Of the Presidential Election and Nigerians’ Weakness -By Chris Gonoh

Historians most times establish events and facts on the mainstream of possibly preceding and succeeding outlined notable occasions not without an in-depth knowledge and external sources, to birth an unprecedented account. These they accompany with courage and persistence, meticulousness and integrity. Nigeria’s political history, come what may, can not bow to controversial topics or archives disengaging it moderating influence from ethnicity because, political parties has never been realistically ”national”. Some historians who are the new preachers of ‘flaws and sures’ can surreptitiously reconsult primary sources and save us from the probable one-in a-thousand result of the system’s cracks and collapses.

Let us tell ourselves the truth from both the realities of our nation and the goals and desires of Nigerians. To get out of this mess, we must without inactions, make individual sacrifices. Since 1978 when General Olusegun Obasanjo blew the whistle for the game of politics to commence, our weakness has been in our diverse ethnic and cultural differences; our weakness is ethnic sentiment and enslavement of our emotion and greed to ethnicism and racial identity. We have since embraced the Democratic system of government and the aiding pillars and institutions which follows it. Hence, when we waste the positive tenet of an all-inclusive state system as we have ignorantly been doing in the past by dint of bias, we again become our greatest ringers and manipulators. The provisions for the right and freedom of an individual to vote his choice, is already an essential element in proffering a productive scope of direction to our national life.

Our weakness is the least human tendencies that does pardon or cordon any misplaced preference; not without a payback for those who share in the cup of prejudice, including those who did not. At this juncture, two points needs to be made. First, our future leader should be skilled in global leadership, conveys ideas effortlessly in the appropriate and makes swift decision to crises. Second, there is a need for a leader who knows how to speak to any person or group despite their race, age, gender or background without truncating anger, emotional distress and stereotypes. These are the simplest yet most difficult key competencies for effective governance

We must not retain our ancestral differences. This is what it takes to alter the lot of our people—the old and young. To build a nation of our dream, we must recruit a capable and compassionate human for the job, disregarding ethnocentric bias. And the industrialization and innovation which we seek await us.

What is of great importance is to recognize and give ethnic bias, it due place, which is the graveyard. It is essential to our progress yet an enchantment with ethnic and cultural affinity cannot mean a break with the past nor the concurrent history.

Chris GONOH writes from Okpella, Edo State.