By Z-Effect Media
The task of political recruitment of a legislator to serve in Nigeria’s red chambers is here again upon us people of Cross River State Northern Senatorial District. As the political climate condenses and gets politically charged, today I’ll be telling you the place of the party, people (electorates), candidate and how decisions hovering around them make for or truncate, torpedo, and makes the gains of political representation elusive.
Notice that periodic elections is the hallmark of democratic governance. And it is this attribute that adds flavor and distinguishes it from other forms of government – military rule, monarchy, etc.
These choices in the final analysis zeros up to two choices:
1. Voting to liberate oneself from hardship misery and the agony of misrule; and
2. Voting to legitimize through one’s consent his oppression.
Ironically, the electorates in contemporary time seem not to recognize nor understand how supreme they are, and how critical their decisions in this political recruitment process (election) is to their survival.
And it is on the basis of this political shortsightedness they make shortsighted electoral decisions that come with incalculable misery, hardship, and agony to them.
The thing is this: they fail to recognize that a pro-people leader who is a friend of the people not the political party is key to their survival. And voting along that line rather that party is the best mans policy.
Voting along tribal, religious and political lines and affiliation comes with some uncommon and rare contradictions: What do voters want? And what do they get? Voters want jobs, but joblessness and retrenchment have driven them into despair. Voters want decent living but all they get is against it – the few are rich, the majority are poor. The few exploit and keep the majority in poverty. Voters want freedom for all, but voters are in chains everywhere in conditions that make men torture. Voters want medical care, but what they get is neglect and abandonment. Voters want education for all but our rulers have sustained illiteracy for most.
Elections after election, the hopes of the people were raised by promises of jobs, education, food, healthcare, transport, etc. But today with our voting patterns detected by party association and affiliation, and party spirit, the result is all the same: more poverty, more homelessness, more hunger, more neglect and misrule.
You now see how that thing (political party) is useless in unleashing the gains of democracy and durable representation? It is disingenuous to expect anything tangible from such arrangement.
The meat of the issue is that people oriented candidate, not political party will liberate and unleash the meaningful life we desire and yearn for. A pro-people candidate not political party will remove these living contradictions.
The political party is nothing but a vehicle through which interests are moderated, sorted, and pressurized with vigor and attained. Only a people minded leader not political party will moderate those interests in the direction of the people.
Those who want to see significant transformation on society and in the political space will have to base their political decision making not on party association and/or affiliation, tribe or religious groupings but on quality and competency of the candidate(s) and how they showcase to be leaders of the interest of the majority.
As we shuttle and find aspirants to pitch our tent with, know we’ve a historical choice to make. It is a choice between freedom and oppression; between health and disease; between welfare and poverty. We’ve to make a decisive choice for freedom, education, jobs, health, decent homes, efficient and affordable transport system knowing a friend of the masses not party will serve. We’ve to choose against oppression, illiteracy, joblessness, neglect, homelessness, poverty, disease, and exploitation.
Dear people of Cross River Northern Senatorial District, without mincing words, when we fail to act right and positively, we will just be fermenting political, social and economic cul-de-sac and combustibly assailant conditions that will annihilate and consume us all.
Electorates, over to you.
We strongly and enthusiastically recommend Prof. Zana to you.
He has proven that he is a friend of the people.
Zana is the way moving forward.
He’ll be offering something more than a clue.