The crazy part of our democrazy: How monetised politics is pushing us to the edge.

 

While heavenly rain made people seek shelter in some places on convention days, others elsewhere savoured the rain of dollars from the presidential aspirants of PDP and APC. Did Moghalu just insinuate it did at the ADC too? All I know now is that the winners clinched their party’s nomination tickets through clandestine and covert negotiations as the delegates who are our ‘egg-heads’ have been ensnared by filthy lucre. They left the candidate that had something for their future for the one that gave something ‘now’. We all are the losers. The primaries are now over, and many are thinking how did we get here? While some of these men were strategizing how to win, a Prime Minister elsewhere had his heart in his mouth for contravening lockdown rules.  The big 2 have offered us moneybags, we must now choose between Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President, and Bola Tinubu, a former governor. But we have other aspirants, don’t we? When they say other candidates don’t have a structure, what they mean is that they don’t have money. Sadly, that is very true. They have monetised our polity, the delegate’s poverty needs to be cured today before he can think about tomorrow. Afterall, what if tomorrow never comes?

The level of poverty is a design of the political elites to keep using these voters when they are needed. We all remember how CACOVID food supplies were hoarded, and they wanted us to be begging for it. We are so blessed, we should not be thinking of what to eat tomorrow, yet we lack food. A serious government will create an enabling environment for the private sector to boom or provide jobs or government support for people without jobs. In other places, there are food banks here and there and not having something to eat is almost a matter of choice. We should learn that every kobo spent by these contenders to get this office are not for charitable causes, they will be recovered in multiple folds when they get the position they so crave.

These primary elections have revealed to us that we are in a pseudo-democracy. The best rainmakers won in the primaries. We can blame the delegates, but what justification do we have when these delegates reflect what many Nigerians exhibit daily? Most of us complain when we are not in that position of authority but once we get there, we change. Many Nigerians will use their position of authority to get what they want at the Police Stations, at the Local government, in their school, in their immediate community, even in the courts, and this is exactly what these aspirants have done.

Atiku and Tinubu have many things in common. They both vacated their last office on the same day over 15 years ago and both have questionable wealth. No doubt they are political allies who have used their past positions in public offices to create businesses that rake in big money for them. Both have been accused of tax default or fraud over the years. Does their inexplicable wealth ever bother us? Both will come on air tomorrow to castigate the party of the other and how much destruction the party of the other has pilled on Nigerians while pretending that their emergence in the first place is flawless. Party delegates have laughed to the bank and given us the highest bidders in their respective parties. Governors and lawmakers have cut their own deals too. On election day more dollars will put one of them in charge (I hope not) and we go again, complaining for years. If the vote buying at the primaries are exterminated and cut off, better aspirants at primaries will mean absence of vote buying at the general election. We cannot continue to complain of the same thing every four years and do nothing about it. Many wanted these parties to field Peter Obi and Yemi Osinbajo, but the war chest goes beyond the good intent of good men.

It is true that developed nations must have gone through their own difficult moments to nurture and perfect their democracies. But it is also true that we can learn from their mistakes and leapfrog their formative era errors, but we choose to wallow in our own misery. Its criminal that our political elites have weaponised poverty to be able to use it against us. The ugliest financial crimes are here, and the law enforcement have chosen to take a nap. Politicians at that level will not overtly share money at the event and the presence of law enforcement agents will achieve very little. Get the names of delegates and investigate them. If we choose to turn a blind eye, we will keep complaining for decades. We need to fight this electoral crime if we need this nation to progress, else these modern-day neo-colonialists and imperialists will keep us subdued and colonised for a long time. If the Professor is also guilty, let there be consequences for actions. We need to save an atrophying nation.