This is a response to Demola Rewaju’s piece, You voted for change? Dont lose faith, please
I was going to vote for Jonathan had the elections held in January 2015. I am not one of those who believe GEJ was a terrible president. However, I felt GEJ had not done enough. His comments did not inspire confidence. Even GEJ could not articulate his achievements in the 5 years he had been in power. He was campaigning like the opposition, making promises. I concluded we had to try someone else.
I voted for Buhari. I cannot claim to be an APC supporter either. The politics APC played to gain power was filled with falsehood, misinformation and total disrespect for constituted authority. Some of the promises the APC made were completely ridiculous.
While I agree with Demola that we should be patient with this government, I disagree with his view that people who voted for Buhari should not voice their discontent at his performance to date. I disagree with his notion that we should stick to a candidate blindly and excuse his misgivings. We voted for you because we expected you to perform. We cannot excuse your inefficiencies.
If you intend to go into politics in the future, by all means, pick sides now and stick to it. The question is, are you picking sides with the individual or with the party? How do you pick sides with people who can cross-carpet twice in a year? How do you pick sides with political parties that have no ideologies? What is the basis of your loyalty?
Some of us cannot pick sides. We are not interested. All we demand is good governance. Accountability. Transparency.
We the youths should not take sides, yet. We have to come together and demand accountability from whoever is in government. APC youths cannot keep justifying their party’s excesses by making comparison with the previous government. Those shortcomings are why we voted them out. We want to see change (there’s a pun here right?). Let us keep party affiliations aside and push the legislature hard till they cut their salaries and allowances significantly.
After the terrorist attack in France, there was a two million-man march to send their message to the terrorists. Prior to May 29, APC cahoots were the first to break the news of any terrorist attack. Now, PDP has taken up that responsibility. We do not care about the dead, we keep trying to expose the ‘incompetence’ of the sitting government. We cannot continue like this.
El-Rufai’s moves have been cosmetic at best, but they have signified intent, purpose and direction. This is all we ask of Buhari, for now at least. His relocation of the DHQ to Maiduguri was a welcome development. However, his silence to the recent spate terrorist attacks has been deafening. We are not asking him to crush Boko Haram in one week. We are asking him to give us reassurance that something is being done. A lot of progress was being made weeks before the election. What happened afterwards?
We also need to understand that the president belongs to just one arm of government. For instance, it’s not the president’s job to make court judgments. We need to channel our demands to the appropriate quarters. That being said, the head of the country has to inspire confidence. With the recent spate of bombings, the time for Buhari to address the nation is now.
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.
