Beyond The Parties’ War

The war of words between the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP, and the newly registered All Progressives Congress, APC, has escalated in recent weeks. The APC describes the PDP as a failed political movement which has wasted 14 years in power while Nigerians have remained stuck in squalor, hopelessness and pain.

The PDP retorts that the APC lacks internal democracy and is a party made up of opportunists who will not perform any better if given the chance to run things at the federal level.

The APC insists it should be given a chance to turn things around and replicate at the federal level the successes in Lagos and other south-western states where it is in control.

The PDP says President Goodluck Jonathan means well and has been implementing a transformational agenda in many sectors of the economy and should be given a chance to complete these good projects.

The war of words is becoming strident as the campaign for the 2015 general elections is gradually unfolding. Amid this cacophony, the facts must be laid bare. More than 10.5 million Nigerian children of primary school age are out of school and hundreds of thousands of university students have been forced to remain at home as the crisis between the Federal Government and the varsity staff lingers.

In addition, unemployment remains at more than 23 percent among Nigerian youths and the general  unemployment figures are even higher. Hunger, poverty and hopelessness pervade the landscape as well as kidnapping and wanton killings by terrorists. The economy is collapsing due to lack of diversification from crude oil production, dearth of technology, manpower, corruption and mismanagement of the nation’s immense resources.

Our health sector is limbo and our doctors are no longer given optimal training. The country is in crisis and it takes more than a war of words to fix all these problems. While we find the verbal exchanges between the PDP and the APC a bit entertaining, we believe that Nigeria needs a political class that can articulate economic programmes that will transform the country as well as give us a clear vision of the expected future. The PDP has not been able to meet these expectations in the last 14 years that it has run things at the federal level. This is where the newly registered parties, especially APC, come in.

Yesterday APC came up with what could be described as its blueprint designed to salvage the nation from the brink of economic collapse. The party’s leaders say they will stop the power outage pains by increasing electricity supply from its current meagre, less than 3,000MW  to 40,000MW in the next four to eight years, make the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, truly independent, decentralise the police, create one million jobs per annum, create special courts for corruption cases, among other lofty policies it hopes to implement.

We hope APC will walk the talk as the vast majority of the people are currently weighed down by hopelessness and despair owing to the poor leadership that has been the bane of the country for many years.

Many Nigerians expect APC should offer them what PDP could not in 14 years. So the party should begin mass mobilisation of the electorate through registration as members of the party ahead 2015. The task is very urgent and the time is too short. So, APC should stop dissipating its energy by bandying words with PDP so as not to lose focus on the lofty goal ahead. Everybody is yearning for a palpable change as quickly as possible.