•Tinubu
Politicians are fond of promising what they are not capable of doing. Given the gimmicks of politics, especially here in the third world where there is political poverty–by this, I mean where the masses are not politically enlightened–it has become a recurring issue for politicians and their party men to promise what cannot be done.
The situation in most nations of Africa, with particular reference to Nigeria, is pathetic. Politicians capitalise on the dysfunctional system to take advantage of people. Rather than concentrating on how they can make efforts to achieve the little contributions they can make, they prefer causing divisions and setting the people against one another using ethnicity and religion as a bait.
It has often been noted since the return of democracy in Nigeria that all the parties and their candidates at one point or the other have been “playing god”.
They promise what they cannot do and since accountability in leadership is alien to democracy in Africa, the political class always has its way.
The current ruling party came on board in 2015 with the impression of having the solution to the problem of Nigeria. Little did Nigerians know that it is clueless.
The previous eight years were a total waste and the current regime under the auspices of the same party has not backed down on the impression of ‘playing god’. They appear to have solution to all the problems Nigeria as a nation is facing. Their approach to finding solutions to the problem has no human face. Their policies are wholesale capitalism. They operate under the illusion of putting things right without having a structure to sustain it. No matter how laudable some of their economic policies may be, the critical areas of omission remains the structure to sustain the gains of whatever they envisaged.
Nigeria runs a government of individual ideas and up until now, the country is yet to have what some great nations call “common dream”. As long as this continues, it is a fruitless labour for any regime to promise a better future or tomorrow for anyone. The tomorrow they are promising is not within their reach if they cannot evolve the structure that will sustain that tomorrow.
To this end, I propose that the political leaders should: 1. Stop attempting to make the people suffer through their vicious policies all in the name of better tomorrow. Sacrifices from the masses will be supported if the future can be seen through a transparent structure with a constitutional backing.
2. Attempt only those things they are capable of doing and leave the rest for future leaders. Rome was not built in a day.
3. Attempt to lay a good foundation by injecting a lasting structure for future generations to build on through constitutional reviews.
4. Be ready to be accountable to the people on whatever project and programme they embark on.
5. Whatever project embarked upon must be completed before any regime can be allowed to hand over.
Knowing full well the Herculean task and demand of leadership, my appeal to the political class is to do the little they can and ensure that it becomes a legacy.
The masses must not be used as a means to an end but rather as ends in themselves. There is no regime that can solve all societal problems. Therefore, the current leadership of Nigeria should stop playing god by creating the impression that they can solve Nigeria’s problems at once.
It is the people that live that can enjoy the utopian future they are promising.
*Professor Aderibigbe is of the Federal University of Technology (FUTA), Akure, Ondo State.
