#SomberTuesday! It’s Valentine’s Day. I pray that all Nigerians experience love despite the difficulties of coping with various challenges, including having to buy new notes with old ones, rising fuel costs, and anxiety over the possibility of electoral violence. Political candidates for office and their proxies are now having final rallies since the elections are coming soon. The grand promises made by candidates are numerous. Will they be fulfilled? Time will tell.
What is certain is that most politicians will promise anything and everything to be elected. Citizens who vote for them must tenaciously demand accountability in order for any of these promises to be fulfilled. While in the ideal, politicians should keep promises, there’s higher likelihood of their doing so with citizens‘ civic engagement and constant demand that promises are fulfilled. Accountable action by elected officials is a necessity.
Nigerians deserve true democracy plus political, economic, and social transformation. The masses bear the brunt of bad governance since their needs tend to be ignored. Politics is a struggle for resources, thus, the masses must embrace civic action by not only voting but also as active participants throughout the electoral cycle. They must be focused and consistent, to receive attention to their needs. Civil society organizations must hold government accountable. Nigerians should organize pro-poor coalitions with a long-term perspective on producing a democratic system that caters to the interests of the majority.
Insecurity has been normalized and seem to be intractable due to acquiescence to the political economy of kidnapping/abduction. There’s unbearable financial cost to families of those abducted/kidnapped who are forced to pay exorbitant ransoms to secure the release of their loved ones. We are yet to truly understand the trauma of dealing with the catastrophic effects of abduction by the victims and survivors as well as their friends and family. Nigeria has a huge population of internally displaced people coping with the enduring ramifications of environmental disasters, ethno-religious conflicts, insurgencies, and conflicts between herders and farmers. These and many other problems would have defeated less resilient people.
Thus, Nigerians’ eternal optimism is a great asset. However, hopefulness must be combined with positive action for anything to change. Do we have conscientious and selfless elected officials that are committed to producing the giant of Africa that their campaigns promise? Do we have well-functioning institutions and good infrastructure? We live in a competitive, dynamic world. If Nigerians want to thrive in this world, we have to organize and focus. We must be effective, efficient, tenacious, and consistent in our responses to our problems. If Nigeria is to be transformed, all citizens must work together for national development. We must stop insecurity, inequality, unemployment, and underemployment from being normalized. These are some of the EndSARS protesters’ demands.
The youths demanded good governance, an end to impunity, violence, and police brutality. They were violently suppressed by state security forces. Two years on, #Nigeria must remember that a democratic government does not massacre peacefully demonstrating protesters as done to the #EndSARS protesters at #LekkiTollGate and other locations. #NigerianWomenArise #EndPoliceBrutalityinNigeriaNOW #EndSars #EndSWAT #EndImpunity
As the elections approach, I appeal to all Nigerians to vote for the best candidates that we believe will put the interests of the country and its masses at the center of the governance agenda.
Like a broken record, I repeat these words of Howard Zinn to show their relevance to Nigeria’s politics: “Civil disobedience, that’s not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while, the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” Let the kleptocrats give back our stolen wealth so that we can fix our infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and also offer worthwhile social protection to our people.
Let the masses enjoy the full benefits of citizenship in Nigeria. Let the leaders and political class repent and build peace with justice. This is no time for politics as usual. The people elected should be those trusted to bring justice, equity and human security to the entire country, not expedient, unethical,l and egocentric individuals determined to dominate for self-aggrandizement or sectional gain. We don’t need oligarchs’ continued domination. We also need a government that puts the interests of majority of citizens first.
Prof. Mojúbàolú Olufúnké Okome is a professor of political science at Brooklyn College in New York.
