There are issues with professional or career politicians who occupy political offices in every administration in a cyclical fashion. Every government appoints them to something, or they are always seeking one elective position or the other, so others and young people have no space to enter the political arena, while the old hands and proven impracticable visions are continually being recycled.
Unfortunately, these old hands have been responsible for government institutional, structural and systemic non-performance and failure. Most of these politicians are considered spineless by the youth becausethey are unable to make hard advancement decisions and take actions that can change the rot status quo of the nation, nor fix the challenges confronting the masses that continue to inflict intentionally induced poverty (IIP).
All for fear of unwanted elite backlash, since their hands are themselves not clean, they are decided to remain undecided about making those hard calls for transformative change. For instance, politicians know how to make the railways work to reduce the costs of freight nationally but they won’t do it, so the northern mafias and the business moguls can carry on with their lucrative trailer-shipment businesses. They won’t make the power sector work, so the small generator importers would not be offended.
Therefore, when people find a politician who can pretentiously voice populist views/desires and promises to take risks, they flock to him. This was the case with General Mohammadu Buhari in 2015. Nigerians needed a politician who could shoot straight according to popular judgement or the people’s aspirations, and they thought they found their men in Buhari. The people needed someone who could sweep Nigeria clean of corruption and call back stolen resources, eliminate government fiscal spending rascality and restore sanity. They needed someone that could face the problem of insecurity, reverse the emerging severe unfriendly economic trends and make life easier for the masses. Nigerians rejoiced because Buhari was saying what they wanted to hear, so they flocked to him. Unfortunately, till 2018, General Buhari is yet to deliver. His structures, systems, institutions, and policies continue to wreak havoc on the poor masses. He himself has been confounded and shocked by the fact that even with the so called upward changes in the economy, the masses have not yet felt the improvement in their daily living status. Whether he will finally deliver the people’s desires is another thing.
More and more electorates in developing nations are rising up to vote politicians that have the capacity, and/or illogicality to fulfill asymmetrical transformations of the damaged institutional and systemic challenges confronting society, and not just one with bags of money, and a case full of beautiful promises to make. Promises are usually only made to get votes as proved by the current administration but those who propose result-oriented solutions to illogical challenges facing society should be the ones that should be given future space. Information should update insight, where politicians know what is ailing the society, such information should give them insight as to how to resolve national, institutional and systemic issues. The catalog of problems should not just be collected and stocked in files.
Failed national management of state affairs, and rogue business operations that kill the masses with high prices of market goods alone cannot be blamed, nor can they be said to be the dual-solo culprits responsible for keeping Nigeria depressed, and the people disenfranchised and oppressed. There is an unholy alliance between the structures, systems and their managers that comprehensively combine and also contribute to the deleterious situations that keep the nation underdeveloped.
The way the structures and systems are arranged, and how they network to operate and deliver services and development determinations for the nation serve to depress, destroy hopes and cause disorder and suffering for the people. Thinking heads need to be come together to redesign how these structures, systems, their arrangements, and management can be restructured and adjusted so they can take the nation to the Promised Land more productively. Then there is the multiplier effect contribution of the damages from corporate organizations’ greedy operations that make goods so unaffordable and unreachable for the masses, forcing inflation, and inducing greater poverty and exasperation amongst the masses.
To repair twisted and fragmented public institutions, structures and their service systems that continue to frustrate the people, intentional steps must be taken to make the required changes. Consequently, private individuals, national assembly members, executive branch, and so on, could sponsor bills that can x-ray and analyze with a meticulous eye for details, to identify and address wrongs each public structure/institution and their systems inflict on society, describing how the structure/institution has been broken/fractured and caused to fail by the identified extant diversities of wrongs.
Then a strategic consulting team must be engaged to propose in collaboration with public opinion, how such structures and their systems can be restructured, fixed, sanitized and made more-people responsive and productive. The truthful and realistic restructuring of public institutions, structures and systems, and the way they service the nation, and the aspirations of the people must be engaged by the 2019 general election winning president, who must be a learning president.
He must have the temerity to open a national debate that will ask the people to discuss the institutions, ministries, their different agencies, and systems/functions that frustrate the masses and how such frustrations occur, and how they perceive these offenses can be resolved satisfactorily sustainably. The dialogue must include their painstakingly describing practically their experiences with the existing democracy institutions and systems’ gaps. They should also suggest efficient control, monitoring and evaluation& learning systems that can be employed to continuously unveil failures or positive progress in the reimagined democracy institutions and systems, and how to make things even more efficient while eliminating existent inefficiencies.
For a new nation to emerge out of the old, constituencies must demand that things be done differently. The old mold just will not fit. The new mold must be designed in line with the aspirations and drives of the society. Negotiations, determinations, alignments, streamlining, public referendums, and so on, must be made to enable functional new institutions and systems adaptable to people’s existent local political, economic, living conditions and exigencies.
Constituencies must insist politicians be democrats indeed. People shouldn’t ascend offices by loud mouthing claims, promises, and unproductive mantras but by what they have done in the past while living and working as ordinary members of society. Past achievements must be measured by ideologically based frameworks and personal trustworthiness.
Sympathy, nepotism, favoritism, preferential treatment, man-know-man, and all the like weaknesses used to elevate people to public/institutional/systemic offices in the old nation must be fiercely rejected and frowned at. The new mold must carry new people with new mentalities. Promises that may never be kept or fulfilled shouldn’t be given space whatsoever. In the new nation, politicians must mean what they say, and what they don’t say, and plan out transparently with the people. They must not introduce policies that will detrimentally affect people’s lives secretly, unless a referendum is invoked. If the new nation calls for new politicians with new mentalities, what should then be done to the expired career or professional politicians who have robed the nation and created the fragmentary democracy systems?
They and their policies have left the nation chronically impoverished due to their corrupt ways, drainage of national resources, poor judgement/decision-calls, and pursuit of self-interests, materialism, and politics of division, divide and rule games, promotion of community animosities, petty differences, and brokenness.
Many nations have been broken and misdirected by greedy politicians, the nation’s institutions, structures and systems rendered unworkable due to selfishness, therefore many remedies have been advanced for clearing such politicians from a nations’ political systems, ranging from the French revolution therapy where the nobles, rulers and the influential clergies were tied to the stakes and shot or burnt, by the revolutionists. And the Ghanaian Jerry Rawlings approach, where all old politicians accused of bleeding the nation were also tied to the stakes and shot, or the Chinese firing squad approach, to the prison punishment therapy. I suggest a different approach, a learning approach, where they are alive and helping.
To conscientize and sanitize the democratic institutions and systems, rethink and adjust formed laws, and public policies that have not worked or failed to deliver expectations. Adjust rules, standards, outcomes, and occasionally restructure old democratic arrangements, or innovate new ones. The best way to predict the future is to create it now, if the nation wants what will work, the responsible political participants must create it. Make, maintain, frequently review government ministries, departments and agencies including tight legislative oversight plans and procedures.
Political leaders must consider employing and retaining subject expert professional, non-partisan institutional/functions/systems engineers/consultants that will serve both majority and minority interests, who can play the role of the repository of oversight information that will serve the executive and legislature.
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