Buhari Alone Can Do Nothing Until We Reform Our Politics

Buhari Alone Can Do Nothing Until We Reform Our Politics

By Joseph A Adams

Buhari is not good enough for Nigeria. Yes, I agree but who is good with this present political system?

It saddens me to realise how people are still naive to the problems of Nigeria. The most unfortunate things are that we think we’re running a democracy because we set up political parties, campaign for election and win. The question is: is that how successful democratic countries are running their own?

Many of our problems started very small, but instead of fixing them on time, we keep sweeping them under the carpet. Today we have mountains of problems that have grown too difficult to solve. We have legislators whose duties are to find solutions by creating strong policies to sort things out and establish law around them to stop the recurrence. But they lack the political will and knowledge to tackle most of these problems.

There are lots of things to put in place before we can see positive change. Our political system is not designed to serve the country enough, and this has to change. Good government doesn’t automatically fall into place, and it cannot be willingly done by the set of politicians we have without pressure from the public.

Traditionally, the thinking has been that leaders know what is good for the country, but that doesn’t work for true development these days. Obviously, we forget that Nigeria is a safe haven for corrupt politicians, where an individual person has more money than the country.

Therefore, we need to frown on corruption. Unless we address this, we will continue to live a false dream. Buhari alone cannot do anything different until we reform our politics. We need to do our own part to support him in order for his party to deliver on its promises.

Corruption is the dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, which typically involves bribery. With corruption running in our system, nothing good can come out of the country.

Lack of proper record is also a bane. We need an effective recording system to know how many people are real Nigerians. We don’t only need accountability from the government, we also need from the citizens and without any good record of the populace, we cannot get it.

Lawlessness and lack of punishment culture is another ailment that is our problem. Nigerians don’t like to follow rules because our leaders don’t make it a priority. The law serves many purposes and functions in society.

Without an effective judicial system, we cannot enjoy our democracy. We also need to establish punishment for whoever commits any crime, and the punishment must be severe so as to serve as deterrence to others.

We need a Discrimination Act to stop people from using the tribal game that is tearing down society. We need to classify tribalism as a crime and set up a task force to fight it thoroughly. Task force is the unit that can uphold a zero-tolerance policy against discrimination of any kind. Until then, there cannot be unity and our leaders will continue to use this avenue to destroy the country for their own selfish gain.

We also need to avoid money politics where everyone only looks for an avenue to make money in a way that is detrimental to the interests of many people and the country. This makes them inflate government contracts sometimes more than ten folds of the actual cost.

Nigerians should wake up and hold these politicians accountable for their failure to put many things right. Self-inflicted poverty is enough to galvanise the masses to demand change more than before and they have the power to provide it. We should not continue to remain quiet. We cannot leave everything in the hands of the politicians; it won’t work.

About the author:Joseph Adams writes from josephaaadams@gmail.com