@deboadejugbe: More thoughts on stomach infrastructure and 2015 (Y! Politico)

by Debo Adejugbe

My mother, a woman who has toiled for the better part of 35 years in the civil service, will be retiring for good in few months. She shares this unique situation with a few other people that enlisted in the civil service in the same year she did and as a part of the government workforce, they surely look forward to their pension and gratuity that would be promptly paid for utilization for the right purposes. She lives and works in Ekiti state.

When it was time to vote, she critically weighed her options and came to the conclusion that such lofty dreams of promptly getting all her entitlements wasn’t feasible in the regime of the outgoing governor of the state and that was a major deal-breaker when she decided to vote for the first time in this republic. There are thousand others like her; some only crave their daily food and a guaranteed future without stress. They are artisans, the slightly educated, the businessmen whose businesses depends on the patronage of teachers and public servants; who were groaning of reduced wages on one excuse or the other from the government – all these people formed the nucleus of those that were expected to vote. These are different people with different considerations at such times.

They patterned their votes along personal lines; going for a slightly uncertain policy direction under a new government instead of sticking with the incumbent that they had concluded wouldn’t push their concerns to the top of his list. So, what should be our considerations when voting in the next election?

There is a short story told by Dr. Bill Newman, in his book “The Ten Laws of Leadership”, he tells us about an old Indian fable centered on a Mouse that is constantly distressed by its fear of cats. A magician who saw this problem helped turn it into a cat, to help assuage these fears. After the transformation, it became afraid of the dog. The magician once more turned it into a tiger hoping that would solve the problem permanently. It didn’t. In its form as a tiger, the hunter became the prevalent fear. Tired of the process and the new fears elicited, the magician said “Be a Mouse again. You only have the heart of a Mouse and I cannot help you.”

Nigerians are like the mouse described in that story. We have struggled for consistency in our demands for a better Nigeria. It is obvious there is no one way to do it right but one side has consistently knocked the other down because of the way they chose to do it (and vice versa). Take for example the call for people to vote their conscience and the vigorous excoriation of those same people for going with their conscience because their conscientious leaning does not necessarily align to what those admonishing them to go with their conscience envisaged it should be. I was previously in this group… castigating people for ‘voting GEJ and not PDP’.

The two stories above perfectly describe the Nigerian situation and the recent Ekiti government house debacle is a reminder that things are generally not what it seem in Nigeria. For long, the idea of a robust democracy – one that has a consistent and strong opposition – has been a mirage until the All Progressive Congress (APC) decided to damn all odds and announce a coalition that sent shivers down the spine of those at the helm of the country. The goodwill poured in and so many gains were recorded in the course of selling itself to the populace. Nigerians were truly elated that there is a party that truly places the common man as its theme. It was a new dawn and this author was one of those sucked into the euphoria of something distinctly different from the PDP.

As the days collapsed into weeks and it in turn rolled into months, the lines became blurry. The distinction some of us saw faded with each unique action from the new party. It dawned on us that we were too optimistic (and naïve, as some vocal foot-soldiers of APC branded us for expecting something distinctly different from the status quo). Things eventually became PDP/APC and the other parties. This is the obvious fact as Nigerians are now classified along the PDP, APC or the others, line. We really have come a long way but we have consistently taken a step forward, two steps backward in our quest for an all-encompassing democratic ethos that truly defines us.

With the advent of the unique, but risible, vocabulary of ‘stomach infrastructure’, we have turned a corner. We now have ‘ideological positions’ as put forward by each party where the PDP has rightly claimed for itself the ‘project stomach’ (as expanded). Derisive originally, the party took it in its stride and with a stroke of antagonistic genius; the APC provided them with a campaign theme that resonates with so many people. On the other hand, as the ever and over-lauded governor of Lagos state proposed in his multicourse menu a while back, his party is invested in ‘tangible infrastructure’ that will provide the framework for the next generation. These are the positions.

But then, Ekiti’s government house funding/loan brouhaha has brought to the fore the expanded version of Governor Fashola’s infrastructural postulation. Is it right to pump in so much borrowed money into a status-project meant for a few (you will agree with me that no ordinary Ekiti citizen would be housed in that paradise) while majority live in indescribable squalor? Is it reasonable for a state that is 35th in the revenue sharing ladder to compete with the government houses built by those at the top of that ladder? There are several questions that could be asked, but that is not the purpose of this article.

It is obvious these two major parties are the ones to slug it out in next year’s general election; what are the choices open to the electorates? As a matter of principle, I said no to the PDP at national level in 2011 and 2015 might not be any different. It is not because I have any intention of voting for the APC as I see them as a bad (and obviously inferior) imitation of the PDP. The considerations by people who haven’t decided yet would probably be: a review of the first story I told. They are in it for themselves and the power in the long run; it is not selfish to vote for the candidate/party that best satisfy your projected future. Letting anyone hoodwink you with the “we will bring down the sun and the moon” to pacify you is total BS.

Be selfish with your vote. Nigeria owes you that much. The days of “vote this way and be full of expectations” should be banished from us. That is the new theme I want to contribute to the 2015 debate. Nigerians need to understand that they owe nobody any explanation as to why they voted a certain way. That one vote is your divine right! For me, I’m looking towards 2019…

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Debo Adejugbe is a trained Telecommunications/Electronics Engineer, certified IT professional and FHI PEER educator living in Lagos. Tophi’s husband, Dad to Hailey and Ryan; he is an advocate against sexual and domestic abuses. Debo has political sympathy for the Labour Party.

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

One comment

  1. Nice one bro. Fayemi is celebrated by people outside the state, the people within knows what’s good for them

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