Nigeria’s 2015 Election Plans: Setting the stage for a giant leap or settling for another arranged loveless marriage?

Had things gone as initially published, Nigerians would have headed to the polls on February 14, 2015, to elect the nations’ next president. The election plans have been moved further back, but since this piece was completed hours before the election date was moved, the hope is that you will still find the premise contextually relevant. One cannot clearly tell whether it was by coincidence or by design that the election was initially scheduled to hold on Valentine’s Day, the globally celebrated lovers’ day, but we’ll take the connection as a good omen. We want to. There is love in the equation of the day, and Nigeria badly needs a love story now. Can you see why?

For far too long, Nigeria’s stewardship story has been so ridiculously ill-dramatized that it is mirroring that familiar Shakespearean allusion to the “poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” You know the story right?

You remember that tale said to be told by an idiot and tersely summarized as a story full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. Everywhere you go, you are likely to find Nigerians arguing their voices hoarse on whether it is Jonathan or Buhari that must win the election, or else… But ask why the result should go one way or the other and here is what comes through. You immediately begin to see that people are too jaded to have given their preferences more than just jaundiced surface considerations. Nigerians have been served so badly by their leadership class that they would quickly plunge into trance-like squabbles on who must win the election, even if they were offered the choice of a deer or a cat as the two candidates on the ballot.

Given the above reality, candidates are hardly ever challenged to articulate their vision for the country with specificity and sense of mission. Just as confounding, there seems to be no enduring public urge to robustly audit for credibility and cerebral horsepower as part of the requirements for hiring for easily the most important job in Nigeria, if not in Africa. This is akin to hiring for a very important job without laying out the job description, and without calling for resumes and conducting job interviews. The nothingness of Nigeria’s stewardship story has become that uninspiring. In fact, the story has for long largely been about:

• The cookie jar tale of ‘who pilfered what public funds?’ from oil proceeds to pension funds
• See-nothing-hear-nothing despicable acts of abuse, and more recently, terrorism – and the lack of transparency and resolve in dealing with the double whammy state of emergency
• Endless and often rancorous political missteps and somersaults

It is perhaps for these and similar reasons that Nigeria’s stewardship story has been so misty that the fact that it lacks directional traction is no longer newsworthy. Under the stated atmosphere, love has become a scarce commodity in Nigeria’s existential instinct, whether love of country or love of neighbor. Before we dig any deeper into the challenge, however, let us first acknowledge that whatever Nigerians do with the next elections stands to set the stage for how the country must play thereafter in a globalized world. In view of this, we must now take a slight detour and travel some already fairly well charted waters of global politics.

Here is the point; Nigeria will not play the global game unless it fields a winning team. And it cannot field a winning team if it elects clueless captains. The question to ask therefore is whether or not Nigeria is ready, or at least relentlessly preparing to play as an adult nation in global affairs. The coming elections stand to accentuate the idea of a culture of nothingness if it does not ready Nigeria for greater things. Put another way, without some collective upgrading of the importance of governance to Nigeria’s corporate readiness for 21st century nationhood, the coming elections will amount to another hollow ritual in the worship of recklessness. Here is why.

In this era of people-centered governance and transparency, it is not that difficult to make convincing predictions about any country on the question of elections, electoral candidates, and election results. For one thing, it is well understood today that mere vote casting does not amount to a viable democracy. In fact, by looking at how a nation’s political parties arrive at what candidates run for elections, it is fairly easy to tell whether a country’s compass is pointed towards a bright and socially fluent future or stuck in the stagnant muddy waters of tacit ineptness. If ineptness is the verdict, then the nation itself has been sold short to those most unlikely to raise a sweat for the love of country, let alone care about its least empowered citizens. The clearest signals which way a country is headed can be gleaned from the following:

• Who are the candidates for elections and how and why are they the ones on the ballot?
• What are the credentials of the candidates – in other words, why do they qualify to run now?
• What defines the operational quality of the institutions and processes over which these leaders have once presided, or now seek to preside – in other words, if you had delivered dastardly unimpressive results in the past, why are you now qualified as ‘the first among the pack’? How on God’s earth are you the remedy to the mess you either created entirely on your own, or played an integral part in creating? Isn’t there something pathologically problematic here?
• If you have occupied a position of trust in the past, what testimonials from the public proclaim that you delivered acceptable returns to citizens on account of your stewardship?
• Where do these wannabe leaders rank on the global scale of leadership and accountability?

