By Samuel Oyejola
Early this year, former President Olusegun Obasanjo in a public statement on the state of the nation accused the Muhammadu Buhari-led government of incompetence, nepotism and gross governance failure especially with the economy and security.
President Obasanjo in the statement said the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party have nothing to offer Nigeria. More significantly, he called for the formulation of a “Third Force” that will take the country out of the political wilderness to the promise land of economic and social development.
“We only have one choice left to take us out of Egypt to the promised land. And that is the coalition of the concerned and the willing -ready for positive and drastic change, progress and involvement. Change that will give hope and future to all our youth and dignity and full participation to all our women….A situation where the elected will accountably govern and every Nigerian will have equal opportunity not based on kinship and friendship but based on free citizenship,” Obasanjo said in the statement.
Less than a month after the statement was released, a group of politicians led by former governors of Osun and Cross Rivers states, Olagunsoye Oyinlola and Donald Duke unveiled the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM) which they said would challenge the dominance of the PDP and APC.
Eight months after the formation of the CNM, Nigerians are unconvinced of the move of politicians across board with the ongoing gale of defections and cross carpeting as the country sails closer to the 2019 general elections.
Civil societies and concerned Nigerians observed that with the country in the firm grip of PDP for 16 years and the APC for almost four years, Nigeria has gained nothing but a record as the poorest country in the world while insecurity, corruption and accountability deficiency in governance continue to plague the country.
They have therefore agreed to form a coalition that will provide for Nigerians yearning for sincere leadership, candidates with track records of excellence in leadership in their various fields to challenge politicians for elective positions in the 2019 general elections.
Interestingly, a set of individuals who have distinguished themselves in their various field of endeavors have indicated interest in taking leadership positions in various elective offices.
It is against this backdrop that the coalition of civil societies has arranged to bring these individuals who have been tested in their area of endeavours and proffer solution to the perennial challenges facing the country.
The group spearheaded by the Red Card Movement is set to hold a gathering of all organizations and individual of like minds for a conference titled “Summit Of The Alternatives”. The aim according to the group is “to fix the leadership crisis in Nigeria political space and arrest governance failure.”
SOTA, a product of partnership among Red Card Movement, BudgIT, Enough is Enough Nigeria, Nigeria First Project (NFP), Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) and Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA) is expected to shape narratives to redefine Nigeria’s political landscape and a follow-up momentum to build a broad based, quality alternative, through a coalition and alliance of the credible alternatives.
The summit is expected to bring under one roof, intellectuals of moral uprightness who have stood on the sidelines or significantly interested in active engagement on the Nigerian political space to cross-pollinate various ideas for entrenchment of good governance in Nigeria.
“Rather than citizens to wait again for the usual cyclical pattern of the candidature of the poorly prepared people to govern the country at all level of our elective offices in the 2019 elections, we as citizens group will work together to define a pathway where the electorate will begin to think of the quality of the electorate that they will be prepared to vote for and to begin to early to send a clear signal to our political class that we no longer want incompetent people, people without credibility, no character, people that are not capable of leading the affairs of the state,” Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, the convener of the Red Card Movement said.
“We now want the political system to pay attention to the attributes that are important in identifying quality leadership,” She said.
She warned that if Nigerians refuse to fix the leadership crisis that the democracy has suffered then there is no basis to expect anything different from what the political class has offered over the years.
Ezekwesili said the coalition became necessary to correct the leadership selection process of political parties with little or no regard to readiness and capacity of candidates to govern.
“The only thing that can happen is that we must find a way to make the political system revamp itself so that it will begin to take the issue of leadership critical. The leadership selection process in our political parties must be disrupted in order to upgrade itself and give us possibilities to achieve what nations that have taken leadership recruitment serious have been able to achieve.”
She was quick to point out that SOTA is a citizen’s movement and has nothing to do with the Third Force promoted by President Olusegun Obasanjo in his statement on the state of the nation earlier in the year.
“This is clearly a citizen movement. It is about citizens and for citizens. There is no meeting point that has ever happened between that initiative (Obasanjo’s Third Force) and what citizens have being doing, if there were you will be informed.”
“There is strategy to take power, taking power has absolutely nothing to do with rescuing the nation. We are not a third force. We are concerned that Nigeria has not being professionally run. We are concerned that all along we have been playing politics and not governance. We want to give Nigerians an alternative governance system, leadership system and style.” The Director General of Nigeria First Project, Nya-Etok Ezekiel explained.
No doubt with these leadership critics ready to join the race with massive support for selected candidates to reshape the governance process of the country, there are fears that the development is rather coming late at a time when the electioneering process is about to fully kick start.
On the other hand how will the coalition rise to the challenge of electoral manipulation of politicians who have resolved to vote buying as recorded in the recently conducted elections in some parts of the country?
“What we need to do is to interrogate why people are trading their votes,” Shamsudeen Yussuf, a Senior Programme Officer at the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) said.
“It is not just about the poverty of the people, it is about people having leadership distrust of the government. The essence of this coalition is for us to change the narrative about who the leaders are.
“People need to start to know the essence of leadership. That is the essence of this coalition. This consultation will need to start at the national level and as we move towards the 2019 general elections there will be a lot of CSOs that will be part of the process.”
Yussuf said that they are taking the alternative campaign to the grassroots and the summit will address sector specific challenges. He said that the summit will come out with a lot of strategies to specifically address sector specific challenges.
“The idea of this coalition is to speak to the unpreparedness of the leaders that we have over the years to govern Nigeria.”
