2023: NIGERIA NEEDS FRESH THINKING

We need a radical president that will lead a radical government who will be fresh thinkers and ready to implement their fresh ideas without fear.

A WhatsApp platform friend said recently that Nigerians cannot depend on those who ruined their past to build their future. This statement so captures what I think presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi said when he scored another bull’s eye in an Arise Television program, that he was looking for a radical young man to be his running mate. Obi wants a running mate and cabinet members who would look him straight in the eye and point out his wrong. If any cabinet member flatters him three times, he or she will be removed. Obi is thinking fresh and wants fresh thinkers.

That is too radical for Nigeria's politics but it is the solution to Nigeria's problems. We need a radical president that will lead a radical government who will be fresh thinkers and ready to implement their fresh ideas without fear. A successful principal of a secondary school of a private university in Ilishan, Ogun State said when the university was celebrating his huge success that at his appointment his greatest problem was inexperience. When the vice-chancellor of the university rose to speak, he said that the principal did not know it was his inexperience that recommended him to the job, it was the reason the vice-chancellor appointed him and it was the reason for his huge success which was being celebrated. We have tested men and women of experience and they have mismanaged us, now we must use men and women who can think fresh even if they don't have experience.

Paradox. Many organizations and nations look for men and women of experience to run the organization and nations not knowing they are setting the organizations and nations for failure. Nigeria has failed because old men of old ideas have been at the helm for all our independent years. Save for the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the first premier of the Western Region, who had no equal among the regions in creative governance, no other Nigerian leader has exuded this mentality. His cabinet was drawn from men and women known for competence, teachers, lawyers, journalists, and artisans. They were capable of holding themselves up in any situation. Obi is showing that he could be another Obafemi Awolowo in Nigeria.

Everything in Nigeria needs an overhaul and only women and men who have not been part of the thinking that brought us into this failure will do the job excellently. I'm not talking of age, a man or woman can be old and still be fresh in his or her thinking. That is why I knew the planned Obi-Kwakwanso alliance can never work and Obi must be happy it didn't work. It could have been the death knell of the Obi presidency if he wins. You cannot pair death and life. You cannot pair conservatism and radicalism. It could have been a costly mistake that Obi would have made. Obi is riding the crest of a new thinking among Nigerians who are seeing him as a fresh breath away from the lethargic and lazy leadership.

Those who ruined our past cannot build our future. Nigerians have to take this to our hearts as we go to the election in 2023. I was three years out of university in 1984 when Buhari became the military head of state. I knew all he did, and from 2015 till now he has not done anything differently. The messiah that proud builders of All Progressives Congress, APC, sold to us has suddenly become a Judas before our very eyes.

Those who destroyed our past cannot build our future. The civil servants who formulated all the policies that ruined us must not be there in 2023. They have run out of steam, they have nothing more to offer, and they must leave Nigeria alone. All whoever has been in the legislature since 1999, the states and the nation must take a bow and go to rest, they are not needed again. They ruined our past and certainly, they cannot build our future. All governors must take the back seat. All that have served in the military, the police, the customs, immigration, NNPC, and other parastatals cannot go with us into the future. The future begins in 2023. Every thinking that has shaped Nigeria since after the civil war must be jettisoned.

Our youths have inherited lies about their nation, they have been told lies about its history. For political and economic gains, these youth have been fed propaganda that is never going to make building a united and vigorous nation possible. I strongly believe that we never had nation-builders at our inception in 1960. We had unlearned men who rather will keep their aristocracy than develop and build the nation, men who are motivated only by religion and who profited immensely from it. 2023 is like another shot at another independence for Nigeria.

Everything we have done till now is bad, our constitution, our civil service, our military, etc. Even the culture of running our affairs that we got from the British cannot serve us again, we need our homegrown system and this will come from homegrown thinkers who are committed to a great Nigeria, who are not looking for what to steal or the interest of their tribe or religion but who want competence, justice, and equity. They are the only ones that can move Nigeria ahead in 2023.

For the first time in the history of elections in Nigeria, the youths are registering enmass. They are saying they want to make a change. These youths must know that what becomes of Nigeria from 2023 depends on them. They form over 64 percent of the population and they are the ones that have suffered the misrule of the current times. Whether we live together in peace or kill ourselves, whether we grow economically or decline astronomically will depend on our youths. Whether we get another selfish man there or get a fresh thinker who will celebrate competence and build a new nation depend on the youths. Circumstances seem to be working in the favour of youths.

The recently amended electoral law has made rigging impossible. Electronic transmission of election results that old and disgraceful builders once rejected have been suddenly accepted and passed. The ball is now in the court of the youths to reject anything old, north and south, and bring in fresh minds. Those who destroyed our past cannot build our future. Would Obi do it?

Tunde Akande is both a Pastor and a Journalist. He earned a Masters degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos