2015 Presidential Election: A Choice Between an Unimpressive Present and a Tainted Past. Femi Ojo

                                              Photo credit to Sahara Reporters

Nigerian Electorates are in a puzzling time. Our country is in a mystifying period not because of the dwindling price of oil at the international market but primarily because this is an election year. This is a year when Nigerians are expected to go to the polls to vote for a new President who will be in power for the next four years as the constitution of the land stipulates.

At the last count, we have well up to about fourteen different candidates from diverse political parties running for the office of the President. These candidates are different characters from known, little- known, popular and un-popular political parties. Among these political parties are the two leading parties whose political activities have gained so much local and international attentions. These two leading parties have been in the news for both good and bad reasons, hyping their political mantra like a small baby would suck his mother’s breasts. One is a bad apostle of “transformation" and the other will not let us sleep with its’ noisy slogan of “change”. Our polity is now characterized with political campaigns of these two leading parties and the only thing that seems to be trending is the political industry with senseless propaganda ever in our electoral history.

It is paradoxical to know that this coming presidential election, Nigerians have been left to choose between an unimpressive present and a tainted past. The current President who is seeking re-election undoubtedly represents a perfect picture of an unimpressive present. A man who has  been in power for almost six solid good years. His years as the current President are not impressive at all; his administration has been allegedly termed as the most democratically corrupt regime  in our national history. The issue of corruption has defaced his administration and his romance, fraternity and public association with indicted or accused politicians with soiled hands is an open secret. His inability to take drastic  actions  as at when due to tackle the current insecurity of  lives and properties by the Boko Haram terrorists especially in the North-East of Nigeria is a great minus which has made his unimpressive present to be loathed the more by majority of well-meaning Nigerians. On the economic front, Mr. President and his political associates might have recorded so many achievements in the book but Nigerians’ economic lives have been worse off. The value of naira has gone up irrationally due to misgovernance at the centre. The level of economic frustration currently facing Nigerians and the rate of chronic poverty in the land are clear evidences that the economy has grown in the book of Mr. President and his associates but never in the lives of the Nigerian masses.

There are many evidences that abound that the present administration at the centre is an unimpressive one thus does not deserve our collective electoral approval. This is one administration that rode to power on peoples’ sympathy and this is one administration that has also used the same sympathy to exploit and torment the masses of Nigerian people, thus it  will be illogical for Nigerians to continue to support such administration that is known for aspirational frustration of its people.

Having looked at the unimpressive present, it is anticlimax that the leading opposition in whom some masses of our people have little trust has offered us the choice of a tainted past. The Presidential candidate of the leading opposition might be a near- saint as it is widely hyped by those who know well his past anti-democratic defects. I must say that heroes are no saint and thus the opposition’s difference from the present administration is only seen in party’s name, logo and colours. Besides these, they are both the same one circle of repetitious evil and selfish characters who want power for egocentric bent. The Presidential candidate of the opposition no doubt may altruistically mean well for the country but the question is what about many people who surround and fund his campaign? How do we believe that these politicians are not up to something else? How will they recoup millions of dollars they have invested in the campaign without deeping their hands into our commonwealth when they get to power? The amount of billions of naira that have been spent on political campaigns and advertisements are no small money for these Nigerian  political capitalists that surround the opposition’s presidential candidate to  throw away for any reason in the name of altruism. It is high time Nigerians asked logical questions about the financiers and political associates of the opposition party’s presidential candidate.

Sadly, we have been left with no other options than these two leading candidates (no thanks to the media) thus we are now to make our choice between duo-worst leading candidates. How do we choose the good one is now the challenge?  Whatever choice the masses of our people settle for and eventually becomes the next President, I do hope will not betray our electoral judgment and will not amount to continuation of cycle of repetitious evil as Prof. Soyinka recently warned.