Nigerian politicians have been blamed for the distortion of the core principles of politicking.
Political affairs analyst, Azubuike Ihemeje accused politicians of distorting and destroying the core principles of politics, adding that Nigerian leaders have over the years distorted the true meaning and practice of Politics.
Ihemeje, who is also a lawyer said that ordinarily, politics ought to be a means of rendering Public Services. Service, he said, will guarantee the best interests and good for the greatest number of the public.
Speaking as a guest at a roundtable discussion for 2023 election, Ihemeje explained that public service is any service intended to address specific needs pertaining to the aggregate members of a given society or country which is clearly opposed to personal pursuits or individual ambitions.
He, however, regretted that the Nigeria’s case has been sharply different, stressing that politics in Nigeria was no longer for public interests.
“Nigeria version of politics has been reduced to the interests of individuals or group of politicians who gang up to hijack power solely for their personal economic survivals, and self aggrandizements. These group of people have mastered how to weaponize poverty in order to use same to grab power and retain it.
“How so? Over the years, these politicians have impoverished the masses with unemployments, productive joblessness, by systematically destroying the economic powers of the private sector. They thereby, make government jobs, connections, contracts and and everything around government agencies to become heavily attractive and indispensable in peoples lives.
“That is to say; politics and government has became the major source of revenue for people in Nigeria. People’s wealths are now calibrated by the type of political office they occupy or are connected with”.
He decried the fact that economic achievements are now linked to your political position. This, he said, was achieved by deliberate destruction of the private sector by the Nigeria politicians, thereby making politics and its participation the mainstream, and bedrock of economic freedom.
“Since Politics now became the only dependable means of financial liberation, every single person now scrambles to slave for one political party, leader or system. Real freedom of choice has been diametrically circumscribed by the dictates of political leanings. Most People dare not make any informed decisions again, except that which has been determined by their political overlord.
“This is because, their very hope for survival solely depends on how much loyalty, in most cases, sheepishly they are. Nigerian politics is so peculiarly skewed towards government dependency, largely because the government itself does not need to think to raise money due to the abundance of natural resources.
Politicians sell oil at the international market and share the money within the several political offices they’ve created for themselves and their Supporters. That’s why politicians in this part are grossly lousy, unimaginative and void of any innovative to solve problems.
“So, to compound the problem, they keep recruiting more and more people into politics with the prospects of sharing their loots with them later. Elsewhere, the private sectors are the highest employers of labor, while government jobs are less and less unattractive. But in Nigeria, government jobs have become goldmines.
He said that the political class has made considerable efforts to keep the masses perpetually dependent on politics and political powers but expressed hope that the private sector will rise up to its roles of employing the greatest number of people, thereby making political jobs unattractive.
