Are the presidential candidates sleeping? By Dan Agbese
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It was not foolish to expect the political parties to bolt from the stable soon after INEC blew the whistle for the official start of the campaigns for the 2023 general elections – and engage the people in uplifting national conversations towards the post Buhari national politics of inclusiveness as opposed to parochial politics of exclusion.
But it was naïve to expect our political leaders to have by now risen to the challenges of political leadership in the 21st century and commit to doing things differently to help the nation recover its soul. As you can see, the big political parties do not appear to have grown in stature and matured in the process. They have sunk deeper in the nadir of the politics of capturing power, not in the politics of good and effective leadership in return for the people’s support at the polls. They are embroiled in intra-party sabotage and inter party brick bats. It is the old and familiar way with the politics of brawn, not of brain. We have travelled so far but covered such a short distance.
Of the three big parties, PDP seems worsted by its internal sabotage. Five of its own state governors are at primitive war of chest beating against the party. It may be unwise for the party leaders to admit it, but it is not difficult to see that its internal sabotage has more or less crippled it and dragged down our democracy with it. The party will likely go into this critical battle of winning the presidency with its commanders and foot soldiers in disarray. I do not think history has a record of a fractious army marching into battle. But it is possible for the party to show that it can be done. This is a land in which everyone trusts in miracles.
We need to rise. You cannot expect change when the same is the norm. But for Kola Abiola and Sowore, there are no new faces in the presidential race. The big parties threw up the same men who have strutted our national political stage at federal and state levels since 1999. They came with the same views expressed in some worn out language because they rely on the same oiled system of capturing power, not winning it.
Not many of us realise how far we have regressed in our national politics. Politics is by nature an exciting game. It has been reduced to soulless business in our country with money being the arbiter in the contest for power. In the first and second republics, we had men who offered soaring rhetoric that lifted up our spirit. From their inspiring and uplifting speeches, tomorrow was almost tangible. Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the best prepared among our politicians of both the first and the second republics, did not just offer us free education at all levels. He showed us the strategy and statistical details of how it could be done.
He thus did two things. He challenged his political opponents to contradict him; he also offered an interesting topic for national conversation. Was free education at all levels feasible at that point in our national development? I knew of no one who answered that question in the negative and put the chief to task. I suppose he talked above our collective understanding at the time. The chief was not a rousing public speaker; he made up for that as a profound political thinker who knew the potentials of this country much better than anyone else.
So far, the chief has not reincarnated and there is none like him. However, he left something vital in our national politics, to wit the utilitarian value of a healthy debate in the quest for power in the context of what is good enough for the country.
If politics is about human progress and development, then it should be anchored on intellectual challenges that give rise to some serious national conversations on matters that matter to us as a people, as a country and as a democracy. None of our politicians is walking along the path carved out by Awolowo because, let us face it, it is not only rather heavy but out of tune with the mediocrity that has taken the centre stage in our national politics.
Of all our political losses, the loss of men capable of soaring rhetoric and inspired speeches must be the sorriest loss for the country. Our current crops of politicians are uniformly dull. Their speeches do not inspire, let alone raise hope, in the present and the future of our country and its people. In more than seven dull years, President Buhari made not a single inspiring speech to whip up and galvanise the people towards a given national cause.
When he chooses to talk always with a written speech, he does so with barely concealed contempt for the people he purports to rule. He did not encourage national conversation to help the country arrive at consensus on matters that not only matter to us but also agitate us. For instance, he treated the clamour of restructuring and state police with such contempt that their proponents must have lost confidence in the justness of what they were pushing for.
So far, not one of the presidential candidates has shown any indications that he can lift us from this national stupor and make up for the years that the locusts of dullness had eaten. We need a soaring rhetoric that fires our hopes in a country about to be freed from rank provincialism and put back on the pedestal of inclusiveness. We hear nothing because from them because they choose to say nothing. Their aides are busy insulting one another and throwing brickbats, a sorry development that throws us back to the primitive politics of taking power, not winning it in a fair and open competition. If the parties had matured, we would not be pulled back as if we were beginning again.
We have less than three months to the presidential election and yet none of the political parties has shown the level of preparedness we expected of them. I find no presidential candidate at the hustings. Are they sleeping? Is this not the time for them to criss-cross the country, marketing themselves? We are in an election season, but it all feels like we are gathered at a funeral parlour. Time for us to see and hear those who aspire to rule us. Their hugging posters and billboards does not rank as serious politicking. We do not know them from the posters and billboard; we do not hear them from the posters and billboards. Politicians who seek power sell themselves to the electorate in person.
In the times before these, the political parties issued their manifestoes because the duty of winning elections was incumbent on them. The political parties have abandoned this and left their presidential candidates to issue their manifestoes. This means that the individuals are marketing themselves, not their political parties. This is a rather cruel twist in the circular development in our national politics.
When the parties issued and marketed themselves through their manifestos in the first and the second republics, we elected individuals arguably, of our choice into elective offices as wards of their parties. But now that we elect political parties rather than individual candidates, the candidates issue their own manifestoes. They market themselves, not their political parties. It flies in the face of best practices in democracy.
It points to two unsavoury developments. One, our political parties have little or no control over those elected on their platforms. They are, therefore, not the servants of the parties in elective public offices and do not feel bound to do what will advance the interests of their parties. The party manifestoes were the selling points in the past. Each party ensured that those elected on their platforms adhered to the execution of their programmes contained in their manifestoes to help them win re-election.
Two, when the right of the political parties to issue their manifestoes was taken away from them, they lost the capacity to drive national and sub-national developments – the primary responsibilities of parties in a democracy. The result, as I have argued here times without number, is the present chaos we witness in the executive branches of government where presidents and state governors commit to and waste money on hair-brained ideas that only deepen our frustrations and disappointments with our governments.
This country gains nothing from being the poster child of mediocrity and political dullness. Nigerians are excitable people. They need a potential leader whose words, if not deeds, excite them. Our country has everything to gain from presidential candidates whose inspiring speeches melt the wax of dullness. They need impassioned rhetoric that fires their imagination and gives them hope for the emergence of a national leader not allergic to national conversations but who will encourage them to help us resolve our problems through dialogue by people who have ears and can hear one another. It should no longer be more of the same but less of the same and more of the new. It requires no magic.
