By Isaac Asabor
There is no denying the fact that the electorates that would vote in the upcoming elections scheduled to hold in February 2023 will have a big responsibility on their shoulders. By the foregoing, I mean the responsibility of voting for the right party and candidates at the polls.
After several years of complaining about the bad governance which political leaders affiliated with the People Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have variously been perpetrating from one political dispensation to another, Nigerians are again presented with an opportunity to vote for the change they want. Without a doubt, in a democracy, elections are the most effective way to bring about desired change peacefully. But that is possible only if voters judge the candidates for their agendas, promises and possibilities, and certainly not by renewing old allegiances by blindly voting for political parties and the often recycled inept candidates as been demonstrated from one political dispensation to the other since 1999.
Despite being formed in February 2013, APC came into being as a result of the merger of then Nigeria’s three largest opposition parties, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) along with a breakaway faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the new PDP, a faction of the People’s Democratic Party. Given the foregoing background, APC can in this contest be said to be an old party that best illustrates the biblical old wine in a new bottle.
Against the foregoing backdrop, it is not an exaggeration to say that both the PDP and APC have woefully failed to engender good and people-oriented leadership for Nigerians since 1999, and paradoxically they have in every passing political dispensation been campaigning that Nigerian voters should help in perpetuating the clueless leadership styles both parties are known for.
Without resorting to denigration, the cluelessness and ineptitude which characterize political leaders affiliated with both parties are clearly observable that a university don and former Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Nigeria (INEC), Professor Attahiru Muhammed Jega, sometime in August last year, alleged that both parties failed to actualize desired growth and development in Nigeria within the past 20 years, and on that note urged Nigerians not to vote for the parties in any given election based on their shared poor leadership records.
He alleged that the two major political parties have destroyed everything, and are like Siamese twins of corruption and that it was high time Nigerians looked for a credible alternative. To my view, as an “Obidient” I am seeing the credible alternative in the Labour Party.
Unexpectedly enough, there have not been positive changes in how Nigerians, who are no doubt at the receiving end of bad leadership, are responding to alternate voices that can be found in other political parties that cut across, Accord, Action Alliance, Action Democratic Party, Action Peoples Party, African Action Congress, African Democratic Congress, All Progressives Congress, All Progressives Grand Alliance, Allied Peoples Movement and Boot Party. Others are Labour Party, National Rescue Movement, New Nigeria Peoples Party, Peoples Redemption Party, Social Democratic Party, Young Progressive Party and Zenith Labour Party.
In fact, the relatively huge support that the presidential candidates of the two political parties, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, have been gaining ahead of the February 2023 presidential election suggests that not a few gullible Nigerians are indeed unwilling to eschew old voting behaviour. Not only have they ostensibly shunned alternative voices in politics, as been offered by the other political parties, particularly the Labour Party, most of the people in this category, who are invariably young voters, were relatively too young when PDP and the parties that coalesced to become today’s APC began to bungle Nigeria’s economy, so they cannot be blamed. Rather, they need to be enlightened by campaigners in the other 16 political parties registered to participate in the forthcoming general and presidential elections, come February 2023.
In fact, it appears they have been mesmerized by the “stomach infrastructure” offered to them by campaigners affiliated with both parties. Not only that, it appears most people supporting the notorious old parties have refused to break the narrative that Nigeria’s electoral politics is essentially an exercise in gerontocracy.
To worsen the messy situation, political leaders of the old parties, rattled by the rise of youthful leaders affiliated with the Labour Party have resorted to vilifying the “Obidients”, and mischievously portraying them to be rabble-rousers and antagonists, and roguishly blaming them for everything that went wrong in the ongoing electioneering. Their fear of alternative voices is understandable. The bigger worry is that young voters who would have been supporting Peter Obi are being asked to choose mostly from among the old and visionless candidates leaving little space for a radical transformation in the way they vote. Still, if they vote wisely, there is a possibility of at least some promising candidates from various untested parties.
Given the foregoing analytical views, it is expedient to say that political leaders that have since 1999 been holding key political positions in the presidency, governors’ offices, houses of assembly, and beneficiaries of juicy political appointments are been drawn from the two major political parties; that is the PDP and the APC. But alas! Despite the assurances and promises they are wont to make at each passing electioneering, things have continued to go from bad to worse on almost all levels that can be imagined.
Sadly enough, the same crop of politicians from both parties is at the moment beckoning the electorates to vote for them again, come February 2023. To my view, the retrogressive electoral trend has become a vicious cycle. The great physicist, Albert Einstein, told us how ill-advised it is for people to do the same thing repeatedly and expect the same result. The foregoing demonstration of foolhardiness is my main grouse with those campaigning that political aspirants affiliated with the APC and PDP should be voted for in 2023. Haba! It is not fair now! How long shall we continue to go through this harrowing experience that is being caused by the emergence of bad leaders from both parties? Enough is enough, please! In fact, for not rallying around other parties as expected, are supporters of APC and PDP proving Albert Einstein right?
