With Uche Nnadozie
You cannot but be impressed with Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili. She is eloquent, passionate and brilliant in her public interest interventions. Indeed she’s an interviewers delight anytime. She comes with a lot of gumption and panache. Asides her God given public speaking ability, you can hardly fault her logic. Who wouldn’t? The lady better known as โMadam Due Process” has seen it all. Her civil society and public service records are quite impressive. Besides she’s not one of those who people can point to as having been enmeshed in corruption. Having held important and high offices in Nigeria and the World Bank, it was not surprising therefore that her rallying cry on behalf of the kidnapped Chibok Girls in 2014 attracted instant international attention.
Since the coming of this government, she has been a visible critic. This is good and in fact most of the time, you can say she is perhaps the โconscience of the nation” at this time. Her words carry weight and she has a lot of dedicated adherents on and off the social media. She’s among the top ten social media influencers in Nigeria. Yours truly is an admirer too and very proud. Her influence is even more effective because she as a mentor has very many young people she has taken in her wings. Folks who she helps in words and contacts to elevate their own ideas and turn those ideas to substance. And that is why when she stated that she was going to lead a movement to stop Nigerians from voting the ruling party, All Progressives Congress, APC and the main opposition, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP I also took her serious.
Since her announcement, she has followed through with interviews in traditional media. On twitter the movement is growing. A lot of young people and the young at heart have signed up. The idea is gaining traction, but I am not impressed, I am not in. I am surprised not because the idea came in the first place but because of the lost opportunity. My point has always been that as a third force, you don’t spend your time, energy and resources to say a general โno” to an idea when you could have used the same skills to say ”yes”. I mean, instead of spending resources and emotion in saying no to APC and PDP, why not use the same energy to say yes to a political party or set of candidates? By this you would have given the people an alternative.
This is important because we are talking about national politics not de-marketing a rival brand’s product. In our country, our attention span is very limited. The most you can achieve with this kind of movement is that a lot of the followers who make Ezekwesili tick will stay away from the polls. The real people who make up the majority will still go out and vote those two parties come 2019. What’s more, it has become fashionable in Nigeria for our acclaimed intellectuals to fail in politics. They easily distant themselves from the system as if those in it are devils. Mrs. Ezekwesili herself will tell you that she’s not a politician. Same with others who although belong to one political party or the other still come out to dissociate themselves on a regular basis from their party’s viewpoints; especially when they lose out on influence within the system. They don’t have staying power, they believe that other party members should see that they are intellectuals, thus hand the party over to them. No effort at all to work with others.
The truth is that our intellectuals including Madam Due Process most often behave like the ostrich. They try to behave as if they are not part of the ruling elite. They do not want to engage in the process. They find all manner of excuses including โhow politics is done” in Nigeria. The fact is that you cannot have solutions to economics, policies, and other issues without finding solutions to how to win election without following the Nigerian experience. Why has it eluded our intellectuals not to have found a way around our politics? Why is it difficult for Ezekwesili and people like her to get into APC or PDP? Indeed why is it difficult for her to form a political party? I say these because we have passed this road before. It is numbers that win election and not ”ideas”. Being dissatisfied with President Buhari is not enough to dissuade APC members from voting their party.
The ”anger” in the land must be harnessed. You don’t turn that anger into a negative political movement, you have to turn it to a positive one. When Boko Haram and corruption caused so much anger under former President Goodluck Jonathan, opposition elements had to find a way to merge. After that, they enlarged their membership, the next thing they picked a candidate who was marketable and used the two problems at the time to sell him as the person that can best tackle terrorism and corruption. That is hope. Simply put, the anger in the land was harvested in a positive manner. Today, the Red Card Movement is not a political party, has no candidate 12 months to election yet it has as its core objective to stop people from voting established parties? I am sorry, the strategy is flawed. It wonโt work!
