Olusegun Oseh is a political scientist and the deputy Organising Secretary of the Edo State Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). He spoke to ALEMMA-OZIORUVA ALIU in Benin City.
We have had 14 years of uninterrupted civilian rule since 1999, what is your view?
WE are still crawling, as a matter of fact, we have not learnt from the past. As a political scientist, democracy is the government of the people for the people and by the people, but do we have that? Check the political parties, we don’t have internal democracy, so we have not learnt anything and I strongly believe that for us to imbibe democracy, we need to go back to our orientation, we should change our value system. This idea of seeing politics as a zero sum game should not be so, we should see politics as a variable sum game, where, my winning equals your losing because when you take politics as a zero sum game, it becomes a winner takes all and that is why you see this craze for do or die, people want to maim, they want to kill just because they want to acquire power, whereas in democracy, if we are ten and six say A should go let it be. But we like to circumvent the rules to aggrandise positions. So far, we are still crawling and I pray that God should touch our hearts so that we will actually practice democracy.
What is responsible for this stagnated growth?
It is because we have imbibed a culture of military autocracy and if you look at those who have been recycling themselves as politicians, they are the military apologists and because they have amassed ill-gotten wealth, they want to foist themselves on the people. If you go to the nooks and crannies of this country, you see people with integrity, but they can never make it because to start with, they are not money bags and because of the abject poverty in the land, you discover that the masses have become corrupt, they want to be bribed before voting and these people who are military apologists masquerading as politicians circumvent the tenets of democracy. That is why you see that we are still crawling and until we imbibe this idea of putting round pegs in round holes and what can a person achieve and not necessarily what money you can get from such a person, from such a system, we cannot move forward. So we need re-orientation and prayers for God to redirect us in this country.
Has there been any political party since 1998 that has shown the tendency of enhancing the country’s democracy?
To me as a progressive and among those trained by late Awolowo, most of the political parties we have had have no ideology, we worship people, you see a man becoming very rich overnight but nobody wants to ask the source of his income. I have been in politics for over 35 years now; a lot of people ask what have I gained because of my style of politics. We need re-orientation and people who are selfless; who believe that going to politics is about service and not to amass wealth. If we have plethora of people that think along that line, you will discover that we will move ahead in this country. Why for God’s sake, do you want to go into politics, you go and buy salt, you buy fish and rice and start sharing to people who want to vote for you and the man who will actually deliver on the dividends of democracy, will not have the money to buy all that? So there is endemic corruption in the system and until we have a change of mind, we will continue to crawl. But what I believe this country needs is a revolution and it will come just like it happened in Egypt and across the North African hemisphere. There are people who are graduates for more than a decade, they have been looking for white- collar jobs, why not think of self- reliance, there is nothing wrong if you learn trade and do it well and then earn money for yourself and even employ labour. But because of the orientation, a lot of people go to school, no jobs, but they want white- collar jobs, which are not there.
The PDP has been in charge at the federal level, has it done enough?
They have performed abysmally poor by my assessment. For instance, Jonathan has come with transformation agenda, what has he transformed? Electricity is still epileptic, it is abnormal to have electricity, what is now normal is to have alternative source (generator); so they have not impressed the average Nigerian, rather, they are lining their pockets with naira. There is a lot of corruption in this country and anybody who wants change will be pulled out of the system. There are a few names that are good, it is not the political party that is bad but the operators who believe they should beat Nigeria so that they can be hero-worshiped, that should not be. We need a Jerry Rawlings in this country but because of the multi-ethnic nature of this country it might be difficult, or people are too conscious of not dying.
If APC emerges as a political party, we will be tending towards a two party system in this country and that will bring the desired change.
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