Ife Adebayo: The hunger for change is the power of the APC (Y! Politico)

by Ife Adebayo

Ife Adebayo

What we have now is a national shift in political advisers; Nigerians are tired of listening to their empty stomach for political advice and are instead hungry for a change.

Albert Einstein said – “An empty stomach is not a good political adviser”. This has been the strongest weapon of most Nigerian politicians. They have employed the voice of empty stomachs to do their political campaigning; this is why all they need do is to show up on election day with envelopes of N500, N1,000 or even N200, depending on the level of economy impoverishment in a particular area.

Interestingly many Nigerians irrespective of religion, ethnicity or economic standard are beginning to move away from this ‘stomach’ ideology. Many Nigerians are beginning to take political advice from their brains and hearts instead of their empty stomachs. The reason this is possible is because the people’s empty stomach isn’t hungry for bags of rice or N1,000 notes, it is hungry for change, real change.

At the moment Nigerians can see the disaster the current PDP government at the federal level and in many states have turned out to be. We have a lackadaisical leader who could not visit a state ravaged by Boko Haram until opposition party governors showed him how to, a leader that leads from the back and only takes action after the opposition shows him the way, a leader that goes on national TV and tells the whole nation he “doesn’t give a damn”. Insecurity is at its worst as we seem to have a commander in thief as opposed to what we need which is a commander in chief. Within one year of his fortuitous tumble into power we had the cost of subsidizing fuel for Nigerians increase by over 200% and all we hear is that if you cannot kill the corruption then you should kill Nigerians by removing the subsidy and starving them to death.

Nigerians have lost count of the number of committees set up by this government, there is a committee for everything. I am surprised we don’t have a committee for selecting the President’s toiletries yet. Maybe we would get one soon. All we hear about is government’s power policy while we sleep in darkness, economic management team while our youth remain unemployed, the few in employment lose their jobs daily. Education policy and we have the second highest number of children out of school in the world, we have been told our oil subsidy money is being used to reduce maternal mortality but Nigeria is still ranked in the bottom 10 of the places to be a pregnant woman in the world.

What we have now is a national shift in political advisers; Nigerians are tired of listening to their empty stomach for political advice and are instead hungry for a change. The hunger for change is the catalyst for the formation of the All Progressives Congress. This is a new party that has brought together progressives in this nation for a change. A party that is being formed without any preconditions except for the unity of purpose that Nigeria must rise again. The unique desire that all Nigerians have to rescue our nation at the national, state and local government levels from these current party in government called the PDP. The power miss road party.

What will the APC do differently? As Franklin D Roosevelt said “In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people”. A quick glance across the states currently ruled by APC governors speaks volumes, I was in Ibadan last month and for the first time in my life I got missing in Ibadan, everything has changed, the ancient city is witnessing modernisation and development for the first time. Lagos State is building a light rail system, not the type that will take 30hours to go from Badagry to Apapa in 100 year old rusty coaches with no electricity, but modern trains that will be befitting of a nation like Nigeria. Change is around the corner, the APC is bringing change and Nigerians are welcoming the change. I hear many PDP politicians will be joining the APC; I don’t blame them, when positive change comes around everybody wants to be a part of it. A part of a party where ideologies rule, where they have to drop all their dirty linens and come play according to the rules, we all need to come together to rescue Nigeria. 2015 is now, the time is now!

I leave you with the words of Chinua Achebe “Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be”.

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Ife Adebayo is an IT Consultant with work experience in Germany, United Kingdom and Nigeria. He currently runs his own IT firm in Lagos, Nigeria. He is an ardent believer in the Nigerian project and encourages all Nigerians to become actively involved in making Nigeria a better place. Ife is a registered member of the Action Congress of Nigeria, Epe Local Government, Lagos State. He was an active member of the UK branch of the party, holding the post of Youth Leader for the year 2010/2011.

 

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

One comment

  1. This is a nice from you, but not yet uhuru APC still has a lot to be done, the early signs from there state government are appreciable.”To be good is not enough,it can be great”

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