Has

Has "Power" Ever Shifted?

Umar Bello

Jubail, K S A

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all the time" (1856) Abraham Lincoln

The issue of power shift has again cropped up in our polity for exasperatingly the umpteenth time and unsuspecting Nigerians mostly and surprisingly the victims of misgovernance have been raising their sinews on the compass arrow of the next leader. I think is better for one to be busier with how to survive the grim Nigerian situation and keep body and soul together than allow his blood pressure that is all time high to be tipped to more perilous level by being hysterical about the texture or tongue of the next president. Unless if his hysterics would toe a much more pragmatic path.

When the firebrand ABU intellectual the late Yusuf Bala Usman was asked his opinion on power-shift, he replied that power has not shifted an inch. It has always been within a class of people that has cut the whole gamut of the Nigerian society till date. He couldn't have been more right! The reality is that power shift is just a clause planted into our constitution by the power and bourgeois elite within themselves in their never-ending struggle to gain material advantage. While power swings like pendulum from the North to the South the conditions of Nigerians simply worsens. Abacha rule had not a wee bit made an average Bala in Kano, Abacha's state, richer nor has Obasanjo's rule made an average Bola in Ogun wealthier. What we have in both divides are wealthier families, cronies and sycophants from all sections of the country. It is based on this premise, a corrupt one, for that matter, that every Nigerian wants the next president to be 'his own' This Psychological comfort in my own being there is a destructive luxury we can not afford. In fact many aspirants latch in on that aspect of their geographical location as the greatest force in their eligibility.

I think it is time that we all woke up from our deep slumber and realized that It is not the geography or genetics of a president that matters but his individual capacity for serious leadership, his compassion and sympathy to the present deplorable state of Nigerians, his savvy of our ailments and his being in possession of a ready antidote. For all we should care, the next president can come from mars but let him deliver! But if we keep on making a mountain out of the place the womb of the president happened to be buried it then becomes to us, an end in itself. If that has any material relevance why is the North still backward inspite of having more than half a dozen presidential wombs earthed in our backyard! We have the highest number of presidents yet the highest ratio of beggars. This is because the leaders lead for themselves and families and while in leadership lived abroad not here for they are strangers to the basic realities of survival in Nigeria. Their eyes are only entertained by facades of sated realities by their yes-men.

If Obasanjo attempts to visit an area today, God-bless that place, for a new road will be constructed, dirt will be cleared, weed will be barbed, Nepa will not dare blink and even madmen and beggars will be cleared not to sore the presidential eyes. All evidences of a satisfied citizenry will be transposed where so ever the president chooses to grace with his presence instead of leaving the sordid realities of administrative laxity unedited or undoctored. The president is not interested in the latter realities either; for he is there as the president on the strength of certain constituencies in which ordinary Nigerians are never, and will never be, a part.

What Nigerian leaders have timelessly missed is that rendering committed leadership has boundless booties both here and hereafter. When you make people happy, you will be happy too because it is infectious. I have seen this reality recently here in Saudi Arabia. Their new King, Abdullah Ibn Abdulaziz Al Sa'ud, has become the darling of all. In one fell swoop he has slashed the price of gas by 33% and now with a mere 30 riyals (just over a thousand naira) one can fill up his tank. The domino effect of this slash is a general fall in prices of goods in the whole society. Beside this, the King has a placed the rehabilitation and empowerment of the poor as the centre piece of his domestic policies. He has inaugurated a housing scheme gratis for the poor. There is a drive for employment creation and the likes. The sum of these is that the octogenarian King has won the heart of the people fair and square. He has earned the soubriquet ' Malik-el-Kulab' 'King of hearts' and you can never insult him any where and go free. What I'm just trying to point out here is that leaders can be good at no expense and yet reap boundless benefits. Nothing has reduced the king here materially and as he once said 'I give you what deserve. This is your wealth' And that is just it! No one bothers to know whether the king has a lot of money stashed in foreign accounts or anything because an average Saudi is well fed, well taken care of and well clothed. No one Nigeria in could have bothered with the fact that the Abacha family had stolen billions of naira, if he had food to eat, clothes to wear and shelter to sleep in and the security of sleeping with both his eyes closed.

Nigerians have for long contained ungrudgingly a set of the most sadistic leaders in the world. It has all along been one sadistic policy upon another since the inception of this polity. Of recent, the government is laying off 33,000 workers from the civil service in a state of dire economic straits and crushing employment. What are these laid off workers supposed to do in order to eat? This is a government that feigns a concern to fight crime while they fuel the embers of crime daily thro such policies. It is funny that a state governor partly in dearth of foresight or lack of priority or even both had decided to be paying self-confessed retired thieves a stipend of 5000 naira as a way of fighting crime. If criminals could be so honored what then would be the pay of Nigerians who had restrained themselves and clung to their exiguous realities of penury to survive rather than opt for crime? What then is their pay? No pay for them here because to qualify for this honor, you have to be a retired hardened thief! This is the mind frame and skewed reasoning of people leading us.

In conclusion, I believe it is time we Nigerians stood up for our lives and that of our posterity. No one can fight for us but ourselves. We have to insist on leaders based on merit and based on the fact that they have the compassionate mind to change our condition for the better. 'Power shift' is only an elitist cry, within themselves, as they pass us like ping pong ball. It is akin to saying 'pass the ball here' while they score their goals. An aspirant should not earn our votes only on the fact that he wears a tribal mark like yours for if the marks, themselves, are of any significance they would have done something significant to your since you also wear them. We shouldn't be deceived forever!