By Muyiwa Adetiba
I often wonder how lucky Igbinedion feels anytime he goes around Benin City and sees the difference a fellow human being has made in five years; something he didn’t— or couldn’t—do in eight.

I often wonder how Anthony Anenih feels when his car gets stuck along the Benin-Ore ‘express’ road—he can’t travel by air all the time— knowing he could have ‘fixed’ the road for good as Minister for Works and neglected to do so. I often wonder how retired Col. Oyinlola feels when he comes to Lagos and sees that the craters he left for roads in the state have been filled up and smoothened over by ‘scarce’ bitumen and the side roads that used to be full of refuse now beautified by flowers.

Or Charles Soludo about his tenure as governor of Central Bank when the soundness of his economic policies were questioned so soon after he left office? Or Prof Jubrin Aminu about the state of Education in Nigeria knowing he had more than one chance to put things right?

I could go on about the growing list of people—many are faceless but powerful Civil Servants—who have had the opportunity to put different sectors of Nigeria on a solid ground but allowed other considerations to hold sway. Many of them started poor but today are rolling in luxury. Many were raised by the community but today have removed the ladder they used to climb up in life. Many by their own confession were shoeless as children; yet have lost all empathy with the poor.

I also often wonder why we accept them so unconditionally into the society. Or worse, why we revere them and put them on pedestals we should know they don’t deserve. Yet they are the ones the priests and pastors recognise from the pulpit. They are the ones who head Harvest Committees and fund raising activities in churches. They are the ones the paramount rulers ‘reward’ with chieftaincy titles and made prominent in their communities. They are the ones who make the important decisions in their families. And, wait for it, they are the ones who cry the loudest about the state of affairs in the country. I have met quite a few of them after they have left office and I snigger when they complain about the state of the country in the luxury of their generator powered homes.

And when they pay the school fees of one or two poor cousins in the village or buy sewing machines for widows, they are tagged as philanthropists who are giving back. We forget that these are tokens, and like the tithes which they now pay regularly, redemptive gestures for a life of greed, corruption and self centredness. We forget that we will not need their miserable fish if they had not blown the chance to set up a system that allows millions to fish and feed their families.

There are for example, those who have consistently scuttled the power generating capacity of the country, stealing billions in the process, only for them to donate a few generators to their communities or buy okada motorcycles for the jobless youths in their villages. Why do we allow such hypocritical tokenism?

The election in AnambraState has come and gone. I don’t think many objective observers are surprised at the outcome. All the pre and post election stories about arrests, delays in supply of materials, disappearance of voter’s register, manipulation of votes, and general disenfranchisement are like a broken record. They will happen again and again until we the people say no more.

When are we going to finally decide that this democracy is about us and we will no longer allow a few ‘active’ people to control the democratic space? When are we going to own the democratic process as a people so that whoever we put there will listen to us because we can get him out when he begins to misbehave?

When are we going to realise that public servants, whether as politicians or civil servants, are there at our behest and thus have no right to lord it over us? They have no right to feed us crumbs after they have cleaned the plates.

What- or who- will wake us up from the slumber that allows ten per cent of the populace to feed on 80 percent of the national cake? What will make us say no to the Stella Oduahs in the system who misappropriate our funds at will, and claim the right to share our commonwealth among themselves? Why do we tolerate a leader who looks away when his lieutenants are ‘misbehaving’?

Is it not time we woke up as a people to the realisation that our core problem is bad governance nurtured as it were, by our disinclination to make people accountable? That is why people commit murder under the guise of politics, religion, ‘riot’ or mere intolerance and get away with it. We worsen our situation by our inordinate worship of money and power. We soften our stance on corruption for instance, when the culprit appeals to our tribal sentiment as if he is stealing money for the clan. Why should a man who has impoverished us be allowed to enjoy his spoil? Why should a man who has debased our dignity now claim be to our kith and kin?

So who or what will wake us up from this slumber? Who or what will clear the fog and show us that power belongs to we the people and not to some godfathers on different ‘hills’ in the country?