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Nigeria’s Expensive Democratic System
The nature of the Nigerian political system is such that breeds thieves and corrupt sets of politicians right from the process of primaries to the campaign itself and down to electoral victory. I came across a report where it was revealed that to win a presidential election in Nigeria requires nothing less than N250 Billion (which is not guaranteed). This is why the system isn’t friendly to those with genuine intentions to work, but instead favorable to those who have pocketed the resources that belong to the people. I wasn’t surprised with the recent news of the price for APC PRESIDENTIAL ticket which is fixed at N100m.
If a candidate can go to the extent of spending that huge amount of money to get a slot to the primary level, sit down to calculate how much he’ll still use to buy the delegates at the Primary to win the party ticket. When the campaign starts proper, he’ll have to tour the 36 states of the federation and the FCT to buy the favors of the godfathers, the electorate (market women, thugs, students, amongst others). After scaling through these, there’s still another set of money to spend on the D-Day (the day of the election) to buy votes before you can stand a chance to win at all. Whoever that will emerge in the election will pass through the same sad process of our political system. Can you see how the system breeds thieves and corruption?
It is logical to see corruption in the land because the system of our politics favors such circumstance and it gives such politicians the opportunity to steal from the land because the very first thing that preoccupies their mind when they win election is how to recover such huge investment in the electoral process. Can you now see why I tagged the Nigerian politics an investment? This is why when they get to office, they become so desperate to recover the huge expenses in the process of primaries and campaigns before their time elapses. Nigerian political system is a money making machine that needs to be fixed; this is why anyone who cannot play to the tune will be left out.
Most of them gradually start to deviate from their plans because the first thing they have to do is to recover those debts. A politician that toured mosques, market places, churches, shrines just to beg for your favors suddenly disassociates himself from the structures that gave him victory and begins to rule like warlord.
There’s a fundamental difference between a politician when he’s seeking office and when he gets the office. It’s a case of Idealism vs Realism. Do you blame him? While he was aspiring, he says many things he knows nothing about until he gets to that office. Many of them believe it will be juicy when they get to office and until they get to power, they see the sad reality. Little by little, he starts playing to the gallery and his behavior begins to change.
Some of you wonder why some academics fail in politics. This can be logically argued.
There’s a clear difference between theory and reality. The way our education system works pay more attention to theories that are situational and very far from the reality when you go to the real world. A student of Economics and Management Sciences that cannot use his knowledge to manage his own life and be successful at running such or Lawyers who are good at telling lies to win cases? Many of the electorate care less on what you have on your head but instead the stomach infrastructure. So, what do you expect when you get elected?
Until we fix the lacunas in our political system, nothing will change and we’ll keep rotating the same sets of individuals in power. Are you ready for a paradigm shift to change the system? We cannot continue to do the same thing in the same way and expect a different result. I look forward to the time when what you have upstairs determines who we elect in office and not how much you can use to settle the boys or the people before you can get the chance. This is my dream for a new Nigeria.
Adelakun Tufayl Olamilekan,
