It is perfectly legitimate and morally defensible to have a political ambition. It is also in order, even if you are a neophyte in the game, to aspire to the highest office in the land.
Money is a major determinant in the consideration of anyone with such ambition. Mountains of them matter. But as has just been proven, they are not the sole determinant. It goes beyond that.
The moral lesson there is that if you have money and lack other essentials, you are done for. If it is all about money, Buhari will by now be preparing to move to his retired headmaster’s home in Daura where Grundig TV is the local plasma.
If anyone chooses to ignore that lesson, a fool at 40 or 70 plus will remain a fool forever.
I doubt if any Nigerian, living or dead, prepared for governance more than Obafemi Awolowo of blessed memory who, when some of his peers or competitors were, in his own words, busy carousing with women of easy virtues, he was busy at his table thinking out solutions to the problems of Nigeria. He ran a better and issues-based campaign more than Shehu Shagari’s or Nnamdi Azikiwe’s, but he was adjudged loser. Many genuinely felt for him because they felt he was best equipped to help the country advance in development as he did when he was premier of the defunct Western Region and chalked up a lot of ‘firsts’ such as the first TV station in Africa, the first housing and commercial estate in the country, as well as the first world-class stadium named Liberty Stadium in Ibadan.
Although he headed for the courts to contest his loss, he did not deliberately pilot the country to the precipice. He proved a true democrat and returned to his legal business when the courts affirmed Shagari’s victory, preparing for another time. Perhaps he contented himself with the holy injunction that the race is not usually for the swift.
Has anyone given it a thought that this mind-set of winning at all cost, may be the major reason why human lives have come to a discount in our country, where politicians lives are just snuffed out by hired killers at the flimsiest of excuses that are not in any way justifiable?
Why can’t Atiku Abubakar pursue his electoral ambition without promoting ethnic disharmony and emulating the nationalistic posture of Awolowo? Why this desperation, suggesting that if it doesn’t go my way, the country can go to blazes? What has come on the Turaki Adamawa who pursued his case against his boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo in those heady days of their Presidency in an impressive manner beholding of a nationalist and a democrat?
I have a quality advice for the serial presidential contender: If he’s not going to confirm some back talk that he’s desperate about becoming President of Nigeria to cover up some alleged illegalities arising from the privatisation exercise in Obasanjo’s time which was put under his charge, and if he will not lend credence to the subtly crystalising charge that he wants a Nigeria to be enjoyed by a few to the detriment of the overwhelming majority, he should prove a good Muslim by accepting this “fait accompli” that Muhammad Buhari’s victory at the polls is Allah’s will.
The Sultan of Sokoto and the Ooni of Ife and other top monarchs from the South East and South South of Nigeria had spoken with one voice that Atiku should let Nigeria be and accept the outcome of the presidential election. To do otherwise is to show disregard, if not disdain, for these eminent symbols of our tradition and culture – and that will not be in sync with his revered status as the Turaki of Adamawa and other places in the country where these monarchs honoured him with prestigious chieftaincy titles.
I am also giving this advice, remembering way back in the 70s when he was visiting the S.B. Falegan’s flat at Victoria Island to look out for his wife, Titi, opposite my cousin’s (Senator Biyi Durojaye) flat in the Central Bank quarters then. Where I am heading is that such a genial and likeable man from way back then should be dissuaded from the path of self-destruction he is treading at the moment. Only those who are benefitting from his current hard-headedness will goad him on. And when the bubble eventually bursts, he will discover, to his chagrin, that he is left alone to lick his wounds. The scavengers would have flown away!
‘I’m not in the party to win, but make money at election time’
The above headline was a statement I heard from one or two pals who are somewhat close to me but who had always chosen to pitch their political tents in different zones from mine.
That got me curious to know why people could throw their hat – and money – into an electoral ring and don’t care a hoot if their money goes up in smoke. I felt perhaps they weren’t coordinated to know what they were saying, thinking loudly inside me if they didn’t need psychiatric attention at some point.
Until I got to the root of it from another person. That such people make more money from their parties than they put in the electoral process; so they couldn’t bother if they contested on the platforms of those parties and still flop and fail in such elections.
Such people, to be sure, don’t mean well for society, and decent people who don’t worship filthy lucre, must avoid such people like plague. In the fullness of time, such people will make themselves outcasts in politics and the society can then move on to evolve better politics and politicking.