It has become so customary and familiar that every four years, or put in another way, every election cycle or season, Nigerians will go all out in search of a new messiah, the old or outgoing messiah and chosen one having failed them woefully or performed so marvelously well, according to only his supporters, acolytes and praise singers. We have witnessed this endless cycle of events or going and coming in the nation’s electoral journey, odyssey that nothing more ever excites some people about our elections and their predictable outcomes. The 2023 election season is therefore not going to be radically different from the preceding ones if our attitudes remain unchanged.
There are some Nigerians, patriotic and unpatriotic, nationalistic and ethnic, religious bigots and free thinkers, whose major contributions to our electioneering is putting forward the qualities of the new brand messiah that would save Nigerians from legendary misrule and abuse of power and nepotism and cluelessness associated with political leadership in the country since independence or particularly since we birthed this democratic political dispensation in 1999, our fabled date with destiny when we reportedly sent the military despots and their imitators packing.
In 1999 when the journey to the present nascent democratic dispensation commenced, notable Nigerians and the elite gathered in many town hall meetings across the country and came up with sterling qualities our new president or messiah or savior would have in quantum. If I can remember very well, such qualities included being patriotic, nationalistic, servant-leader, selfless, detribalized, having good knowledge of the economy, polity and morally upright and other fancy things they listed.
At long last, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, an ex-military leader and born again democrat emerged as our new brand president and the rest as they say in this part of the world is now history. After eight long years of Obasanjo’s rule, we went back to the beat again and listed yet more qualities of our next new president; messiah and savior combined would have including being angelic and nothing short of a miracle worker, a magician and even a superman. After President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration was truncated by ill-health and eventual death, the polity suffered some political quakes before his deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was allowed to assume the reins of power through the doctrine of necessity. Jonathan went ahead and won another four years despite our long list of eminent qualities our president must have.
Then in 2015, Nigerians witnessed another unusual high drama of the qualities of the new savior that will occupy Aso Rock, the seat of power. Despite our usual list of good qualities our new leader must possess, the managers and handlers of Muhammadu Buhari campaign sold him to Nigerians as a great patriot and a born again democratic who would save Nigeria from the Boko Haram insurgency, fix the wobbling economy and fight corruption to a standstill. This happened in spite of protestations by many that a leopard hardly changes its spots and that a military despot will always remain one. But Buhari’s handlers invented derogatory words to paint the then messiah at Aso Rock, calling him clueless and spineless and other unprintable epithets known to the English language.
Eight years after, Nigerians can now tell the difference between the then messiah and the new one they sold to Nigerians. Upon all the listing of qualities of our new messiah at every election season, are Nigerians better off? Is Nigeria not the poverty capital of the world where millions of people live far below one US dollar per day? Is Nigeria not being buffeted by insecurity despite making it a campaign issue? Are millions of young Nigerians not unemployed in spite of our being a major global oil producer?
As we steadily approach the election season to usher in a new messiah in 2023, we are still being inundated with fresh list of great qualities the messiah will have. Although those qualities are a rehash of previous qualities listed by our compatriots or the same people with varying inflections and tonalities, they remain the new rituals of our election season. They have become meaningless to the people and even those aspiring to be the new messiah. We are at the crossroads in our polity where self-proclaimed kingmakers now want to be kings and only one king or messiah will rule the republic at a time. I believe strongly that something is definitely wrong in a polity where kingmakers now aspire to be kings. Although there is nothing basically wrong with listing the qualities of our new messiah, after all he is going to be the leader of all of us, the paradox of the Nigerian jinxed political atmosphere is that those who put all of us in the manhole we are in today are the same people parading the polity and the media houses with their expected qualities of our new messiah.
How can the same people who put us in this mess be the ones telling us the way forward? How can the blind lead the blind? What these people easily forget is that no Nigerian leader will come from heaven. He will still come from among us. Regardless of the qualities of the new messiah they listed, the only way we can get out of the present political quagmire is to ensure that the electoral system is free from corruption and undue interference by the powers that be.
This is where the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will come in and save the country from the looming anarchy of impunity and imposition of leaders. A free and fair poll will enthrone quality leadership, something Nigeria has been in the lack since independence. No country will grow beyond its leaders. For us to get the kind of leader or messiah we need in 2023, we must envision a new society, a new Nigeria where things will work, where every Nigerian must be equal before the law and where every section or part of the country is given a sense of belonging. We should imagine a new Nigeria where hard work pays and where one can dream to achieve whatever he wants to be. Nigeria’s endless search for a new messiah at every election cycle will be highly lessened when we agree to build a real nation out of the over 250 or more ethnic groups in the country.
Before then, the political rat race continues with many kingmakers speaking in diverse tongues. History moves in cycles and tends to repeat itself but in Nigeria, it always repeats itself even in months. To avoid a situation where our past is better than our present, we must strive to build a strong new nation of our imagination. We must restructure our politics and our mindset of our country and its politics and make it all-inclusive.
Our endless search for a messiah will continue until we jettison the culture of recycling old and tired leaders who should be in retirement. Purposeful, responsive and forward-looking leadership will continue to elude us until we tinker with our leadership recruitment system by fundamentally redefining and setting national and even world-class standard for the kind of leaders we want. Until then, we really need a leader who can fix Nigeria in all sectors and not necessarily a saint, miracle worker or a superman.