2023 is next year and it is going to be the most important year in Nigeria’s history because the country is hanging on a number of unresolved lifelines that will either make or mar it.
Take for instance the question of restructuring. Many Nigerians have in the past years called for the country to be restructured insisting that without restructuring any presidential election would be a waste of time as the current structure makes progress impossible in the country. Some in this group have threatened that they would not allow the presidential election to go ahead and have called on their compatriots especially in the South West and South East to boycott the election.
There is also the issue of referendum called for by the various agitators in the country particularly by IPOB. These groups have constantly contended that what formed the present Nigeria was colonial agreement. According to them, it is now time for the various social categories in the country to come together not only to decide on whether they want to remain in the same country but more importantly, on whether they want to be in a country that is run as the current Nigeria is run. Members of these groups have been adamant that there will be no presidential election in Nigeria without referendum.
The political class is the only group that seems to be adamant that the election must go ahead as planned with or without restructuring or referendum. But one wonders why any sensible person would want to go ahead with election in the Nigerian of today considering that everything has refused to work. Inflation in the country is at its highest level in decades, the exchange rate of the Naira against the USD is outrageous, universities in the country are shutdown, there is no fuel for transportation and people are crying and dying of hunger because the cost of foodstuff in the country have become unaffordable even for the rich.
In the face of all these, renegotiating how to move the country forward would be the most sensible thing to do but our politicians don’t care. Their only concern is how to get to power to scratch up into their private coffers what remains from what has been looted by their predecessors.
What our politicians forgot is that the patience of any people limitless. According to the Frustration-Aggression theory, there is an extent you will push someone or a population, then you leave them no option than to turn around and demand for their lives by any means necessary.
Take the revolution in North Africa for instance, especially, in Egypt and Tunisia. Nobody saw it coming, the politicians were going about their no normal businesses, stealing monies as usual and starching them away in Swiss and other Western banks; then boom, it was revolution and everywhere was on fire. What about our own ENDSARS! The politicians never knew that Nigerians youths would go to that extent but they went. Why; because they have been pushed to the wall.
And one would ask has the underlying problem of ENDSARS which is misrule been addressed? I don’t think so. The worse thing is that those who have the responsibility to address it don’t care whether it is addressed or not; they are more interested in 2023 election.
Have we come to a critical Juncture in Nigeria? Will something dramatic that will shake our politicians out of their dogmatic slumber about happen in Nigeria before 2023 or will it just be business as usual? The onus is on the Nigerian populace to decide.
