Expect Political Violence —Utomi

Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Mega Party, SDMP, Professor Pat Okedinachi Utomi, said he is not surprised at the spate of political violence in the country as the election days draw nearer.

He said violence should actually be expected ”as we have jointly created the social conditions necessary for the incidence of violence.”

The SDMP presidential candidate disclosed this while responding to questions posed by a journalist in Lagos.

“I am not surprised at the renewed spate of violence as we progress towards the election month. We actually asked for it by creating the favourable conditions for it,” he stated.

He explained that the national orientation of seeing politics as an avenue to amass wealth in place of being an avenue for national service is the major reason for the violence. “The citizenry as well as the civil society organisations must take responsibility for allowing public office holders to exercise power without accountability. When we look at politics as an avenue for amassing wealth instead of an arena for service, there is no way we would not have this kind of situation on our hands.

”It is more lucrative and even easier to be a politician than being an armed robber or a 419er. So, all those people that should have been armed robbers and 419ers have rushed into politics. Politics should be seen as an arena for public service, a kind of altruistic social responsibility.

”People that have made their marks in their various callings coming together to give back to the society. We should be having people of sterling qualities with private means becoming senators and representatives without asking a kobo from the common purse. We should be having governors that would not collect salaries, ministers that would collect very minimum allowances and perks. But what do we have? We have professional politicians, people with no other skills or alternative means of livelihood, who would be useless in any other endeavour, coming into politics and contributing next to nothing to uplift the lives of the people,” he said.

“Until political office is made less financially rewarding than it is now, we may not see an end to this kind of violence. The moment, for instance, that we have a part-time legislature comprising of professionals going to the chambers for probably six weeks in a year, save for ad hoc period of emergency, we would always see this mindless rush of people with nothing to offer jostling for political seats,” he added.

Utomi called on the law enforcement agencies to see the situation as a big challenge to their autonomy, objectivity, professionalism and patriotism. “They (the police) should see in this situation that the free and fair election is at stake,” he said, pointing out that they should strive to achieve balance in their administration of enforcement.

“It is easier to arrest an opposition politician for a travesty than to call to order a sitting governor,” he pointed out, saying that this should not be so. He disclosed that in his home-town in Delta State, the people are living in a state of siege as gun-battle between politicians rages while the police look on.