The Nigerian General Election 2023: Daylight Robbery.
The effect of consistently usurping the will of a people in a political environment, is that you’ll eventually alienate the people, and deny them a sense of belonging in the government, and in their commonwealth.
The major difference between a military rule and a civilian government is not the quality of leadership.
It is the will of the people to choose their own leaders.
For instance, in Nigeria, some older folks will argue that military rule gave us some of the most time-worthy infrastructure in the country such as the third Mainland bridge, the Niger bridge, free education, job creation etc.
And yet those social incentives were not enough to earn the goodwill of the people they led. People would rather have a fraction of these things under a government they chose themselves- or believe they chose.
As the political will of a people who come out to vote continues to be usurped by a smaller class of people, people soon feel detached from national sentiments, and become less inclined to protect national resources because they don’t feel they have a stake in it, nor do they believe it benefits them personally.
An Igbo proverb says; Children chorus the ritual tunes in vain. The meat used for the sacrifice belongs to the adults.
The result is an anarchy where each man hustles for his own pie from the national cake because if you left it for the people whose responsibility it is to share it equally, it will never get to him. He might as well help himself. Singing children will soon tire and want a piece of meat too.
Others will see their fellow citizens committing crime against state and feel no moral imperative to stop him, because they too, have no sense of co-owner ship for corporate resources.
Crime will increase. Moral justifications of crime will increase (remember how several Nigerian youths felt sympathetic towards Hushpuppi when News of his arrest in Dubai first broke out?)
Tales like the white man stole from us first were everywhere. Those youths were happy to live the dream life vicariously through Hush puppi’s outlandish social media pictures, even if the source of his income was illegitimate and ruining the income of others somewhere.
President Buhari had a special moment in history to do one thing right: to extend the same graciousness of a free and fair election like the one that brought him into power in 2015 when GEJ conceded defeat.
He failed to use it. In 2020, a few bullets from armed men sent the wailing youths into retreat. But have you heard the folklore about the horns of the raging beast that re- grew and became more monstrous than the ones its owner took out?
New horns are taking shape, and will fight back soon.
