by Ralph Egbu

They are not quarrelling over roads,  education, how to fight the world’s  economic wars or better still, how to make our nation a contributor nation. They are rather ready to destroy the rest of us over which group and zone takes control of wanton allocation and  discredited “values”

Some teachers when they teach these days say all human beings have eyes but not all eyes can see. When they say this, they make it quite clear that they are not talking about those who are clinically blind but those who have very functional physical eyes. For those who can see beyond the limits of the physical, 2015 is already here with us. Features often associated with the period are here already with us. As is usual with our political character, the atmosphere is indeed unduly very charged, and the intrigues very deadly and destabilizing.

Let me clarify one thing before we proceed. I am one of those who strongly believe that political activities to the next elections should start early, in fact, many years before the actual show. We are afraid to start early because of our negative style of holding the wrong end of everything. Our politics and the intrigues that accompany  it  have nothing whatever to do with politics of real issues and development. In place of politics of development we have successfully enthroned politics of personalities and patronage. Because it’s not development driven, it opens the space to all manner of actions containing mainly the seed of abuses, cleaving to primordial sentiment of ethnicity, religion and of narrow group interest. This is why the game of politics that should naturally produce joy and optimism, provoke instead deep cynicism, fear and actual destruction. Raise your head under this satanic climate,  especially when you are decent and visionary, it will be chopped off in the most despicable manner by those whose hearts and conscience have long been sired with hot iron by the devil. Unfortunately, they are many in our clime. These and more are the reasons all of us fear kick-starting political activities very early.

In places that cherish positive growth and development, you know the possible aspirants more than four years ahead. If they are in lower power positions, they tell you where they are going by the contributions they make in virtually all issues and the kind of achievements they try to post. If they are not holding positions, they undertake the task of moving into places and groups to espouse their vision and what they see of the issue(s) of the day and what the right way forward should be from their knowledge. This way,  before elections, the electorate already know who they are and what they represent.

Contrast that with what we see happening here even now. In our nation currently, most aspirants appear from nowhere on the eve of elections, not because they harbor great vision or have the benefit of distinguished antecedence but because they have money and inherent ability for great nuance and have at their instance a system that has neither rules, procedures nor precedence. Few years back, precisely in 2007, the same group of political players taking this nation to the brink, hailed American election that produced President Barack Obama. I recall reading and hearing many of them say they would work to ensure our nation follows suit. I have been asking my friends if from what we see, if Obama were to be a Nigerian, would he see the space of nursing an ambition let alone going through party primaries and then winning a national election? From the few party primaries we have witnessed, would it not be correct to conclude that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a good man with great vision to go through the primaries of any of our parties? The party controlling the central government – the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)- could not organize simple party primary in Anambra and the alternative as we have been told; the All Progressives Congress in its peculiar case first got the answer before trying to discover the process that could lead to the answer. I don’t want to talk about All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) that embarked on a curious kind of disqualification to enable it arrive at a predetermined choice.

Before now, I had predicted in this column that rebellious elements in the PDP would not fancy the APC. From what we see, that prediction has come out dead on target. I applauded the coming of APC and said it can only stand if it carried from day one indices of ideological freshness and disposition. This bent should be seen in its programmes which should tilt   a little towards welfarism and how it intends to solve  national problems. It would not matter so much who the messenger(s) is, after-all very effective societal changes in history were executed by agents who knew the inner recesses of the palaces. From my estimation, APC is missing the point and yielding the political space to those they desire to change. Not knowing the times and seasons, a cardinal instrument in politics, they have left the PDP to act and fuel the false belief that everything about PDP is about Nigeria. It is a dangerous presupposition which ought not to be allowed to blossom. Unfortunately, that is the scenario we have on our hands and it is burgeoning.

For the PDP, the truth is that it is passing through a convulsion, a disease that is self-inflicted. What is happening there is no crisis but a squabble. I hold this position because the “struggles” I see there, besides being unnecessary have nothing to do with issues of development. They are not quarrelling over roads,  education, how to fight the world’s  economic wars or better still, how to make our nation a contributor nation. They are rather ready to destroy the rest of us over which group and zone takes control of wanton allocation and  discredited “values”. That is all there is to it. The dirty struggles there have confirmed that zoning is more important than industrialization and jump starting the economy. This is most regretful. For those who like compiling lists of who is a tribalist or not, this period appears the fertile season for such an exercise, if actually it has meaning.

I am sorry for this nation and for the millions of citizens God sent here. My sympathies go for them, because this is one nation I have seen where successive leadership class take delight in repeating old mistakes. It is one society where the massive levels of suffering we see daily from which thousands die daily never move us to attempt to do things differently. Perhaps my assuming this disposition may be stupid, after I have heard countless leaders tell me that compassion is never part of great leadership. By now, I expect our leadership class to be sober and very reflective, using occasions of the approach of crucial elections to ask very pertinent questions about our development process.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.