In 2019, It Is Us Vs Them -By Halim Ishaq Shehu

Halim Ishaq Shehu

Election period is fast approaching, and preparations are being done by the political parties towards the incoming election; the group who lost the 2015 election are putting up a full fledged preparation to wrestle power from the party in government, and the people in government are not folding their arms too, they are also preparing to slug it out and still become the ruling party at the end of the day. Therefore, in the preparation for this 2019 elections, the people who are vying for political positions have added more sugar to their tongues in order to deceive the gullible to coast to victory in the coming election. However, promises will be made, the manifesto of the political parties will be garnished with what the electorates want to hear but at the end of the day it would turn out to be the primordial pranks that have always been played on us.

What we have went through in the hands of our political leaders should serve as an eye opener for us in the forth coming election.

Let’s reminiscent to the time PDP came into power. Before PDP came into power, we were under military rule, and the malaises about the military rule are lack of rule of law, wastage of resources on trivia things, and lack of opposition to serve as check in order to hold them accountable. However, the unrestrained squawks of Nigerian citizens about the military rule facilitated the transition to democratic governance that led to the emergence of the PDP as the ruling party in 1999.

Nigerians were infested with high hope of better life under the democratic government compared to the military government, but it turned out to a sore experience an akin of jumping from frying pan to fire. The dividends of democracy were not enjoyed by the Nigerians, the wastage of the resources that permeated the military rule was evident in the democratic rule, Nigerians were marooned by the few individuals in the sharing of the country’s resources, and the situation continued unabated that got Nigerians fed up and decided to give another political party a chance and APC rode to power by leveraging on the failure of the PDP.

Surprisingly, after the emergence of the APC on the mercy of the 16 years misrule of the PDP, things are still how it used to be. The APC’s promise of purifying the putrefying stench of corruption that has permeated every nook and crannies of the country has failed, the hope Nigerians had on APC speedily morphed into forlon, unprecedented killing in every part of the county, and improper handling of the economy that led to the dampen economic image of the country, and to mention few.

The actions of both political parties that have enjoyed the seats of governance tell the tale that they don’t deserve our votes come 2019, the elites who are the leaders of the both parties don’t have the interest of Nigerians at heart. They came, they saw, and they mismanaged. Therefore, the weapon of liberating ourselves from the whims of the political elites lies in our hands who are the electorate. 2019, is US vs THEM. Let’s stop recycling incompetence and shun the politics of religious and tribal sentiment. 2019 lies in our hands. It’s either we make it or mar it.