The rate at which politicians are jumping from one party to the other, thinking they are repositioning themselves to be in the ruling party at the federal level for the 2023 presidential and other elections, calls for very sober reflection. Again, the way our top politicians think and do their permutations about winning or losing elections also requires in-depth examination and re-examination against the background of future elections. It is either there is something these politicians know that the majority of the population do not know or they are simply trying to play God when everyone knows they are mere mortals.

The world of human affairs is governed by clear rules. God gave the human being a free will to decide between good and bad, to make choices and to take action. But our choice of action comes with clear consequences. The policy choices of yesterday have become manifest in the results of today. The extant policy choices of today will manifest in the results of tomorrow. This link between choice of action and consequences is so clearly demonstrated by the quality of governance in Nigeria.

The inexorable link between our choice of action or inaction is what leads to the results we get between security and insecurity, terrorism, banditry and normal law-abiding citizenry, a country with good and sound macroeconomic fundamentals and the kind we have today where the economy is on a free fall to total collapse. Essentially, it is about the eternal law of sowing and reaping.

Our politicians, starting from the President to the least, have made choices which have made the country extremely insecure. We are now rated among the most fragile, volatile and insecure places on earth. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and criminals have taken over the country to the extent that men and women can no longer farm except with the permission of bandits and herdsmen, the state has lost the monopoly of organised violence and in some instances, have paid ransoms to criminals to free innocent citizens. Some governors and other high level government officials are urging Nigerians to defend themselves against criminality as the security agencies despite their best of efforts are evidently overwhelmed. At no time in our history have we been more disunited, disoriented and without hope for the survival and future of our nation. The nation has been impoverished and is heavily indebted to the extent that we use 97 kobo out of every 100 kobo to service debts.

In the face of all these, the politicians in the ruling party who presided over this mess are deluding themselves that they will be in power until the next hundred years. They make no effort to salvage anything out of the already bad situation but insist that they must remain in power. How can they honestly believe they will come back to power through the normal ballot if the law of choices and consequences and the eternal law of sowing and reaping are valid? Pray, will the woman and man in northern and southern Nigeria who can no longer attend to the traditional means of livelihood being farming, line up and vote for candidates and the party that have deprived them of their means of livelihood? Will mothers weeping and mourning their children killed or still in the dens of kidnappers line up behind a government and ruling party that have failed, refused and neglected to protect them? Will unemployed graduates step up to campaign for candidates who offer them nothing but continued unemployment? When presidential spokespersons abuse honest and influential Nigerians who tell the President and his party the truth and these are men and women who command large following across the country, how do they intend to raise the votes?

The above scenarios have led to the earlier question whether there is something these failed politicians know which the masses of the Nigerian people are not aware of. It appears that these politicians think that Nigerians are incapable of knowing what is good for them to the extent that they will easily embrace their oppressors? These politicians believe that families that lost loved ones due to their incompetence and neglect will line up behind them. This brings the discourse to what exactly the failed politicians think they know that others are ignorant of and which will lead them to win elections. It is simply a plan to subvert the popular will, to manipulate the vote and to return persons and parties not endorsed by the popular will of the Nigerian people.This is as good or as bad as high treason. They know that the people will reject them and they now have just one card left, which is to impose themselves on the Nigerian people whether we vote for them or not. Through this approach, they believe they can delink their action and choices from the inexorable consequence of being rejected by the people. We still have primordial politicians who believe they can play on the cards of ethnicity and religion to win the vote.

Essentially, Nigerians need to be eternally vigilant especially following up the proceedings in the National Assembly and the presidency on the amendment of the Electoral Act. We must insist on a law that makes the vote count and takes cognisance of the challenges and mischief in the existing system through suppressing them and providing a remedy. We must not give up because rights and liberties are not given by any group to another. Instead, they are products of contestation, drawing boundaries by the oppressed and resisting tyranny.

At the end of the day, it is up to the majority who have been oppressed by the tyranny of these few politicians to rise up and shake them off the corridors of power through a process that makes the vote count.