Something's got to give

• Published date: 02 February 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

En route to the general elections, the charge persists that the race is dominated by controversial characters. Several pundits dismiss the political class as corrupt and attack the system that sustains them. But how did such a system manifest? From where do politicians emerge?

They aren't from outer space. They didn't fall from the clouds. Neither did they manifest through the membrane of an alternate reality. Rather they are sired by Nigerian families. They are produced from society's cultured and corrupted loins. They are groomed by our schools, prisons, worship houses, and traditional institutions.

They are our fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, grannies, sons, daughters, concubines, and benefactors. They are a perfect reflection of the Nigerian family - a spitting manifestation of our clandestine quirks and professed values.

Among the contenders for the various public offices, some incumbents have boasted that they would turn scorched earth to gold even though all they did in their first term was pound the precious metal to dross. Some promised to turn the underdog into an overlord, but all they did was make street sweepers of the strapping, and sewage cleaners of the literate in the cold, harsh bowels of the diaspora.

More youth get by in the shadowy political economy as goons, assassins, mercenary protesters, and internet hooligans. Those who fall outside the bracket of patronage end up as armed robbers, kidnappers, drug mules, and human traffickers.

Yet en route to the 2023 elections, some presidential aspirants have presented their manhood in flight. Flaunting a juvenile skittishness, they leapfrog from mood to mood, from cloying fib to the ugliest lie, seeking to enchant gullible galleries.

Others have flaunted the privilege of incumbency, frantically playing to more sterile herds. However, the leader Nigeria needs must be visionary, pragmatic, brilliant, and unflinchingly humane.

He must flaunt a brilliant track record, glowing and fruitful, like a blooming orchard. He is a true patriot, the type that wears altruism on his heart's sleeves. Demagogues promise glory without sweat, success without sudor, and get significant segments of the citizenry, mostly youth, hung up on the fantasy of a world without hardship. That is not the kind of leader that we need.

If there is a cautionary tale in Nigerian politics, it is the tension between the politician and the voter. Both schemers, their hostility echoes the proverbial race between the fox and tortoise. The...