SAVAGERY IN POLITICS: The hindrance to national development
Faulty political practice as the primary cause of failed economic development in Nigeria.
by
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OUR PEOPLE ARE IN DARKNESS
You simple people, how much longer will you cling to your simple ways?
- Proverbs 1:22; 500 B. C.
From 1952, the country has continuously bred armies of politicians who have deliberately kept the Nigerian peoples, not only in exploitative bondage, but also in a cul de sac of ignorance.
It is more out of ignorance on the part of the electorate, rather than just poverty, that politicians are able to swing voter-decision by distributing money and food items during electioneering campaigns. Such bribes can be as low as N50.00. During the 2003 general elections, the government parties and professional politicians distributed between N50.00 and N200.00 to individuals as enticement to attend their political campaign rallies. The electorate has interpreted this practice, over the past 50 years, to be the only opportunity for them to take their own share of the national cake. They know that the political office holders will inevitably “take their own share” by looting the state and national treasuries. The electorate is ignorant of the reality that, by accepting bribes from self-seeking politicians and voting such people into office, it has sold for a very cheap and worthless maximum of N200.00 or a bag of rice, the public entitlement to good governance which would have manifested as free and compulsory good education for their children, clean and habitable environment, good and efficient transport system on good roads, full employment for all, good housing for all families, three square meals daily for the family, access to good healthcare at affordable costs, and indeed issue-based public discussion of public affairs with a free flow of ideas between those public office holders and the people .
Secondly, the professional politicians have made the people to believe that once a “son of the soil” is put into a public office, then the people of the area of his origin have automatic access to their developmental entitlements under a good government. In practice, such an office holder becomes a part of a gang that exploits the population, depriving the masses of their entitlements whilst the few of them appropriate public wealth to themselves.
In spite of the equitable distribution, in terms of spread through the states, of political offices throughout the land, which Obasanjo and the National Assembly faithfully did in the 1999 to 2003 dispensation, the quality of life of Nigerians did not improve one jot. We know that in the very first seven months of that period, unemployment jumped from 30 million to 35 million in the country. The national currency dipped from N80 to the dollar to N140.00. Truly, he raised the minimum wage from N3,500.00 to N7,500.00 per month, yet the price of petrol rose from N11.00 in 1999 to N34.00 per litre, diesel N19.00 to N38.00 and kerosene from N6.00 to N38.00 in 2003. Food became more scarce and expensive. Rents for accommodation hit the roof. Access to healthcare, education and energy by the people became more difficult. In short, living became more demanding.
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About the Book
Political practice on the platforms of political parties as a route to political power started in its present form in Nigeria during the last decade of the colonial era. With the twin formation of the Action Group of Nigeria AG and the Northern Peoples'' Congress NPC, events that made the new political parties rivals to the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons NCNC, politics and political practice in Nigeria rapidly acquired the characteristics of parochialism on the basis of tribes, planned electoral rigging and fraud, corruption in government and the public service. These features are adversarial to economic development, a project that should rightly be the objective of any group that goes into government, particularly in a country that is so backward as Nigeria. With the formal departure of the British colonialists on October 1, 1960 military politicians ravenously invaded the political terrain on January 15, 1966. In spite of the regular claims to the objective of cleaning up the political field at every successful overthrow of the constitution by successive military dictators, the coup plotters and their civilian collaborators deliberately sustained the politics of exploitation of the people and the kleptocracy that were the hallmarks of the politicians whom they had removed from power. Every military government was composed of the coup makers and the politicians they had excised from constitutional government. In 1999, the military dictators were compelled to retreat from power following the twin deaths of Sani Abacha and Moshood Abiola. The present constitutional polity is still, like before and during the era of military dictatorship, characterised by faulty electoral mechanism and processes in a cosmetic democracy that perpetuates the combination of erstwhile military dictators and their usual civilian collaborators in power. They utilise the platforms of the three ruling political parties as their mutual political base. In such a political environment that effectively shuts out alternative and new political options from the choices of the improvished Nigerian peoples, kleptocracy in government, corruption by the ruling politicians and exploitation of the people continue as the prominent features of Nigerian political practice. This book offers a new approach that the author believes that politicians with new ideas can use to gain access to political power and initiate the needed rapid economic development of Nigeria. The Democratic Alternative and similar political organisations are called upon to utilise the programme in this book to rescue Nigeria and Nigerians from the clutches and grips of political practitioners whose ideology, objectives, methods and practices in government have continuously denied Nigerians of the immense benefits that are derivable from the abundant national resources with which the country is blessed.
About the Author
A soldier, surgeon, politician and administrator, Abayomi Ferreira was born at