Elections happen in exactly a month’s time and I’m sure a lot of us who are going to vote have already made up our minds.
What’s going to happen in February is difficult to truly predict. Not just elections, I’m talking about the nature of the rhetoric that we’ll be fed via all forms of communication. We must be reminded that we are deciding our collective futures, not just for ourselves as individuals. Let me emphasise, if you think your vote and the candidate you support are simply predicated by what you stand to gain personally, you are not fully grasping the gravity of the situation. The workers you pay, the level of peace of mind, the schools the kids in the immediate environment your children play in, the quality of relationships you build on a day-to-day basis, the number of times you sigh when you have to click a gofundme link to donate for a friend or a stranger who is seeking aid to travel abroad for treatment. These are the things this next election will impact, directly or indirectly.
It is clear we have friends and family who are benefitting from the current political party in power or stand to gain from a potential victory by the main opposition, but we need to ask ourselves if the victory and comfort of the few outstrip the betterment of the larger society. We cannot continue to be content with simply seeing society at large decline while our colleagues and peers join the steady migration train and become comfortable with criticising the government from the comfort of their flats and condos in foreign countries.
I strongly feel it is important to vote for a candidate who isn’t surrounded on all sides by opportunists and vultures. It is of the most significance that we vote for a candidate who isn’t beholden to Caucasus and godfathers or ethnic or religious extremists. We want a leader who understands that Nigeria’s true resource is its people. Not oil and gas. We have experienced almost a decade of a government ignoring the youth, even going as far as shooting and maiming them. That is not a government or party that deserves our vote, and neither do we need to vote for a candidate who barely showed any significant presence or interest in the country during our most trying times. We were ruled from London for months in this current dispensation, I am not sure electing a president who rules from Dubai is a better alternative.
Again, if you think supporting a candidate because of proximity will give you juicy contracts or get you a sweet Special Assistant to Bolekaja, just know that as long as these people are simply in it for self-enrichment, we all will be served the proverbial breakfast. We all will continue to be unable to travel across state lines because of fear of kidnappers and herdsmen.
And if anyone comes to you talking about structure, let me tell you what a good rebuttal is; the structure they speak of is paid political hands. People in state wards and local areas who work for the party as long as they are being paid. Their interests change depending on the highest bidder. They are for candidate A today and for party C tomorrow. Thats what these people refer to when their argument is about structure. So ask yourself, is that the structure you want? There’s barely any evidence its presence has ever worked, it is simply an argument opportunists use to support their implied relevance.
