By Peace Ejikeme
Leadership selection anywhere involves the asking of requisite questions of the candidates contesting for elective positions. The searchlight is on the names of the candidates on the ballot for the November 8 gubernatorial election in Anambra State. Crucial questions must be asked in the process of the leadership selection or else the society suffers the consequences of wrong
choice. Since elections have consequences it is incumbent on the people to have adequate checks on the track records of those who seek to govern.
This question cannot be gainsaid: Should we rather pander to emotions than do the necessary due diligence when it matters? It can be argued that many of the candidates have largely avoided discussion of substantive issues. Why? The reason is simple: They’ve not articulated any coherent blueprint or alternative programme for Ndi-Anambra.
A fundamental aspect of electoral contest is that the candidate must be duly qualified for the post he or she is contesting for. When a candidate gets angry because holes are picked over his qualification for a post there is need to worry. The other dimension is the matter of an allegedly forged certificate. Issues-based politics can never stand on a pedestal of forgery.
Some pundits are insinuating that the candidates who do not stand on solid ground as per qualification are trying to muddy up waters by resorting to barefaced mudslinging instead of marshaling out the grand plans they have for Anambra State. It is remarkable that when Prof Charles Chukwuma Soludo, CFR, presented himself as a candiate for the governorship of Anambra State, he brought along The People’s Manifesto that showcased all he planned to do for the state.
It is necessary that all the other contestants angling for Soludo’s office should come forward with their own manifestos so that there will be a debate across board over who offers Anambra State the best. The election is less than two months away, and the opposition candidates have offered quite little in revealing their plans for the state.
Soludo has, for instance, pitched his tent in following the lead of the First Republic Eastern Region under the exemplary leadership of Dr Michael Iheonukara Okpara that built the cities of Onitsha, Owerri, Enugu, Aba, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Uyo, and Umuahia etc. with taxes, and the money generated locally from oil palm produce. Like Okpara, alias “MI Power”, Soudo insists on the people’s tax money working for the people, a sign he puts at all the plenteous construction sites all over Anambra State. One would like to know the views of the opposition contestants on tax revenue. It is by telling the people what they have on offer in regard to the vexed issue of taxation that they can win converts, or lack thereof.
Soludo has argued that the coming of the so-called Oil Boom in Nigeria after the civil war created a rentier culture that destroyed the incentives and institutions for taxation. Now the oil boom has turned to oil doom. States can no longer get adequate allocations from the federal purse in Nigeria’s accursed “feeding bottle federalism”.
Those vying for the governorship position ought to make their own views known to the public. Why is it all quiet on the opposition front in the field of bringing forth issues that will engage the public? Recently, one of the parties said it was putting together its campaign committee only to postpone it indefinitely. There is hardly much time left for the opposition parties to get going. As they say, you can’t get a second chance to make a first impression.
From the United States where Nigeria took the presidential system as opposed to the earlier parliamentary system of the British used in the First Republic, debates on issues form the fulcrum of electoral contests. Only by fielding formidable candidates can a party debate on issues.
Should we then conclude that it is due to lack of quality in the candidates being offered by the opposition parties that cogent issues have not dominated the electoral process in Anambra State. As things stand now, it is almost a one-horse race in the coming Anambra gubernatorial election on November 8.
APGA is the only party on the ground, and Soludo remains the man with all the issues shining forth.
Dr Ejikeme, a public affairs analyst, writes from Ifite Awka, Anambra State.
