First Published In The Peoples Daily Newspaper, Wednesday Column, 22nd, November 2023
For as long as we continue to live like a people above the law, we will continue to build and destroy with our own hands, the very nation we claim we are working to protect. For as long as we enjoy circumvention of institutional processes, we will continue to return to wail over the consequences of our unconstitutionality. No one will make right for us what we refuse to do right as a people and as a nation. Just days ago, the Appeal Court sitting in Abuja sacked the PDP elected governor of Plateau State, and tongues were wagging; but, PDP knows it smacks itself at the back when it failed to organise its house and conduct valid congresses as ordered by the State High Court before the elections. The party, the oldest existing one for that matter since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, ought to know that there would be consequences or did it expect the court to also look the other way?
And because we don’t learn from the past as a people and a nation, we continue to fall into the same pit again and again. It was in 2019 that the ruling APC was disqualified from the contest in Rivers State and had all its victories handed over to PDP in Zamfara State, for almost the same reason, yet, no one learnt from that. And if the people who are presenting themselves to lead us are as bereft of the capacity to do the right things as we have witnessed over time, what hope do we have that we would get things right by having them make decisions at all levels of government?
Some politicians have reduced the country to a state where the court now declares election winners, but then do we blame the court? Political parties have been emasculated by some unscrupulous politicians and the former has been disempowered to carry out their constitutional and democratic functions. It is a major reason why we are having an epidemic of court determinations of election winners. However, the law is the law, devoid of emotion as we call it. How do we explain a Kano State governor who won an election on the platform of NNPP without his name being on the party’s membership register that was submitted to INEC in compliance with the electoral laws and which was equally presented to the court?
However, it was also reported that another party register was later tendered to INEC after the statutory time frame. And still, the embattled governor comfortably is relying on an affidavit deposed to by another person - who is not a party exco - to the effect that he was a member of the party going into the election. Not even an exco from his ward was invited to attest to his party membership. The case to be tested, partially at the Supreme Court according to the Appeal Court judgment is whether the embattled governor of Kano state is duly qualified concerning the omission of his name on the party’s membership register that was submitted to INEC - as tendered as evidence. This is however different from the touted similar case of the Labour Party presidential flag bearer, Peter Obi, who defected from PDP, but which was a determination of whether or not he has the locus standi to present his petition. They are clearly dissimilar.
How effective can such leaders be in power? leaders who could not comply with very basic provisions such as being on the party’s register. Or we could equally attribute the noncompliance to the poor administration of political parties which cut across. In another case, how would a man claiming to possess the capacity to rule a state, yet not knowing the consequences of going on to be on the ballot without a substantial, prerequisite party primary? Unfortunately, that is what we parade across the states and our Local Government Councils; leaders bereft of the capacity to follow rules and so incapacitated to take decisions; leaders manifesting desperacy to manoeuvre their way into power without the capacity to engage power and use the same for the good of the populace that voted them into power.
When you critically assess the sacking of the Plateau State Governor and the uninformed, politically biased, and emotionally charged outrage that follows, you would but want to weep for this country. In 2019, the ruling APC having clearly won the governorship election in Zamfara state lost the same in court, because the party failed to carry out legally valid and presentable primaries; and now, it would appear everyone would have learnt from history but no; PDP in Plateau repeated the same error in 2023. Pre-election, the court instructed the party to organise a new congress in the state and the party chose not to, and now pays dearly for the refusal when the court brought down the big hammer on its head; and would want to cast blame for its woes on everything and everyone else except itself.
These events are mirror images of the leadership position in the country; not just now but over time, we have paraded leaders, elected and appointed, who have no idea of what their offices are meant to be used for. They ride on the instrumentality of crude political power to offices and become redundant. We see ministers who become puppets to carrier bureaucrats, permanent secretaries in their ministries because they lack the capacity to bring anything to the table; ministers who are ceremonial at best, taking accolades and corruptly amassing wealth without having a clue to the working of their ministries.
They have their speech written, and public appearances doctored like people who are in charge but no, they are only in charge of one thing: the appropriation of public wealth into their private purses while the work and the nation continue to suffer. For as long as political parties in the federation, rather than being a ladder to assume positions of power to serve the public, become only. Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs); an instrument of getting inordinate power and financial influence, we would continue to see a nation under and bereft of real indices of development.
This is why building democratic institutions, in this case, political parties, is important for real national development. An effective political party system and administration would have ensured to internalise vital lessons of the past and avoid a repeat. But that is not the case as the opposition parties failed to learn from the losses of the ruling APC in the penultimate election cycle. The consequences of a weak political party administration also directly put pressure on the nation's judiciary which in the eye of the public is now an arbitrary decider of our elections.
