I have watched and heard election rigged by political parties. I have heard of manipulations in intra-party primary elections, most times, predicated on sentiments, or some irrational events such as connection with party leaders! I have seen results of elections upturned, through make-belief judicial systems, which some people call fraudiciary.  Political appointees and electees virtually have the entirety of the country handed over to them, with nothing left for the citizenry! While a legislator gets paid his/her salaries with excessive perquisites of office, he/she is paid the likes of constituency allowances, supposedly meant to serve the constituency, the governor and the president have hundreds of billions, in the guise of security vote! This is desperate the fact that we maintain national police, 85% of which members are assigned to protect these same electees and appointees alone and their families alone!

As if not enough, employment vacancies in the public service, I just realized sadly, are slotted to legislators, and other political heavyweights, instead of being, normally, advertised for public attention! This ensures that, only those ones connected with them have the opportunity of applying and getting recruited to work in the public service! Nothing had sounded that sacrilegious, in all my adult life! This says much about the rot our public service became, in which officers don’t see themselves as servants but benefactors to the citizenry! It says much to the chaos under which the citizenry has to live their lives! Until Olubunmi Ojo became the minister of internal affairs, international passports were good as being sold! The experiences of people going through our airports, speak volumes to the moral decadence, brazenly exhibited by our uniformed men! The psychologically stressful state of our roads, dotted by road blocks, brazenly mounted by POS machine-carrying policemen in uniforms speaks to what policing shouldn’t be!

The question, always, is: what is there for Nigerian voters, in all of these? Even, at election booths, their citizenship is severely assaulted by weaponizing their poverty and hopelessness, by purchasing their voter cards, among other mischievous tactics! What, today do Nigerians have to show for decades of what we dub democracy, other than the emergence of, fraudulently wealthy men who became wealthy for lifting no pin, but flaunt such ill-gotten wealth with unrestrained braggadocio? Our country can be said to bleed, today, as it harbours the hungriest and angriest citizenry, with the highest number of our youths roaming the streets aimlessly! This accounts for the socio-political stress, in which fear grips communities and individuals in efforts to move about on daily needs.

No doubt that the problems confronting our country, on account of social decay and the desecration of politics are daunting. Nonetheless, they are not without solutions, just that some of the steps might seem weird to customs. I, once opined that we address the issue of moral decay by any means possible. The seemingly intractable incidence of the out-of-school children must be tackled as a way of bringing our youths under a form of guide early in their lives so they can grow to responsible adulthood. Parents Teachers Associations may be formalized, as a tool to ensure dialogue between parents and teachers so there would be no hiding place for youth truancy and rascality. The National Youth Service scheme desires to be re-branded, in a way to inculcate, in our youths, the spirits of patriotism and selflessness. These would guarantee that our youth are prepared for effective, responsible and progressive leadership.  A country being led by weird motor touts, alcoholics and 419 people cannot compete globally, today nor can it be a suitable place of abode for humans.

Enough is enough, Nigerians must stand up to demand that our democracy gets defined appropriately, as government of the people, by the people and for the people. If, as being claimed by government, Nigeria is truly secured, why do political electees have to go round in heavily-armed convoys of expensive bullet-proof vehicles? And, if Nigeria is that secured, why assign more than eighty percent of the number of policemen to guard political electees and appointees while none is assigned to the real policing of the society? Are electees afraid of electors?