Politics without bitterness

A few months ago I wrote an article with this title the above title. In that article I acknowledge the original author of the title, Waziri Ibrahim of the then Great Nigeria Peoples Party (GNPP), who after his exit from the then Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP) maintained he would play politics without bitterness. He never antagonized those who frustrated him out of the NPP; he was contented with producing Muhammadu Goni as the governor of the defunct Gongola State. This state continued until Gen. Muhammadu Buhari seized power on 31st December, 1983.

With the conclusion of the parties’ primaries, especially those of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), the battle line is now clear with the emergence of the governorship and presidential candidates across the country. It has is now time to call on all the participants to bear in mind that what Nigerians need is the politics of issue and not of ethnicity or religion. We are looking at who can give us security, electricity and water; the leader who can make it easy for us to put food on our tables, the leader who can rebuild the battered image of Nigeria and Nigerians and rescue our naira. One remembers with nostalgia that at a time a dollar exchanged for 75k while a British pound exchanged for N1.25k.

Right from the First Republic, the country has been battling with the issue of corruption. Those who overthrew the first elected government promised that they would stamp out the hydra-headed monster. But for 48 years later, no leader has been able to save the country. Rather, the rate of corruption seems to heighten with every change of government, whether by the bullet or by the ballot box, except perhaps for the 20 months of General Buhari’s leadership. But that government did not last long enough to enable Nigerians evaluate the anti-corruption crusade. All we have had are successive governments that have seemed to be competing with their predecessors over who should be more corrupt. As a result, the ordinary citizen cannot have electric light in his rented apartment, the small businessman cannot have power to power his equipment, the artisan cannot work because of lack of power, and our educational institutions cannot carry out meaningful research because the funds allocated have been frittered away. It is no longer fashionable to parade certificates from Nigerian academic institutions as the standard of education has fallen ridiculously. In fact, rich Nigerians no longer believe in the country’s educational system, hence they send their children to other countries to acquire foreign certificates and come back to work in Nigeria as expatriates.

President Jonathan should no longer tell us he had no shoes. Nigerians have bought him enough shoes to enable him work effectively. If elected, he should rise up to the challenges of leadership and justify the people’s confidence in him. He should never allow himself to be seen as a “schoolboy”, to borrow Tam David-West’s expression.

On his part, Buhari should be reminded that he is not going to be president to dead people if elected. He may wish to recall his statement in the early morning of January 1984, that “we have no other country than Nigeria, and we must salvage it together”.  We do not need the “monkey and baboon” to soak in their blood. Otherwise, the general-turned-president will not have anybody to govern. Following the recent utterances of Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, the current governor of Rivers State, the APC must assure Nigerians that their interest is not to govern at all costs or to capture and appropriate the wealth of the nation to themselves and their cronies; that, truly, they are not driven by personal ambition, as Buhari said in his address at their party primaries convention.

The parties and their candidates must know that the country is bigger than anybody or group’s ambition. They must not allow the negative prophecies of the other countries (that Nigeria will disintegrate in 2015) to come true. Nigeria already has too many problems to grapple with, and the cooperation of everybody is needed to salvage it. Nobody or section of the country should see the country’s leadership as their birthright. Let there be politics without bitterness.

Uwadilachi I. Ijioma