It startles to learn that for most politicians and their supporters, elections are simply means of grabbing power through whatever way, whether diabolical or decent. Perhaps, for many politicians, politics, especially in Africa, is a power struggle for the sake of bad governance. Or better still, politics, as it is played here, is not about the people. Rather, it is about ruling them for personal pleasure.
And that is why politics here is hardly issue based. It is mostly about religious, regional, ethnic or regressive political and socio-economic sentiments predicated on the desire of grabbing power to rule for reasons of personal gains thereby deliberately subjecting the people to untold hardship.
Here we are in Bauchi state perceiving the miasma of hopelessness with dead public schools, ineffective healthcare service, vulnerable women and children, moribund industries, poor housing schemes, ineffective food production system and dead civil service. Yet, all that some of the politicians care about is to retain power.
They want to remain in power, not because they have ever shown any propensity for making the lives of the people any better as they hold sway, but because being there, for them, is a means of survival even if at the expense of the masses. Nonetheless, more surprising are the supporters of these regressive politicians who are at the receiving end of the actions and (or) inactions of their political leaders.
It beats every imagination that there is anyone out there who consciously endorses ideas that aim to reverse progress, suppress change as well as ensure social, economic and political retrogression. May be, this is a pointer to the fact that our people need more enlightenment on the concepts of government, governance, democracy and politics.
Mukhtar Jarmajo,
Kukadi/Gundari Ward,
Misau local government area,
Bauchi state
