They have been given too many opportunities to lead Nigeria right. But look where we are today? Since 1999, this country has been flailing about, lurching from one disaster to another mediocrity. Today, that mediocrity, under achievement and underperformance defines an otherwise great nation, Nigeria. We have spent untold trillions trying to fix electricity, roads and other mundane issues that other countries have since taken for granted. We have not been able to produce anything from scratch as a people. Between these two parties, they wrecked the nation. Yet people who should keep quiet in remorse, having eaten the future of the children of Nigeria regularly mount the rostrum and lecture the rest of us! Look at education.
These two parties have been raping Nigeria in an unending sick financial and mental orgy since 1999. The problems that the politicians promised to solve since 1999 when the military left, have only metastasized. From less than 6 million in 1999, the number of out-of-school children (mostly boys who carry bowls all over the place begging for an existence) has climbed to 13.5million by government estimates. A governor, Mr Ganduje, who claimed in 2017 that there were at least 3 million of such children in his state alone, now says they are 300,000. What has Kano done to reduce these numbers? Nothing. All over the country, we churn out graduates that have not been properly trained, but who excel only in dogma (repetition of other people’s ideas). We haven’t challenged our children to take this country over, simply because we cannot bear to see them excel.
Our understanding of life is to live our own lives to the fullest, and eat the future of our children. Whether we are talking about health, education, security, the environment or any other index that makes life livable for citizens, Nigeria has only regressed since 1999. When there was an election that paved way for an opposition party to come in at the national level in 2015, many rejoiced. But these ones have proven to be worse – in corruption, nepotism, distraction, manipulation, mediocrity, disdain for the rule of law, and what have you. So what is the use of these two political parties? What is their benefit to Nigeria since they have no plans for our future? It is easy to focus on the present and neglect the bigger picture. It is true that the All Progressives Congress (APC) government has deliberately gone after other arms of government and destroyed institution in brazen displays of arrogance.
The party supervened, over the midnight, raids of judges’ house, DSS invasion and violation of the courts, and the international embarrassment that was the political removal of a Chief Justice of the Federation. It is true that they have lied over and over, deceived the people, usurped our freedoms and sold us into slavery through their dalliances with their foreign friends. Nigeria presently owes close to $90 billion and they have vowed to take even more, and never to look inwards to see what we could do to finance and build our projects. It is true that the APC government has never bothered to work on the unity of this nation.
They rode in by dividing the people, they can only sustain themselves by continuing to divide the people. There are no nationalists on the horizon right now. No elder statesman or woman who is painting for us a vivid picture of why this country is great together, or working to ensure the justice and equity upon which peace will be established. What we have is self-obsession, then tribal and religious politics. The president sees nothing wrong in granting a presidential jet to his daughter. He travels all over the world with huge entourages at our expense, treating himself in foreign hospitals while telling us lesser mortals to stay and die in the dysfunction that is Nigeria.
He sends all his children to university abroad while asking others to pull their children back into schools into which he has not invested anything. The definition of hypocrisy and phoney-ness couldn’t have been clearer. Ministers now draft their children as special advisers and assistants and draw freely on the taxes of those of us struggling to provide value through our little businesses, to largesse because a politics of superiority and winner-takes-all is at play.
