Our politicians in the ruling party have failed us. And God will address their matter. But before that divine judgment must come the judgment of the people. It is your responsibility as opposition politician to deliver this well-deserved judgment on behalf of the good and oppressed people of this country.

Your status as opposition politician is attained upon the loss of an election or political post whether or not that post was secured through the ruling party. It is evil for anyone to point to your past and say that you once enjoyed the largesse of the ruling party. What matters is that God has, through your political loss, shown you the light and led you to the honorable path of opposition. Loss of, or failure to secure political office does not an opposition politician make. What completes you as an opposition politician who has lost out in politics is the righteous anger against all the unholy things going on in the government you cannot be a part of. There are some who lose out and take the shameful path of hanging around the corridors of power, placing full-page, full-color pro-government ads in the papers, congratulating every politician in power, commiserating with every serving politician whose grandmother has died. Some even go as far digging up some dead relative of someone in power to do a 10th year remembrance ad. God forbid that you disgrace yourself like this for political power.

First thing to do is to change political party. You cannot remain in the ruling party and be successful as an opposition politician. Our ruling party does not take kindly to dissidents. They destroy all who try. Look at that small man in the House of Representatives who was trying to be an opposition leader and how they used bribe money to smear and truncate his hustle. So, you must decamp. It may be in a colorful well attended ceremony where the opposition leaders will welcome you and your supporters in front of cameras or through a press release. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that people know you now have nothing to do with the evil big party.

As opposition politician, you need a platform. You must remain in the consciousness of the people especially now that losing elections has led you to the glorious and honorable path of opposition. Try Twitter. People don’t realize how powerful it is. You can from the comfort of your room rouse thousands of followers to the holy task of insulting the government. Otherwise, with some ‘brown envelopes’ you can have journalists who will always run your story and give you interviews. If you use Twitter you need a lot of followers. Followers are the key to your success. It is they who will make sure your thoughts get retweeted to the ends of the earth. How do you get followers? I have only about a thousand, so Malam Nasir El Rufai, a ‘certified ruffler of feathers’ who has over a hundred thousand followers is in a better position to give advice on how to grow your Twitter fan base. Don’t say I sent you.

Your job as opposition politician is not difficult. Our country is run like a circus- a lot of what goes on beggars belief. Where else for example will two different security agencies arrest two different sets of suspects who all ‘confess’ to the same crime. Or a government official who will brazenly budget 1.2million for a facebook account? All you need to do is buy newspapers and follow news reports on Facebook and Twitter. If it is not the President asking us to pray about problems that he needs to solve himself, it is him allocating one billion to the Villa for food. Just tweet it and your thousands of followers will retweet it, adding the necessary insult to injury.

Attack those who disagree with you. Because the opposition should be, like the customer, always right. Those who question your motives or ideas are enemies of progress and agents of the ruling party. They must be denounced. There can be no opposition to the opposition.

You must understand that the only way you can achieve change as an opposition politician is by running for office or getting a political appointment. There is no need to do anything selfless like what Al Gore, who instead of running again for office after he lost, devoted his life to fighting climate change and other environmental causes. That can only work in America. Here you must be in politics to achieve change.

Remember that being an opposition politician covers a multitude of sins, both past and present. As soon as people receive evidence of your having decamped they should, if they are not evil people, turn your crimson past into an immaculate white present. They should not distract you from your task of opposing the government by bringing up scandals and allegations. If they do God will judge them harshly.

I wish you well as opposition politician and that, someday, God blessing your hustle, you will get that office you so thoroughly deserve.

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