Let's hang the politicians!
By
I was shocked to my wits end weekend when at a gathering of more than 500, the question was asked: who here knows the ward office of any of the three political parties in this area?” It was a gathering of people who live in the same area with me. On the average, two out of every three people there had a university degree or a higher national diploma. It was a middle class set up, yet none of us as much as knew where any of the 11 wards in the Amuwo Odofin Local Government Area was. Of course it went without saying that none of us was a registered or active member of any of the three political parties.
As we were later to discover, an illiterate who ran a shop in one of the hovels, in one of the seedy areas of our ward had control of the ruling Alliance for Democracy in the ward. The other parties were in similar hands!
For the Alliance for Democracy party at our ward, which is run more like a cult than a party, nocturnal meetings are regularly held, in these local government election days, in an abandoned, uncompleted market stall, aptly nicknamed, Ako Akete! And who are the party chieftains in our area, you may want to ask? Well, they are at best, semi-illiterate bus drivers, conductors, petty thieves, thugs and the likes! We really should not be shocked; we should blame ourselves. We only needed to look at how badly the last chairman and his council members ran the Amuwo Odofin Local Government Area!
We only needed to look at the life of opulence, of unexplained wealth which our leaders who are now seeking re-election are now living. We only needed to look around us, at the mansions which sprang up, almost overnight; owned by our former council chieftains.
We were stupefied at our own stupidity! How could we have allowed the very dregs of the earth to be our leaders due to our own carelessness? How could we who are supposed to be some of the leading lights of our country have mortgaged our ward, local government, state and country to a bunch of ruffians while we stand aside, moaning the calamity visited on a regular basis on our country by “our leaders”?
No one needed to tell us, the state of affairs at our ward, local and state level is purely our failure. It cannot, for this time, be laid at the door step of our leadership, as Professor Chinua Achebe, in his book, The Trouble With Nigeria posited years ago. No, it is now more than that. Our problems, surely emanate, rather from a failure by us, the followers; it is a failure of the numerous, good hearted Nigerians who have continued to shun involvement, even at the ward level, in party politics. We surely deserve our leadership failures, the bad government, the failed economy; we earned for ourselves the common thieves who rub our noses in shame among the comity of nations.
Yet it seems so easy to effect a change, to do something about the kind of people who man our politics, who we elect into position of leadership at any level of our government. That is why I am mightily glad that the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, has decided to do something about our politics! Yet until our group discussion, though I know that the PFN had something going, I never really thought it fit to find out how it affected me.
I was even a reluctant attendee at a forum the PFN held at Festac on Sunday as part of its effort to pursue its agenda which briefly spelt out is a sensitization programme, tagged “Righteousness In Our Government”. Headed by the fiery orator, the Reverend Moses Iloh, the body is encouraging everyone, especially the Christians, to come out of their closets of religious piety and get involved in politics. Good men cannot continue to stay away while buffoons hold the nation hostage.
The strategy is simple: If every good Nigerian gets involved at the ward level in each of the registered political parties, the era of having the dregs of the earth, the felons who currently run our government would soon be over. For we are all to get involved, there is no way we are going to allow an illiterate thug to be our councillor. If we are to get involved, we should have a say, a very vocal, intelligent say, in who our local government chairman should be. If we all are to find just an hour in say every two weeks to get involved in the politics of our ward, we should be able to influence, positively the quality of men and women who get elected into the state legislature, the government houses, and indeed, in Aso Rock. We should be able to change the face of our politics!
There is no better time than now to get involved in politics, to move to change our situation for the better. As Ene Henshaw said in his quaint little book: “This is our chance”, this indeed is our chance to do something about the bad governance we have had since independence. The beauty of it is that we do not necessarily have to contest for any position. We only need to make up our minds today, look for the party of our choice, go and register at our ward office, and thereafter take the destiny of our children and our nation in our own hands. The silent majority is what is needed now, more than ever before to flush out the thugs and thieves; the morally bankrupt, self-centred men and women who masquerade as our leaders today.
As for my wife and I, we are going to look for the ward office of a party of our choice and register. We are going to mobilise our neigh-bours and friends to do same. We are surely not going to allow some riff-raffs to be our councillor or a person of dubious past, or of a doubtful means to be our next local government chairman, legislator or governor in Lagos state. We are joining the team who will enthrone righteousness in our government!
Feb 2003