerians were tired of promises given by the current APC-led government and wanted results.

Nigerians, he said, continued to face hard times despite government’s assurances that the economy was gradually moving out of recession.

“The cost of living is very high; workers are being retrenched daily. Even some of those still working are not being paid, both in the public and private sector; the power sector is comatose. The effects of all these on the poor masses of this country can better be imagined,” Archbishop Martins said.

“We know efforts are being done to address all these, but Nigerians are tired of promises; they want to see results. In the past we have been given promises of palliatives being put in place to bring immediate relief to the masses, but we are yet to feel the impact, or is this another case of policy somersault?” he said.

Even the People’s Democratic Party, the party whose 16 years at the helm of affairs in Aso Rock have often been described as the years of locusts and caterpillars, last December said Nigerians had become disillusioned over the failure of the Federal Government and the APC to deliver on their promises.

In a statement by Kola Ologbondiyan, its national publicity secretary, the PDP asked the ruling party not to issue any New Year message to Nigerians since they did not fulfill any of the promises contained in their previous messages since assumption of office.

“What else should Nigerians expect from a government that promised massive employments only to render 7.74 million Nigerians jobless between 2016 and September 2017; with combined unemployment and underemployment rate hitting 40.0% as declared by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS),” the PDP said.

“This is the same APC that promised to deliver Naira exchange at N1 to 1USD but ended up wrecking the currency from N160-N170 to a scandalous N350-N400; the same party and its government promised to reduce the price of fuel only for it to rise from where the PDP left it at N86.50 to N300-N400 per litre. What do we expect from a government that so devastated the economy in 2017 that Nigerians were forced to turn to Ponzi schemes like the Mavrodi Mundial Movement (MMM) for survival only for an estimated three million of them to lose about N18 billion in the process?” it said.

Amidst this litany of failed promises by not just the APC but the PDP and the political class as a whole, many Nigerians are craving for a new beginning.

Ogundana Michael Rotimi, in a column published in January 2018 said focusing and limiting the political spectrum to the APC and PDP is one of the reasons Nigerians have not realized that there are more than enough people in the society with the abilities to take the nation to a well-deserved height of greatness and excellence, but are not privileged because of the obsession with the APC and PDP.

“However, when we all, irrespective of differences, shift our attention beyond political parties and look beyond the present dominant political structures, every candidate will have an equal opportunity to be elected,” Rotimi said.

He said that for far too long Nigerians’ leadership choices had been influenced by religion, ethnicity, political affiliations and the likes, which have consistently failed to deliver the results.

“But now is the time to focus on the capacity, competence and character of whosoever is willing and ready to govern us than on any of those criteria,” he said.

 

ZEBULON AGOMUO, CHUKS OLUIGBO & MABEL DIMMA