Furthermore, ineffective leaders who schemed their way into elective offices for just the sake of their inordinate ambitions and personal aggrandizement have equally grave impacts on our national systems and other institutions. I will mention a few examples shortly after.
This is a nation that by all ramifications should be up there, and serving as an example to others. No doubt, we have so much potential and capacity that we should not be grappling with underdevelopment in whatever sector of our political economy. This is a nation that has been established as a superpower even long before now; Nigeria was there, and stood strong against apartheid in South Africa; we were there across the continent establishing our strength far more than others. We literally earned the giant of Africa nomenclature, and it was not for nothing, we rightly deserve it by virtue of our endowment.
But where are we? We have let ourselves and our nation down. We have let Africa and the entire black race down. Rather than showcasing the strength of socio-economic development and taking our position among the giant nations of the world, we have made ourselves and our nation a laughing stock before other nations. We are now known for corruption, crimes and insecurity. We are now popular as a nation blessed with leaders who have no respect for the people and have literally submitted to the unfortunate perversion of their personal interests are the same as national interest. Leaders who have turned the national wealth into personal wealth and living large in the midst of perennial poverty among citizens.
Today, we hardly can pick on a sector that is flourishing in Nigeria; not a single one. The only thing flourishing is politics and the lives of politicians. Imagine that we have Nigerian students all over African countries studying yet you would hardly see foreign students in our universities. Our students are in Ghana and even in Benin Republic and Togo in droves. It is pathetic.
Was there a time when our hospitals were standard enough, that foreigners travel down for medical tourism? Do we still have the memory of the old glory of the University College Hospital in Ibadan; of receiving foreigners for treatments or we were created from the onset to be the way we are now? If our politicians do not trust the health system they built, it could only send one message to all of us: the standard. For many factors, access to health care in Nigeria is very limited in all dimensions. To what extent have we provided a full range of essential health services to our people, ranging from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care and beyond these, to a holistic improvement of the well-being and quality of lives of Nigerians? It has been below par with the global standards despite the expenditure on the sector from the outset. We have only successfully allocated resources to the sector but also successfully cornered the bulk of the allocations over the decades into private purses without consequences while the sector remains backward.
The summary of our healthcare delivery currently is “low quality,” and this has been the perception over many years with nothing significant beyond the normal political responses from politicians. The entire national health care system and its infrastructure are in a visible state of disrepair, as much as they are substandard by all ramifications. No wonder, we have to spend as much as $1BN annually on medical tourism; even a mere injury sustained by the Labour Union leader some days ago almost warranted his being flown abroad for treatment. It is pathetic.
What would it cost Nigeria to finance its health sector, enough to make available for Nigerians, readily accessible health care services, and the politicians' confidence that their lives are safe in the hospitals they build? Just one thing, the jettisoning of corruption; take this away and the narrative would change for good.
Perennial poor funding of the health sector leaves negative impacts on Nigeria’s rising population. According to a report, Nigeria is now responsible for 20 per cent of global maternal deaths, the world’s highest number of under-5 deaths, the third highest global HIV infections and the heaviest TB burden in Africa. The nation is littered with abandoned health delivery initiatives and projects, while the majority of existing health infrastructure is understaffed, ill-equipped and dilapidated, and those running under these dismal conditions are unable to cater for the Nigerian population.
Poor funding, closely followed by corruption, has been the bane of the sector. We all recall that in 2001, we became a signatory to the continental agreement to allocate a minimum of the nation's annual budget to the health sector. As of 2022, the budget contribution to the sector was 4.9 per cent; being only N724.9 billion out of the N14.77 trillion Federal government’s budget. When this is broken down, it goes down to N3,587 per citizen per year, N298 monthly, N68 weekly and N9 daily.
Why are we not getting it right in aspects that matter most to our democracy and our dear nation? When are we going to begin to get it right? These and many others are questions bothering many well-meaning citizens, but unfortunately, the answers are far beyond us and in the hands of politicians who have for decades and ages refused to succumb to the call for true governance of the country. And for as long as we continue to see politicians exhibiting their desperate attribute to win elections, circumventing just processes, maiming and killing, buying votes and instigating the common man and the media as weapons to win elections, we must know that it is still the usual game and we are in for a long walk till we get to real leadership and national development. All efforts must be put in place to see to the reform of our political party institution in this context; to rescue it from the clutches and abuse of our contemporary politicians, and to save the nation's democracy from further embarrassments concerning election matters.
*GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA*
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