Politics and Political Prostitution in Nigeria -by Mustapha Saddiq

I know many will ask in disbelieve, ‘prostitution’? And I will say, YES!

Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in ‘sexual relations’ in exchange for payment or other benefit. Well, one may wish to replace the word in parenthesis with ‘political relations’ and the meaning of political prostitution will be quite clear.

In Nigeria, anytime election year approaches, a day hardly pass without hearing, seeing or reading a political defection (or atleast a rumor of it) from one political party to another. One will be reading headlines such as Mr so so and so is consulting about his political future or that Mr so so and so, or group of people has dumped party A to party B. In most cases, this is bound purely base on some personal gains rather than the interest of the electorates.

In Nigeria, our politicians changes party at will and also take no time in adapting into their new party. This and of course many other reasons are making me wondering if at all there is any difference among our political parties and politicians apart from their names. In my country, politics is being played without sanity, parties are being founded with no ideologies and people enter politics with out principles. One will not be wrong if he or she said that the majority of our politicians are out just to enrich themselves.

I know the inherent political character of whether good or bad, a person does not change just by mere change of political party -afterall, political parties in Nigeria are just platforms on which politicians showcase their egos- but I believe there is that integrity and trust no matter how small it is that is being lost with each.

I will give the benefit of doubt to those politicians that ‘cross-carpeted’ just once that maybe they might realized their first mistake but seriously I have no respect for political prostitutes; at least I shouldn’t be expected to trust someone that changes party at will. That tells much about him or her when entrusted with the public treasury.
Now in Nigeria we have people that not only castigated and abused the party they are comfortably in now, but also call the party members all sort of unprintable names before but only for them to come back and ‘eat their vomit’ with no shame. They are now dinning with those their old foes. Ridiculous!

So now I ask, when will we have some sanity and decency in our politics? When will we start seeing people with integrity in the political arena? When will we start playing politics base on ideologies? When will the masses come in terms with the reality and start giving their mandate to only those politicians with integrity? When will we start rejecting all those political prostitutes? I hope soon.