All over Nigeria, politicking is picking up steam ahead of the 2023 general elections to leave a country sorely crying out for intervention on the cusp of one – for good or for worse.
A tussle of titans.
In 2015, Nigerias political equation was irredeemably altered. With Mr. Goodluck Jonathans defeat in the general elections of that year, an incumbent president – the first among equals in an approximately 200-million strong country, and a political party that had boasted that it would rule for sixty – had tasted the bland ashes of defeat. It was an historic upset.
With the poor performance of the All Progressives Congress and the presence of the political juggernaut Mr. Atiku Abubakar as its presidential candidate in the elections next year, the Peoples Democratic Party can smell blood. With Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu as its candidate, the ruling All Progressives Congress believes it can consolidate its hold on power in Mr. Peter Obi, the undisputed choice of Nigerias anti-establishment spite of its illusory achievements. With the Labour Party sensing that young people, can spring a surprise, it has offered the visionary former Anambra Governor its platform. And he it was, the visionary, who recently alluded to the madness plaguing the occupants of Nigerias corridors of power.
In 2019, Mr. Peter Obi shared the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party with Mr. Atiku Abubakar, and he was his running mate. Then, both men went on a marathon in the maze of madness that Nigerian politics are.
When it became obvious that Mr. Obi was not going to get the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party because according to him and his supporters, the process was unbearably compromised in favour of some ideals he would never accommodate, he moved to the Labour Party where he has continued to diagnose the Nigerian predicament with the nous of not just one who has strutted some of the world`s greatest academic institutions, but with the experience of one whose time as Governor in Anambra State remains a reference point.
If Mr. Obi thinks that there are mad people in governance in Nigeria, many Nigerians would agree because save for few exceptions, the country has been run since 1999 as if it were a meeting of mad people.
Many moments of madness
If Mr. Obi spoke about Nigerians taking back their country from people who have no business being in power, he probably had in mind the many lunatics who have occupied public office in Nigeria, and the many times they allowed their lunacy to get the better of them.
That leadership has failed in Nigeria at many levels for many years lavishly tell the story of how badly Nigerians have repeatedly failed to get the right people into power. Many of those who have sailed into public office in Nigeria have betrayed themselves as accidents in the many moments of madness they have allowed to overshadow their rational selves.
A method in madness
But it would seem that there is method in the madness with which Nigeria has been visited across so many years by those who have purported to lead the country. It is not very easy to dismiss those who for many years have stolen Nigeria dry and fostered the dysfunction rampant in the country to feather their own nests.
This people are not as mad as Nigerians think they are, and in many ways, they represent the very problems Nigerians must confront as they head into next year`s elections.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
