IN the ingenuity of the politician, the future is about elections. When politicians engage in phased discussions of Nigeria, they are not contemplating legacy projects that would enhance the development, as we have seen in most of the states that would be up for grabs on Saturday. Politicians’ concerns are elections, power, who becomes what, and those marked for nothingness.

The reduction of the country to this contracted vision is the biggest failure of civil rule since 1999 and shows more glaringly in the states. Every administration, from the local governments, through the states to the centre, sees office as a platform to perpetrate either itself or its interests in power. When it leaves, the damage endures. It appears the most important ambition of the politician is to grab power. He wants to stay in office as long as he can, produce a successor that would do his bid, and retire to continue manipulating the system.

Most administrations in the states did nothing, other than engaging in schemes to hold power, which for them is an end in itself. Power is everything the politician wants. He gets it first, before thinking of what he would do with it. Rarely do we have candidates espousing their ideas, in realisable forms about the future of the states they intend to govern and expending their energies in ensuring  their realisation. It is not surprising that most of those who gain access to any notch of power in these circumstances, abuse them.  The abuses stem from ignorance, sometimes.

In some instances, outright greed and an obnoxious contention for narrow interests. The evidences include governors who have no agenda for their states. Their state assemblies lie behind them in despoiling public resources. Do politicians realise that each year they spend in their quest for

frivolities wastes opportunities for the country’s progress? What is their vision for their states beyond elections? When people vote them in on Saturday, how would they use the mandate the people gave them? Would the present be different? We should build our states to last for decades.

The future of its institutions, for the benefit of its peoples, should be the primary concern of its leaders. The well-being of its peoples should be at the centre of policies. Our future is not about elections; in the sense, politicians see them. Elections are useful as part of the quest for democratic governance. The democratic importance of elections is over-emphasised where the people play minimal roles in them. What is important – always – is what people want to make of their country. Elections can produce change if the elected change from the well-known ways of our politicians.