It should be obvious from the foregoing that with regard to leadership credentials, Nigerians need to lean less on paper diplomas and ‘been there, done that’ rhetoric. Where rubber meets the road is in solid and measurable accomplishments that make, or point to the potential to make, a notable difference to national renewal and citizen socioeconomic empowerment. Think of things like the overall quality of life beyond capital city highbrow districts, the education of the young and the motivations for their teachers, healthcare, employment opportunities, rule of law, etc. These are the clearly bankable leadership accomplishments that raise citizens up and put nations on the global list of countries to reckon with.

Sample a cross section of Nigerians across the national space and you may be surprised that the results they expect from their leaders are no different from what citizens of the most advanced countries of the world expect; service above self. While this is as it should be, it remains impossible to exaggerate the fact that Nigerians have zero faith in the odds of their leadership class putting the nation and welfare of citizens first. Sample Nigerians abroad, if you will, and the results are clearly similar. Specifically, Nigerians cherish the hopes of a nation:

• Where the provision of utilities like electricity and water supply is not elevated to the realm of unattainable dreams.
• Where peaceful political campaigns are not welcomed with hailstorms of stones and machetes and gunfire in some archaic tale of North-South, East-West misspent tribal energies. The reality here is a cocktail of greed and shortsightedness woven at great cost to the citizenry by players whose aim is to see themselves in control of the country’s resources, largely for their own personal gains.
• Where healthcare investment is not neglected for the reason that ‘leaders’ and the ‘elite’ can routinely hop abroad for publicly sponsored medical checkups. Destination countries range from South Africa to India, and wherever else money can buy in foreign lands that which ‘love of country and neighbor’ should have spurred these same people to create at home, for the benefit of all and at a much lower cost.
• Where university professors seeking basic encouragement are not belittled and left to languish on strike for the better part of a full academic year, largely because political leaders educate their own children elsewhere, from Ghana to the United Kingdom, and from Australia to the United States. Mind you, we are talking about a country that was once the preferred destination for education for the whole of Africa.
• Where citizens do not have to spend more on privately owned electricity generating sets than it would cost should love of country instruct their government to make the provision of uninterrupted electricity a nonnegotiable national priority. Beyond the immediate out-of-pocket cost of buying and running millions of electricity generating sets, try imagining the resulting environmental and health costs.
• Where huge public funds do not disappear repeatedly, storied to sleep with tall tales from the overused playbook of ‘seeing and hearing no evil’ while iniquity ravages the land.
• Where love of country and empathy for neighbor drive good policies and unequivocally police the excesses of privilege.

The list is a lot longer but who is counting? What is amply clear now is that for Nigeria as it stands today, status quo has become both dangerous and outrageously expensive. And if the outdated playbook remains Nigeria’s leadership reference manual, the obstacles to the country’s emancipation will only continue to calcify. The question that counts today is no longer who wins what election but how the country wins beyond feverish political campaigns and votes cast on the altar of unadulterated gullibility. As is well documented, the game of individual winners and losers in Nigeria’s politics and governance has only served largely to fuel corruption, enthrone mediocrity, celebrate under-performance and institutionalize half measures. With no signs today that essential lessons have been learned, the vital question for Nigeria now is when? ‘WHEN WILL THE BLEEDING CEASE’?

Who will stop Nigeria’s protracted socioeconomic hemorrhaging? Has either Jonathan or Buhari earned the standing to take Nigeria to the Promised Land, or should their parties go back to the drawing board? If the two gentlemen represent the caliber of leaders Nigeria needs in this age of Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Narendra Modi, where are their blueprints and road maps? Nigerians need to review these for substance, and they need to ask hard questions before they vote? The goal ought to be for strong handshakes with proven goal-getters able to reverse Nigeria’s arrested development saga. This is the only reason Nigerians should be signing off for any candidate seeking political office, more so one looking to become both Nigeria’s leadership draftsman and chief public relations officer in a globalized world.

If Nigeria continues to bleed after the elections, the mafia dons would have won again. Here, whether it is Jonathan that holds on to the captain’s seat or Buhari that jumps back in to pilot Nigeria’s ship of state, Nigerians must brace for a continuing bumpy ride in a porously leaking and loveless boat. While, in the classic Nigerian style, the ‘winners’ would have earned the bragging privilege to pop imported champagne and marshal themselves and their key lieutenants into the club of the stupendously wealthy, Nigerians will remain unlikely to get a break on their most fervent wishes.

Will Nigerians lay the foundation for achieving their most modest wishes for their fatherland after they vote in the coming elections? Will their votes coalesce to herald a bold giant step into the future of possibility and progress, or sum up to another coin-toss throwback to the sad past? Can you predict what is likely to happen?

Let us wrestle this down in coming pre-election Light-Trail segments.

---

Call to ACTION for our readers!

• Please share your thoughts in the COMMENTS section below. Your ideas matter for the Nigeria of your vision.
• To follow light-trail, please click the follow link of the right lower end of the screen!