ACN: Messiah or more of the old.

I personally don’t see myself in any way as a political pundit. At least that’s not one way I would use to describe myself. I am a devoted and patriotic Nigerian. And anything that goes on in my country takes a paramount place in my heart.

Having said that, I am more than sure if the reader knows anything about my beloved country, you can imagine how troubled my heart has been on a couple of things to use the lightest word-weight that can be used.

Stepping back a bit, the 90’s gave us the worst type of governance we thought possible. I mean the Babangida-Abacha-Abubakar axis of government was certainly not our best days. Anything would be better, we thought. Then began the PDP era. “After all” we thought “Its democracy, what could possibly go wrong?” Up until then, I for one would admit, I had never heard the word ‘senator ’ before.

Well, the politicians didn’t keep us waiting for long before they answered our questions. Assassinations became frequent. Public fund embezzlement went to higher levels. Even football, our never-failing success for some reason directly or indirectly tied to poor administration seemed to die a natural death. “PDP has to be the worst thing ever” we all seemed to start screaming again “Give us anything else”. I mean if the justice minister gets killed and there’s no justice. Let me say that again, the JUSTICE minister can’t get JUSTICE even in death, what chance do we others have.

Abacha, Abubakar, Obasanjo: Bad, worse, worst?

Then came the proverbial messiah. Forward came Ahmed Tinubu to rescue us from this our political quagmire. He would rescue power from the PDP, he would bring us a breathe of fresh air. I mean it’s all in the script. Gov. Raji Fashola transformed Lagos and we were promised this was just the beginning. But fellow Nigerians, looks like the actors are not quite following the script.

Alright, I’m very well into my twenties and I like to think I do read political journals and follow the news as closely as I can, never in my life have I heard a political party declare a candidate for any electoral seat just based on the discretion of the leader. I mean Tinubu is not even the party chairman for crying out loud. I read in an article recently a quote from the party chairman, Bisi Akande. Hear him:

“If election within our party is what you are trying to describe as internal democracy, then we reject such idea. Can we impose when we are contesting against PDP? Party knows what people want. But we can do something within our party if the leadership of the party feels that that is the best thing. This is because it is the leadership of the party that understands the manifestoes of the party and knows what the people really want. This is not a matter of an individual but the party. Nobody should accuse ACN of imposition because that is our style. Anyone that is not comfortable with that should go and contest in another political party”

Bisi Akande: ACN National Chairman.

I’ll tell you what, if I hadn’t seen the above quote on numerous websites, I would not have accepted or believed it. It’s the kind of thing you expect to see from Lenin or Stalin or maybe even Chairman Mao himself. Tinubu also chose his wife as  senatorial candidate, his daughter and his son-in-law were also hand picked without any form of internal elections whatsoever. Folasade Tinubu-Ojo and Oyetunde Ojo got tickets to represent contest Agege constituency on Federal and state levels respectively.

At this point I invite the reader to draw a conclusion for yourself. If a party cannot please its own members by ensuring internal democracy, does anyone mean to tell me they’ll care about what candidate you and I want if God-forbid, they hold presidential authority?

Bola Tinubu: Would present his cat as a candidate if he could.

A pertinent question I ask is, what offence have we committed against God, so bad that he watches these kind of leaders rule over us? The stench of moral decadence in our so called elite fills the air.

Normally, we’ll like things to be better and better. But in the case of our leaders, things just seem to be going from bad to worse as far as the moral integrity of those being saddled with leading is concerned. I for one believe the best of our days are still ahead but for now as far as these leaders are concerned, something has to give. And hopefully, pretty soon as well.