Insouciant, immoral politicking for 2027 elections, by Adekunle Adekoya

A cursory perusal of the state of affairs in Nigeria today and how things are managed by the politicians in charge led me to one conclusion — we, the people of Nigeria, do not matter a jot to the politicians managing our affairs. In addition, the laws that we have in place to regulate our daily experience in many spheres of life also do not matter to them.

This is because preparations to get re-elected after the elections of 2023 began earnestly last year, a development unprecedented since the Fourth Republic was birthed in 1999. To me, that wasn’t just jumping the gun, it signalled a crazy obsession with, and yearning for power that even demagogues may not possess. Throughout last year, and continuing into this year, developments on the political landscape had to do in the main with who is defecting from which party, and to which. This year, most of the rumours became fact when the decampings started taking place, one after the other, like the sequence in a computer programme.

Meanwhile, a lot of hope was invested in the coming of a new administrations at the federal and state levels, after the years of the locust presided over by the late Katsina General, Muhammadu Buhari. I thought it was normal to expect that life couldn’t get worse that it was under Buhari, but within hours on May 29, 2023, life and living not only got abnormal, things took decidedly bad turns for the worse. No point flogging the peremptory removal of subsidy on petrol and the reform of the forex market. We are all living with the after-effects, and truly, I don’t know, and can’t see when we may recover.

I said that we don’t matter a jot in the scheme of things wrought by the present generation of politicians and I still stand by that. When the late General Sani Abacha increased the price of petrol, he used the proceeds, which was the difference between the price we were paying before and the new price, to set up the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF, which he then used as an interventionist agency to revamp dilapidated infrastructure nationwide. Though it is generally agreed that the PTF did a good job, I think it would have done even better if the chairman of PTF was not the redoubtable Muhammadu Buhari. Those who know, know.

Using that as a backdrop, one would have thought that the difference between N187 per litre of petrol under Buhari and the current N900+ price would have created a huge resource pool from which a lot of national issues can be funded for redress. Instead, we were made to pay this money, and the proceeds turned over to the political class to use as they see fit. If the math is done, it can be seen that trillions of naira have accrued since May 29,2023 into the coffers of government at all levels. As things stand now, the federal and state governments are flush with cash, and nobody seems to know what to do with it.

In short, where is the equivalent of Abacha’s PTF after the astronomical increase in the price of petrol? If a military dictator could be that socially conscious, one should expect a lot more from civilians whom we thought would be more compassionate. Sadly, that is not to be our experience, since these politicians do not seem to think that we, the ordinary people, matter at all. They, their friends and families might as well be the only people in the country. Meanwhile, people are SUFFERING. Multi-dimensional poverty claims more and more Nigerians with the passing of each day. Hunger is ravaging the land. Famine stares us in the face.

Unaffordable drugs and a collapsed healthcare system are sending thousands to untimely graves daily. Bandits, gunmen — known and unknown — are enacting bloodbaths in many parts of the country daily. Kidnappers and cultists are on the loose, perpetrating orgies of sorrow. The overall situation is so depressing, and in the middle of all these problems, the only thing the power elite is obsessed with is power. What has it done with the power granted or grabbed since 2023? And you see them in churches. Also in mosques. What do they go there to do? Beg God to forgive them for the evil they are doing to us? That would be if they have any conscience left, and I seriously doubt this. 

Those of us Nigerians still lucky to be alive, walking and breathing and continuing to struggle to make ends meet are on our own. Nobody is out there for you, least of all, anybody in government. There is no will to make life better for the average Nigerian there, just a desire to get there, loot and loot ad infinitum.

One member of the House of Representatives, representing Gusau and Tsafe federal constituency, Kabiru Maipalace, symbolises what the political class has in mind for us. As part of his constituency project, he sponsored the renovation of 80 cemeteries in Gusau and Tsafe local government areas of the state. According to the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, Maipalace said that: “We had noticed the dilapidated conditions of our cemeteries in various communities across my constituency.

“As human beings, we know one day, all of us are going to be buried here; therefore, we must ensure we do good to improve the conditions of our last home.”

Impeccable logic, but he didn’t see dilapidated schools, hospitals or roads that are in use by the living. In any case, rich or poor, educated or illiterate, hungry or overfed, one would die. So Nigerian politicians are not caring about us in Nigeria. We are on our own, and in the hands of God. TGIF.

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