Without mincing words, Nigeria a country in West African sub-region , the most populous black nation on earth, “Giant of Africa”, with a population of over 180 million people, can be described as a time bomb ready to explode at any slightest opportunity. Why such hasty conclusion? one may ask. The reason is not far-fetched. The reason for the above description is in lieu of the manner in which policy makers, drivers of our economy and those who oversee our welfare treat the interest of the masses with reckless abandon. How can our present crop of leaders claim they are the best out of the 180 million people? Nigeria has continued to be a subject of laughter in the international arena. Last year 2017, our president stayed in London more than three months on health grounds, to a point that a CNN presenter used Nigeria as a question poser to a global audience when he asked which country’s President that had not stepped feet in his country for three months. Of course you can take the story up from there. Last week, our president dropped another bombshell.
Quoting Chukwudi Nwokoma an analyst, this time the youth were the victims of his vindictive assessment of his constituents as he practically said that “most” Nigerians below the age of thirty are uneducated and lazy, while expecting hand – outs from the government simply because we are oil – producing country. After watching him make the remark, I quickly flashed back and juxtaposed comments made by past presidents of this country in relation to the youth and discovered that there is no convergence between his remarks and those made by ex Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan in relation to the kind of youth Nigeria is blessed with. But instead of PMB’s media team and party to face the reality on ground, they quickly in their usual way of deceiving themselves and gullible Nigerians, submitted that PMB’s remark about Nigerian youth was politically twisted to incite the youth against the President.
And I ask, how long would this people continue to fool themselves in the name of fooling Nigerians? Yet in the face of clueless administration, high-handedness, clanishness, poor quality of life witnessed in the country and failure to heed the voices of reason by ex presidents of this country, we still hear that PMB is gunning for second tenure and that the twenty four All Progressives Congress Governors have endorsed his ambition. I have tried to understand the criteria for the endorsement by APC governors. Are they endorsing for their own selfish interests? Are they endorsing so that the looting spree among them will continue since the president is teleguided by a cabal? Are they endorsing in negation of the sufferings in the land orchestrated by their lack of administrative ideas and ideals ? Or are they endorsing because they do not have any better candidate to field in? Whatever is the basis for the endorsement, it must be in tandem with the views or expressions of the people about the administration.
The governors should not endorse because they want him and their party to remain in power and surpass the number of years the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) steered the ship of this country. With the way events have panned out since they came into power in 2015, it is obvious that they were not well prepared for governance, while their change mantra has remained a fluke and a propaganda machinery. I cannot agree less with political observers, that 2019 will be intriguing in the sense that the political awareness among spectators in the game is increasing tremendously and must be applauded while it will be a difficult year for the underperforming ones who must have been plotting their graph on how to woo and entice the electorate to vote for them who have equally resolved to collect their money and retire to their houses. The case of the Senator representing Kogi West, Senator Dino Maleye where he jumped out of a Police vehicle transporting him to Kogi State to answer for criminal charges and all that played out, is an indication that more drama and laughter await Nigeria.
Even in Nollywood, we have not watched the kind of movies that emanate from our political landscape since the APC administration came on board 2015. As we continue in our prayers for God to perfect his will for Nigeria, I join my voice with the voices of other well meaning Nigerians who have suffered in the hands of greedy politicians to implore us to vote wisely in 2019 in other to avoid the continued gnashing of teeth that we are in today.
