Now that the 2023 general elections in Nigeria are over, the candidates who won at the polls as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have tall and wide responsibilities with obligations to the constituents beyond partisan considerations to avoid compounding image problems for the political parties on which platform they were elected. Any crippling contradictions from the aggrieved candidates and interest groups, partisan factions and fractions, intra-oppositions, dissensions and alienation in terms, should be resolved judicially in favour of who actually won, translated to victory to people’s power.
The strength of the elected political leaders lies in the reputation of apolitical representatives, calm, just, kind and utilitarian, who have major stake in the survival of Nigeria, defined as a conglomeration of electoral constituencies to placate the constituents who have become more discerning and desperate for good leadership and are wont to get out of the bankruptcy of unprofitable representation. That will ensure the popularity and spread of the newly elected leaders as rare selfless species in noble self-sacrifice and exemplary patriotism, the oasis of hope in populist empowerment and emancipation who have the resolve and sagacity to get things done for the constituents. They know that the welfare of the people is the reason to be in political leadership and are ready to represent the people very well for they are part of the people and are accountable to the people with passionate integrity.
To be otherwise, adhering to self-credo and sideline postures will be a huge negative for the elected leaders to turn to political gamblers who soonest will exhaust all permutations and have nothing to rescue them from imminent electoral disaster at the next recall polls, called general elections, which force them back to their constituents to render stewardship account and have their mandate renewed for another term, if they do so well today.
Nigerian press has a huge role to play, come May 29, 2023. Press editorials should be agenda setting to inculcate or inject into the nation’s newly elected political leaders, the patriotic use of political power. It is the responsibility of the media to deploy the advantage of being the watchdog of democracy to educate the elected leadership to see past the routine pre-occupation with self-survival in political office. They ought to think of themselves as the next generation of statesmen of the regime of rectitude in political office with commitment to nation building reforms. This is the nationalistic duty of the press to the newly elected leaders who must be well managed.
Only the press reared in integrity, courage, acuity, and walks the tightrope staked in the continued survival of our democracy, can hold the political leaders accountable to the people without incitement against the government; but the other press in praise singing, court jesting, and trading in bias or prejudice get somersaulted from distrust and suspicion of the life size support for a section of the political leadership for unmerited favour and partially as they look away from the other section.
Nigerian democracy can no longer be said to be on trial after decades of successful leadership successions. Rather, it is the politicians who have not professionalized the craft of politics and politicking to get divested of the toga of weird and odd partisanship that make acute enchantment of bad politics ironically attractive to them while practically, quality public interest politics is sacrificed in the process by the day when that ought not to be.
A people well developed and put on development path seek no liberty for there can be no greater liberty than development governance.
• Isaac Olusesi writes via [email protected]