As the 2023 presidential election campaigns took off in Nigeria this week , it is time to focus on issues to be discussed as well as the political actors on the national stage competing for power . This cannot be done in a vacuum or in isolation because Nigeria as a nation , is a very important sovereign citizen of the international community or the comity of nations . A comparative analysis is therefore desirable to not only enjoy the topic or the discussion ,but to help us have an insight into our fate or future as a nation after this 2023 presidential elections .
Already no less a person than our own OBJ , a former head of state has played the role of ‘ a prophet of doom ‘ as it were ,and flew the kite that if religious leaders do not play their role well in preaching the truth , politicians will destroy the nation . That is typical OBJ . He says his mind and Abacha almost killed him for that but he became president instead later and governed for two presidential terms of eight years . Definitely , from or by experience , he knows what he is saying and Nigerians should listen because dismissing him as shouting wolf when there is none will amount to going to sleep in a thatched house when the roof is on fire . We should no wait to be accused later of closing the stable doors after the horses have bolted .
In other not to be hoodwinked or bamboozled by election promises which are the sweet stuff of campaign , especially in Nigeria , we look at two leaders on the world stage who are women and who have just won power to govern in their different political systems . It is apparent that there is no woman in power in Nigeria but that does not mean that Nigerian women are in any way inferior to these foreign women . At least Nigerian women know they are women and real ones at that . Well educated , and comparatively brilliant and competitive in all disciplines with women any where in the world . Unlike a US Supreme Court woman judge candidate who was scared to define the word ‘ woman’ in the way we understand the word , in this our part of the world .
We take a look at the two newest women PMs in both Britain and Italy as well as European and American political and cultural values . The choice of the two nations is predicated on their history and their religious and political pedigree as nations . Britain had an Empire and was a colonial power which colonized Nigeria till 1960 when we became a Republic . Italy was the base of the Ancient Roman Empire which still fascinates politicians and scholars till now and is the origin of the Roman Catholic Church which ruled the civilized world at a time when the Church was the state . We look at the emergence of these women leaders and compare the issues that brought them to power with those in Nigeria and of course the nations of the EU as well as the US , with which the nations mentioned here have a close relationship if not affinity .
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In Britain Liz Truss succeeded Boris Johnson as PM and was the last Minister the Queen received as PM before her demise and fantastic funeral . Giogia Melone became the PM of Italy this week when her Party Brothers of Italy won the largest chunk of votes to form a coalition in which Melone is expected to be Italy’s first woman PM . The two women have some thing in common . They are both conservatives . In European terms that means they are pro family ,church and are against abortion , migration and are anti Islam because of terrorism and its importation without integration into Europe . Consequent upon Brexit , Britain is outside of EU control but the values of these two conservative women that brought them to power conflict with what the EU has stated as European values . These EU values are pro –immigration , pro abortion , promotion and respect for LGBTQ rights and the right of individuals to determine their sex and gendre . Even the words man , he , woman , and she are about to be eliminated in their vocabulary to be replaced by gender neutral terms in the EU and American lexicon under the present US government and in majority of EU nations .That explained why the US Supreme Court judge was unable to define a woman or call herself one . Meloni especially has been demonized as extremist and a danger to the LGBTQ community in Italy but she is in power and is expected to move Italy in the direction of her campaign promises . That should please her supporters immensely and should pain those campaigning for same sex marriage and LGBTQ rights which incidentally includes the Catholic Church based in the Basilica in Rome Italy and is led by Pope Francis from Argentina which recently legalized same sex marriage .
In Nigeria which started its presidential campaigns this week all these issues are not political issues . The issues are different . The presidential candidate of the PDP set the ball rolling when he said at his campaign launch that the Buhari government has failed , that Nigeria is in confusion and that our federalism is suspect and not genuine . That is the tip of the iceberg . The issues of insecurity , mass migration from North to South ,kidnapping , armed Fulani herdsmen terrorism , Boko Haram terrorism and the insurgency in the East , are issues that any presidential contestant must offer credible solutions to be able to win power and rule Nigeria after the 2023 presidential elections .Nevertheless, the PDP candidate has a credibility obstacle to overcome , having been in power as VP before and was an active political supporter of the PDP government of the Jonathan Administration that was accused of the same inadequacies he has laid at the doorstep of the Buhari Administartion . Surely the saying is apt here that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones or they will be ridiculed as the pot calling the kettle black . Nigerians are wiser this time around .
On another note the election of Giorgia Meloni in Italy showed that in politics especially at election time , culture matters . That observation is applicable to politics anywhere in the world and not only Italy but including Nigeria . Meloni and her coalition partners were regarded as homophobic and promoters of hatred against strangers and they lost elections one after the other . At the end of the day the elections showed the main dictum of democracy and that is that the minority must have its say but the majority must have its way , no matter how long that is . In modern politics Italy’s election of its first woman PM has shown that nobody except the electorate at election time can stop an idea, whose time has come .I presume the Nigeria electorate has taken judicious note of that as the camapaigns now begin .