ALL manners of experts have filled media spaces with their laudatory tales of how former Vice President Abubakar Atiku, and the former Governor of Lagos State Jagaban Borgu Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu won the tickets of their respective parties. Words have been thrown around to justify these victories that query the Nigerian’s appreciation of the past and cast doubt about any importance we attach to the future.
They have no qualms in ascribing the victories to “strategy, sagacity, critical thinking, networking, and political savoir faire”. These words have meanings.
A communal meaning of these words could not have associated them with how these bazaars dubbed primaries were conducted. What is the sagacity in out-spending others? What strategy prides itself in buying delegates? Does political savoir faire negate the basic fairness and justness these contests entail?
What are the duo promising Nigerians? How do they intend to recoup their expenses from an over-burdened economy that is under threats from insecurity, debts, corruption, and the philosophy that governments are self-serving? Should their expenditure on the primaries not be a concern?
There are other issues. Some would mention their age, health, as possible hindrances to what they intend to do to improve Nigeria. We are in such dire straits though most Nigerians believe anyone would be better than Buhari.
Atiku and Tinubu deserve their victories. Nigeria does not deserve them. They know it but their life ambition of ruling Nigeria is more important than the survival of Nigeria. Nothing counts. If they don’t become President they will keep running until they win.
So said Tinubu when he pledged to work with whoever won in the All Progressives Congress, APC. Atiku started running for the presidency in 1992 under the Social Democratic Party, SDP. He has been in every presidential race since 2007.
Their political sagacity got Nigeria into the nightmare administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. They have offered no apologies for the damage their support for Buhari, an extension of their ambitions, has done to Nigeria.
Sometimes you think they were oblivious of Buhari’s Nigeria and had arrived on a rescue mission. They lured millions of Nigerians into seeing Buhari as the answer whereas his administration has addressed none of the issues on which he stood to sell his worthiness as President. Are we celebrating rewarding them for procuring the hardships of the past seven years? We still complain about how challenging Nigeria has become in those years.
When some Nigerians talk you would think they are under a spell. How can we behave as if we are having parties for a duo who invented Nigeria’s paradise? What is wrong with us as a people?
Talks now centre on their competence, courage, experience, patriotism, and steadfastness. Assuming for a moment that these are values, how have they used them for Nigeria? Will they suddenly change from politics of self?
Alternatives are available. We have to explore them. Nothing says that their reward for hardships that they visited on us is to award them rights to dispense more hardships. They must know that we have not forgotten.
Successes and their fall outs impress us. We are not ready to subject the results to any meaning interrogation. It should challenge whatever is left of us as a people that Atiku and Tinubu are our best – with all they have done, all they have refused to do, and a lot more they will do for themselves.
Their priorities if elected would be to recover their investments with interests while Nigeria wallows in the accelerating consequences of their decision to gift the country to Buhari for eight years.
Finally…
NOW that the primary is over would the government attend to the secondary matter of the universities on strike? The ASUU strike has for months beclouded the future of the leaders of tomorrow. Government has no sustained interest on whether the universities are open or closed.
Read also: Atiku, Tinubu unveil economic agenda
PONZI schemes are back in fuller force under more guises. People should be careful with those mouth-watering investments that offer to double your investment within an hour.
IT was deliberate mischief to publish that passengers kidnapped in the Abuja-Kaduna train attack in March had been released. They are still held.
DOES anyone know the reason for the attack on St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo? Is it enough to name a group as responsible?
LAW and order have so degenerated that motorcycle riders readily fight security agencies trying to implement a government policy. We have really lost a lot of control.
WAS an official statement made on the attacks on some people who wanted to register in Lagos for the voter’s card? They were attacked because of their origins. The attacks have more damaging meaning for our fragile unity. Government should act, and decisively too.
.Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues
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