Regular readers of the Nigerian Guardian Newspaper over the last five years of more would know that I used to write here, now and again.
I used to do so because I have been here during the most important ebbing years of the colonial era, lived significantly all over the then Nigerian political regions, had first-hand experiential knowledge of these, as well as obtained my education by the courtesy of the religious missionaries as well as the Nigerian government, as funded from the public purse.
I did such writing also because I understand politics as the science and the art of individual and group relationships, that allow the person or group to inform and influence decision-making for the common good. It may even involve the accessing of the power to make these decisions by one’s self or the group, but always for the common good.
Political discuss is both a moral and a spiritual responsibility for every adult in the given community or polity – family, general neighbourhood, faith community, work place, everywhere. Those who fail to do so will surely answer for it on this our so well spoken about last fay! Therefore politics in itself ought to be non-partisan. It ought to be, because once it becomes partisan, the ‘common good’ disappears from it and gets replaced by the partisan and increasingly selfish interest of the individuals or people involved in it – the very opposite of the inherent purpose of politics!
However, a-partisan politics remains possible anywhere only at the local community or local government level. People who are of any common good values are usually well known already in that constituency for those same reasons. So, they do not need any parties to be campaigning for them for any elections therein. All they need to do is to express their interest in serving the people as such.
If they start to do so early, over time as they grow in it, they would also have no need for a political party to present them at the other two higher levels of politics as those would have heard of him or be influenced by their actions, otherwise. However, this will not be so at the regional/state or national levels of governance; and political parties become inevitable for these reasons.
Yet, in order to remain good politicians, such party members must remain bi- or multi-partisan in their involvements there. They do not necessarily favour or vote for the positions taken by their political parties, if these are of lesser ‘common good’ than any other position taken by another persons or parties. It is on the basis of this proper and a-partisan political discussion that I had been writing in this Guardian newspaper; among a few other reasons.
However, my last publication here was on the January 16, 2023. It was on the subject of “the pillars of Nigeria’s systemic corruption”. I will like to request anybody who may desire, to source for the article electronically – to see how what was said there has been what we did as a country ever since then! I stopped writing here, as well as in the four other Nigerian Newspapers that I from time to time send articles to. I did so because it was obvious to me at that time that the people we were writing for had no interest in doing any other thing than to maximise those corruptions. So, you may ask, why have I decided to resume writing again?
The answer to that is as simple as ABC. Having gone the way that we have gone in the last one year, a few people have seen that such continuing corruption is not the way to go! Then a few may ask, but our most dear Buhari and the mafia that used him was (were) doing that for eight full years and we were clapping for him/them and nothing happened; and many are still presenting him as the best thing that happened to Nigeria! Yes indeed, that is true.
But the Good Lord our God that allowed that to happen knew what he was doing. I will like to bet anyone in Nigeria today that much as that posture may still be palpable in the country, a lot more people are beginning to appreciate that we may not leave ourselves to such fooleries for much longer. So, it is time to start talking or educating such people again. And I dare to say that such people are not few!
One of the reasons that the PDP and the APC up to the Buhari two terms at governing, or rather ruling, us with such unprecedented corruption was because they managed to achieve a government with no reasonable, to talk less of a healthy opposition. The PDP did that before them, only that the APC would seem to be doing it better than them! It is only under such conditions that corruption thrives.
The present government may try to do so, most ignorantly and has been recorded to have been trying to do so. They do so in the fake name of “unity” or “patriotism”! But that is the height of ignorance of real politics.
The best thing that ever happened to any partisanly politically governed country, is to have a positive and very healthy opposition! The people who provide such healthy and effective “political opposition” are usually some of the most patriotic people in such a country. They provide alternative views of governance to the ruling party which if they are not corrupt or very foolish indeed, it will be in their true political interest to examine, accept wholesale or partially (instead of their own original ideas) and implement those properly to their very own credit. That is the supreme value of a healthy and effective partisan political opposition.
Because of this supreme value, I believe that reasonable Nigerians must indeed be praying and working for a true, healthy and partisan political opposition for every government that they have at every level of governance in this country – local, state or national. They should not try to pray or to wish it away’ for such will amount to the continuing promotion of the present and long going states of autocracy, impunity, corruption and retrogression, that we have been in since the late 1966.
The other reasons that I went on holidays from writing here or else will be the item of discussion for some other day, surely. Until then, as life remains with us, let us thank God for the quiet revolution that is already taking place in this country, whether we see it or not. Let us also thank Him for the people that He is using on all the sides of the lethal divides in this country that have brought and kept us in the present miseries. For as it is said, it usually gets darkest shortly before dawn. May it be so for our dear country Nigeria! Amen.
