The drama is playing out before our very eyes. The race for the presidential nominations of the ruling party and the main opposition party is assuming a comical, if not a tragic, dimension. Fifteen candidates have cleared the first hurdle towards the nominations under the banner of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Each had coughed out N40 million ($68,376). As at the time of writing, about twenty candidates of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have paid N100 million ($240,884) each for the nominations. It’s been speculated that about ten more may pick the nomination forms before the close of the exercise today.
The wanton display of the nomination forms in photo ops on Instagram and other social media platforms is bizzare, if not scandalous. The parties are cashing out bigly while the nation’s inflation is in double digit and its poverty index is on a downward trend. The Naira rain is being staged in the middle of unbridled insecurity and as the government - funded universities are closed for more than a quarter of the year.
It would seem the aspirants or the pretenders don’t give any qualms about our sensibilities. Each claims to have come out after consultations with stakeholders, even when they had only conversed with their shadows and dialogued with their ambitions. In what is a dubious and self-deceitful posture, most of them claim the nomination forms were paid for by some faceless supporters or coalitions of interest groups. One aspirant in charge of the nation’s critical economic institution is still seeking a divine direction even though he has already registered as a party member in his ward and has obtained a nomination form. And you wonder why only a quarter of the so-called aspirants are actually traversing the nation, connecting with and wooing the delegates.
Which begs the question: have the parties settled for a coerced consensus as against direct or indirect primaries during their forthcoming conventions? And could that be why each candidate in APC has been allegedly compelled to sign a ‘voluntary’ withdrawal form? Is there a hidden agenda in the proliferation of candidates from the South to give the North the advantage of crowning a malleable Southerner? With the Northerners at the helm of the two parties, the natural reasoning is that the the parties are poised to produce Southern presidential candidates. But will crass opportunism and brazen regional jingoism cloud reason and keep the presidency in the North for additional eight years?
Meanwhile Nigerians are immersed in the theatre of the absurd with a mixture of disbelief, distrust and disinterest. They hope the pretenders will leave the stage for the serious contenders. They pray that the crafty will be taken in their own craftiness, that the hands of the deceitful will not be able to perform their enterprise, and that the evil men will grope in the day as if it were darkness. In agony, Nigerians hope and pray for rejoicing in the land as righteous and visionary leaders bestride their political landscape in 2023.
Will their hope and prayers make the difference? How long more shall Nigerians wait?
While most Nigerians can only watch on the sidelines now because we are not members of these 2groups of same of the same, my counsel is that we all must take voting at the general election very serious. This is when we can give them the shock of their life at every level.
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