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A lot of my political associates are Northern Muslims of Nigeria. We always engage in intellectual political discuss. A lot of people do not know that there are cerebral political intellectuals from Northern Nigeria who are Muslims. My love and respect for everyone always give me the advantage to interact freely with people of all backgrounds and understand where they are coming from on all issues. My belief in life is in line with Thomas Paine’s philosophy, “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren and to do good is my religion”. This philosophy underlines my belief that in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society, it’s only the implementation of the doctrine of equity, justice and fairness that will guarantee the political, economic and social stability of the country. There’s this my friend from Jigawa State. We used to belong to the same political party in the immediate past. He is a regular critic of my views. Even when we don’t agree on the conclusion of his criticism, one can see the objectivity of his submissions. He has been critical of my latest political moves which saw me dump a ruling party for a relatively less recognised party at the onset. He has never doubted my love for Nigeria or my disposition towards justice, but, as a good and loving friend of mine, he was also interested in my welfare. His submission was that he recognised that things are not going well in our country and we deserve a change but he is of the view that it is better to stay inside and fight. I was however of a more aggressive view that when the foundation is destroyed there’s nothing even the righteous can do. I believe that the foundation of the existing major political parties have been destroyed and they have become a nuisance to the society and this made me more amenable to the power of using any legitimate democratic means to bring about a change.
I was pleasantly surprised lately when my friend reacted to my latest scepticism of the status quo with a more aggressive language. I had to ask why? And he replied “I am just riding a high speed train (300km/hour) from Makka to Madina in Saudi Arabia. I can’t believe the infrastructure put in place. This was a totally rural economy when I first visited the country exactly 40 years ago. Our people are simply shameless kleptomaniacs”. He continued, “There are indeed issues with the polity but is so confusing to say who is not part of the rot! There should be a National Consensus on how to move from where we are, not by partisan political parties, but by the citizens of this country who should provide us a blue print, not a worthless political manifesto”. The summary of my friend’s impeccable submission is that we have been governed by men without character, who cannot be entrusted to keep to their words as promised. He went further to completely rule out the manipulation by any leader who will not come out to tell the people what he will do for them but rather surreptitiously present the letters written in a book called manifesto as what he will do. He called it worthless manifesto. He must have reached this conclusion because if a leader cannot be trusted to deliver what he verbally agreed to do, what hope does any Nigerian have in the leader who did not promise anything with his mouth but put it in a book which he can later deny.
For the avoidance of doubt, leaders of political parties have been known to have denied what was written for them in their names. Atiku Abubakar, for instance, ordered the deletion of a tweet written on his twitter handle condemning the killing of the innocent young Northern Christian girl, Deborah Samuel, whose only offence was refusing the sexual advances of some males, who brought blasphemous allegations against her and burnt her alive, when he discovered that the tweet offended some of his Muslim supporters, who threatened to withdraw their support from him. The excuse he gave was that the tweet was put out without his authorisation. This makes it clear that the only thing a leader simply needs to do whenever he doesn’t wish to implement any policy but requires the policy to get the votes of the people is to simply put it in a manifesto but refuse to personally say it himself or refuse to present himself to be cross examined by independent interviewers on such subject. During the campaign by APC in 2015, Buhari was asked about the issue of restructuring which is in the manifesto of APC, he simply laughed and told the journalist that his answer may jeopardise his votes in the south of Nigeria and he simply decided not to answer it. Despite the fact that APC as a Party set up a Committee, headed by Gov El-Rufai of Kaduna State to define what restructuring is, the government of President Buhari is still arguing that there’s no agreement on what restructuring means. Putting any policy in a manifesto is therefore not any actionable promise by any leader.
When we were in the University, we always have a manifesto day, where the contestants for any election will address the students on their policies and programmes for the students and be questioned by the students on the policies stated. This was not a debate, as the contestants were not allowed to altercate on any issue. Each contestant is allowed his own time to address the students and leave for another contestant to do his own. Nothing was put in a book for the students to go and find out. In America and some advanced countries, citizens hold politicians responsible for what they said to them through interviews, conferences, town hall meetings, rallies and debates, not by what is written in a book somewhere by some brilliant Professors on particular subject matters. When Obama was contesting to be President of the United States of America, he was asked what he will do if he gets an actionable intelligence that Osama Bin Laden was hiding in a country which is providing refuge for him. Obama pointedly answered that he will go into that country without their permission and kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. When he was elected and he did just that, Americans simply played back his speech and agreed that he did what he promised to do. Pakistan, where Osama was hiding, couldn’t raise alarm because Obama simply fulfilled his promise. Also Liz Truss openly promised the British people that She was going to cut down their taxes and energy costs and won the election based on such promises. On assumption of office, the economy rejected her promises by reacting negatively to it. She resigned before the economy collapsed under her watch and she made it clear that she couldn’t deliver on the mandate upon which she was elected. If she hadn’t openly made the promise, all she needed do was to deny that she didn’t personally promise the British people on her economic plans.
So there’s enormous benefits to the country that contestants personally and openly canvas their manifestos to the people. Can you imagine the political fate of any politician in any advanced country who refuses to honour live interviews by journalists, refuses to answer questions as to the clarity of their policies and plans, refuses to honour debates organised by independent arbiters in elections? The politician will fail before the election day. When George Bush Senior denigrated Bill Clinton his presidential political opponent that he will not honour a debate with him, that started marking the end of his presidency despite his stellar performance as President. Americans mocked him by calling him “Chicken George”. They called him a coward. By the time he decided to honour the debate, it was late. Americans voted him out. Nobody asked of his manifesto. The citizens want to hold their leaders to their words.
In Nigeria, as we are approaching 2023 elections, no contestant can beguile us with “worthless political manifesto”. What the citizens want is a deliberate, open conversation between the candidates and the citizens on what they will do for us. It is disturbing that candidate Tinubu has categorically said that he is not campaigning to become the President of the Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation and as such will not grant interviews to journalists. Although one must confess that Tinubu has of late become incoherent in the articulation of his thoughts like employing fifty million youths and feeding them with cassava and agbado or turning a rotten situation to bad or feeling insulted when Funke Akindele’s name is mentioned or claiming the post of the President is his personal property in “emi lo kan”, but the fact remains that if he is convinced that he cannot honour the obligations of a candidate, he should simply step down. It is not the turn of anybody to be President in 2023, it is the turn of Nigerians and Nigerians deserve to know the character, competence and capacity of who they want to vote to be President. Although, Atiku Abubakar has not openly opted out of interviews, debates or conferences, he has not granted live interviews of note till date. People keep taunting that he has a manifesto but no one has heard him sit in a live interview to defend it. The only manifesto from his mouth is that he is a great unifier and that North should vote for only Northerners. It is obvious that were it not that he said those things personally and publicly, assuming those things were written in his manifesto by his handlers, from what is going on in his party now, he would have denied that he never said them. Peter Obi has been going around granting live interviews and personally explaining what he has to do for the people and being interrogated in return. He has also given his guarantee that he will honour every debate asked of him.
Nigeria is facing an existential threat now because nothing seem to be working. Dollar is moving towards a thousand naira, insecurity is alarming, thieves are stealing oil and nobody has been arrested for this, inflation is biting as hard as poverty and youth unemployment is hitting the roof. The least the candidates can do is to come out and tell us their solutions for these problems so we can know who has the best plan and so we can hold the person responsible for his promises. Nigerians are tired of worthless manifestos which the candidates may not know what is contained therein.
Please join me in celebrating my birthday today by thanking God for His divine protection, provision and preservation for these years. I thank you for being there for me in this column and in all other things I do. God bless
