What is killing Nigerians more than the Boko Haram suicide bomb attacks are the death traps called road infrastructure in the country. No one understands what the Federal Government and its Minister of Works is doing with our roads. Lagos-Ore-Benin; Lagos-Ibadan, and Lokoja-Suleja expressways, to mention just three of them, claim more lives than any deliberate criminal human action currently going on in the country.
This does not suggested that the bloodletting of insurgent terrorism of fundamentalist Islam and the violent militancy of other groups, like the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta-MEND, is exculpated or legitimized by the criminal neglect of the nation’s roads by the PDP-led government in the last 14 years of corrupt rule. Everyone will answer to God and mankind, for his acts of omission or commission, on the day of reckoning.
As citizens complain about road infrastructure and its sorry state, rail and air transport are even in worse conditions in the last one decade; not to speak of the utter confusion in the electricity service industry where the FG is known to be actively deploying resources and engaging investors on a daily basis. A competent administration would have delivered the above infrastructures safe and sound to Nigerians within a period of 14 years. Should a country continue to allow itself to stagnate by a bungling political administration in perpetuity? Isn’t there a need for a peaceful change through the ballot box? The return of Chief Tony Anenih to PDP leadership shows that a peaceful transition may be impossible in 2015, since rigging is what the Esan Chief knows what to do best. But would rigging work for a dispensation that has failed Nigerians for 14 years?
It appears that the PDP- led government is of that cast of mind. President Good- Luck Jonathan seems to have bought that dreadful, dangerous, package as a last resort. Earlier, the President had charged the Ministers to beef up performance to leave a commendable impression on the minds of Nigerians that his transformation agenda is on course, and would ultimately deliver service to the people.
Unfortunately, the balance sheet from the Ministers of Power, Works and Health are not particularly impressive, even as MEND threatens to provide a southern version of the Boko Haram terrorist insurgence to complicate matters for the Jonathan government. With this monumental failure stoking the fire of the PDP-led government, the only tempting option for the incumbent regime to perpetuate itself in office, appears to be a pre-planned massive rigging of elections. Getting a master rigger on board the party is one quick strategy.
The mandate to the party leadership to deliver 32 states in the 2015 elections is another preparatory strategy that the Jonathan government has latched on to; as if it is a settled question that once election rigging plans are perfected in advance, winning would become a fait accomppli, a “done deal” for the ruling party, as the politicians often say. Or are they oblivious that there is a recipe for non-performing elected public officers in a democratic system of government?
Former head of state, General Olusegun Obasanjo --OBJ, has such a recipe. The recipe is embedded in the constitutions of democratic systems of government. For OBJ, the recipe for non-performing state actors is a sack order from the electorate in the next general elections. The way to avert a bloody civil strife where incumbent governments have failed to deliver public good and public safety to the people is for the people to take their destiny into their own hands, by using their votes to sack non-performing elected officers and installing new ones with a mandate to learn from the sacked state actors and make the delivery of social goods their article of faith. What legitimizes democratic governments is the ability of elected public officers to flow with the electorate. Once the voters are happy with the performance of government, no opposition political party or parties can successfully gang up to sack the ruling party.
That is the message of OBJ to Nigerians; a message that is already contained in the democratic principle of periodic elections to determine whether a ruling political party still has a title to legitimacy; that is, whether such a party has produced happiness for the voters. It is voters whose votes count that truly determine the success or failure of political parties in elections. Thus, performance or lack of it is the basis on which to hold political parties accountable. That is the right democratic culture for political parties to imbibe; instead of the ludicrous charge for party operatives to deliver a pre-determined number of states for the ruling party or any other party for that matter.
Political parties should get their elected officers to perform effectively and creditably, to deliver service to the people, to combat kidnapping and terrorist bombing and cruel killing of innocent Nigerians, and hopefully, avert a bloody civil strife in the country. In most countries where there is civil war, it is the clinging to power by incumbent regimes that failed to deliver service to the people or regimes that are nepotistic, tribalistic and vindictive; using all means to retain power that triggers violence and rebellion, and the attendant internecine bloodletting that follows.
Political parties should get their elected officers to perform creditably by delivering service to the people; and to do this conscientiously as the only legitimate vehicle to enable either the retention of power by the incumbent or the ascension to power by the opposition party or parties working in concert.
Written by Prof. Jim Unah. Prof. Jim Unah is a lecturer in the department of philosophy, University of Lagos. Nigeria.
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