Editor:The death of Nigeria’s literary legend, Prof. Chinua Achebe reminded me of what he said in 1983 in his book titled: The Trouble with Nigeria. As a teenager who had just written his WASC examinations in June 1982, I was excited to read from him that Nigeria’s problem was mainly that of lack of good leadership, especially political leadership.
That is why it borders me a lot to see that in Nigeria, politics has never been given the right attention. Check out the signs: no professional political association or institution like we have for accountants, medical doctors, engineers, estate valuers and surveyors, lawyers, marketers, bankers, comedians, artists of all shades and colours, market women, road transport workers, environmentalists, religious people etc. That means politics in Nigeria is not professionally organized. That is why you have people of indeterminate character driving it in Nigeria. Yet, politics could easily be said to be the most important activity of man; it is like the human head and once it is not well organized, the entire society surfers greatly.
Again how serious are political parties in acting as the authentic training ground for future political leaders? Nigerian political parties must know that one of the most critical functions of a political party is the above role. For any political party to succeed in this, there must be an intra-party systematic process of teaching, learning and practicing politics, such that when a new member joins the party, he must start learning the basic beliefs of the party and this could last for three-five years. Thereafter, the member would be employed to hold party official positions to work for the party and this could last for two years or more and it is from here a member could rise to become a party secretary, chairman or leader. To contest for election for any public office under the ticket of the party, a member must have spent at least seven years as a servant of the party. The member must also belong to a registered professional political association (as we speak, there is no functioning one today in Nigeria) that is capable of managing the professional practices of its members. All these go to show how positively seriously Nigerians take national politicking.
Today in Nigeria, other professions have positively grown and developed into key integral agents of society and contributing significantly to the development of Nigeria. Ideally, Nigerian politics remains below the basics. In fact what exists in Nigeria is not politics, rather mere efforts to fulfill constitutional provisions. That is why Nigerian politics is full of ignorance, greed but less of ideology, discipline and true commitment to national development.
No wonder other sectors and professions in Nigeria had kept the faith by struggling to develop their dear sectors. Hence, today they are busy organizing economic summit, education summit, water summit, environment summit, legal summit, Nollywood summit etc. What of political summit? None because Nigerian politicians do not believe in the profession they practice. Nigerian politicians are hereby challenged to convoke a Nigerian Political Summit and let us see what will be the result.
Okachikwu Dibia
Maitama, Abuja.
