27th January, 2014
A year and four days to the presidential election, Nigerians still do not know who are the contenders or what are their manifestoes. Just like in previous elections, time is running out and the game of hide-and-seek seems to have been perfected by a political elite with no ideology.
Our politicians seem to have mastered the game of hiding from the electorate for years only to emerge a few days, weeks or months to the election to beg for their votes.
But in other climes, it is not done that way.
In the United States for example, several years to the last presidential election, the difference in ideology between the Republicans and the Democrats was so glaring that even here in Nigeria we knew what it was all about. The Republicans wanted a smaller government and advocated for more austerity measures to be put in place to shrink America’s gargantuan debt and rescue the economy.
The Democrats argued that austerity measures, when the economy was still weak, would be counter-productive and lead to retrenchment and hardship for already suffering Americans. They called on wealthy Americans to pay more taxes to rescue the economy.
The Republicans rejected the idea, saying that wealthy Americans should even be given a breather to create more jobs and pay more people and pay lesser taxes.
The same differences were also very clear when it came to immigration, women rights and the rights of the minorities.
Besides, the contenders also were well known. And with long and interesting primaries, Americans were able to scrutinise the contenders very well and to separate the boys from the men and the girls from the women.
By the time the presidential election eventually came in November 2012, it was crystal clear what the stakes were and what the difference between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney was.
But here in Nigeria, even though the presidential election will take place on 14 February next year, we do not seem to know anything about those seeking to lead us or where and how they intend to lead us.
And even now that INEC the electoral body has made public the timeline for the various elections, it may take us many more months before we finally know who are the contenders and by that time Nigerians may be asked to vote based on political affiliation, ethnicity or even worse, religion.
Some contenders may claim that they were restricted by the electoral law that wants them to make their intention known within a short period.
But even that argument is not tenable as they could have used their various political platforms to highlight the differences in ideologies long before now.
The truth is beyond the mantra of “we deserve four more years or we need change now.” There is no ideology that has been presented to us.
Nigerians do not seem to know the core differences between the various political parties in the land in terms of how they intend to bring down unemployment rate in the country, create more jobs, attract more investors, improve our educational system, not just by increasing the number of students in our institutions but also how they intend to tackle the ever increasing failures in our schools.
We do not know how they intend to reduce poverty and inequality in the land. We do not also know how all these political parties intend to fight corruption.
Nigerians are left in the dark.
It does not have to be that way. We believe that those who want to run for political offices must tell us clearly and unequivocally how they intend to bring us from our current hellish situation to the paradise they often promise us.