Crusaderhotnews
In Nigeria Politics, Politicians have no idea of what the time is. They muster courage to continue to remain in power and dictates the scheme of things even when their body refuses to comply with the trends.
On Saturday February 23, 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari comfortably secured a second term as Nigeria's president, according to official results.
The 76-year-old, of the All Progressive Congress (APC) party, won 56 percent of the votes, compared with 41 percent for his top rival Atiku Abubakar, the candidate for the People's Democratic Party (PDP).
Following the electoral commission's announcement on Wednesday, Abubakar rejected the result as "the implementation of grand theft of the people's will" and said next steps would be revealed shortly.
At the end of a long electoral process that was hit by a last-minute weeklong postponement, delays in the opening of polling stations and instances of violence.
Nigeria's political system, and the challenges ahead had credibility issues arising from the just-concluded elections.
At some point, there was an epiphany when it became clear that the rate of poverty in this country, the rate of population growth, the rate of unemployment, were all heading towards a social cataclysm in the years ahead if the trajectory was not broken now.
In the past 20 years of our democratic experience, we have only gotten poorer and most take, has attributed it to some stuff of age of our leaders.
Some have argued that what can take Nigeria into the 21st century as a modern and prosperous nation is a visionary, competent and technocratic leader.
But the democratic legitimacy that is conferred by being elected at the ballot box is the deciding factor of the progress or lack of progress of any country.
But Nigeria still has this issue of the electorate voting along party lines and not really about the manifesto of candidates.
Many will agree that It is the lack of political education, which campaigns really should be all about.
Campaign process of political education should be topmost priorities in educating the people away from habits that have been ingrained over the past 20 years.
Another factor is the fact that there are too many people who are poor and hungry and for them, the immediate need is for survival in the moment; they don't have time for the fine luxuries of electing a good and competent leader, they are just looking for somebody who can give them food today.
Right now, [the people] should see the vision as they are and be sympathetic to it but clearly, they are not just ready to act.
Most people who could have voted for other party decided ultimately to vote for the PDP because the overriding priority was for them to defeat Buhari. They asked themselves, who can defeat Buhari?
In their view, it was only the PDP because it was an old, established structure, but then they don't realise these are the very same people who have contributed together with the APC to bringing us to where we are today.
They do not have the sophistication of making that distinction - it was just anybody but Buhari.
Before 2023, Nigerians must think out of the box and make a distinction over the age syndrome. Nothing though really wrong if a grand pa wins election. But it is and will be unacceptable to continue in apathy to reelect unproductive individuals to lead in this context.
I believe that a number of practical factors will be more in our favour than the situation today - 2019 is the last grasp of the old order. It should be by all estimation the last grasp of the Aged political hangouts
By the way, the election is not yet over. We are still not sure who has won. The process itself has so many problems of credibility that we have to see whether it will survive all kinds of possible challenges, judicial or otherwise.
A lot of votes were stolen - stolen by rigging, stolen by voters suppression, stolen by vote-buying by the two big parties, the APC and the PDP.
I believe the two of them were rigging the election and it's possible that one might out-rig the other and have victory declared for it.
Clearly, a lot of votes were stolen so that means that this election had serious credibility problems and everybody is complaining about it.
Some Critics say that rigging has become more enshrined in the system over the years.
Part of our planning for 2023, if we were to hold another election as Nigerians again, is to learn the lessons from 2019, including the question of rigging, vote buying.
We now have four years to begin to educate our people, to strengthen our political structures across the 774 local government areas - and who knows, time could meet opportunity.
The problem is that Nigeria hasn't gotten to the point of voting for people for positive reasons; instead, they vote against them.
They don't care very much who they vote for. That has to change.
Jointly, we must fade out the old brigades from the political structure and perhaps consider the ages of individual interest during elections.
This election saw a campaign for bigger youth inclusion in politics and must be sustained. The time is up for oder generations.
What we refer to as old is not [necessarily] the numerical age because somebody who is 60 is not old by any definition - he's mature but not old.
What's more important is not their physical age, it's the age of their ideas. That's [what we mean] when we talk about old and new.
People may have a higher numerical age but they can still be in tune with new ideas about leadership, transparency and governance.
In this context, when we refer to 'old people' we mean that they represent a certain tendency, a certain habit that has been formed over the past 20 years
It is those habits and tendencies and pattern of thinking that we reject completely.
It's about the way people think and mislead a nation that is the issue.
0 Comments