SIR: The greatest evidence of hypocrisy and lack of principle on the part of Nigeria’s politicians is their propensity to cross carpet without batting any eyelid. To start with, political parties in Nigeria are always without any clear-cut ideologies to properly differentiate them from one another.
What usually happens is just few knowledgeable party faithful being saddled with the task of putting pen to paper and coming up just with something that may provoke a popular appeal by the electorate.
Campaigns are then begun with pledges and promises the campaigners themselves are fully aware would neither be achieved nor implemented. Incumbent governments are projected as evil while the opposition would want itself seen as the liberator and saints out to rescue the masses from continued slavery or suffering.
At the time the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) held sway in Nigeria, other parties went into several coalitions aimed at wrestling power from the ruling party which was portrayed as being run by an autopilot.
Several attempts at capturing power from the PDP failed until the terrorism in the North East went out of its bound in the unfortunate story of the Chibok girls which brought about a general disenchantment with the ruling party and then an opportunity for the electorate to say enough was enough.
Now with the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the saddle of governance for more than 10 years, it is now clear to Nigerians that both the incumbent government and the party it ousted are just either six or half dozen. It is probably only in Nigeria that politics is played as a full profession and so whenever a party is defeated in any election, members of the other parties are totally confused and dislodged and their next move would always be to cross carpet to the ruling party in order to be part of the action.
The APC came into power under the mantra of Change coupled with the so-called integrity of the party’s flag bearer at the time. The pledge then was to rescue Nigeria from the reign of total plunder of the locust as the ousted patty was painted. There were promises to name and shame all those behind the national stagnancy with a view to bringing them to book and discourage corruption in all its ramifications.
True to the pledge, the next few months of the swearing-in of the new government brought forward some names connected with sharing among themselves of large fund earmarked to procure the gadgets meant to fight terrorism.
As the masses waited with bated breath to see whatever would become of the probes, cross carpeting started in a full swing and almost all the key members of the ousted patty soon joined the new government. A spanner was thus thrown into the machinery of the activated fight against corruption and the idea of naming and shaming was stylishly jettisoned while the new regime itself began its own plunder of the state under a leader that was more of a mere onlooker and who ended performing worse than the party he ousted.
Now with a government which has assumed power since 2023 making frantic efforts to change the course of things in the positive direction, mass cross carpeting from all the various parties to the ruling party has begun once again.
As a matter of fact, unless the current trend is urgently halted, the biggest fear now is the tendency of Nigeria becoming a one-party state with all its attendant problems. If and when that happens and Nigeria ceases to have a virile opposition, the nation must have hit an irredeemable cul-de-sac.
