Okhaimo Victor wrote: During the 2011 presidential election I was thrown into a voting confusion as to my choice of candidate. Buhari was in popular opinion an upright person; Ribadu was my party man then (when I was in ACN) who also had wedged war on the cankerworm called corruption and Goodluck was from my region – South-South. I was convinced beyond reasonable doubt it was time for us to have a South-Southerner as the President and I joined the vanguard that yearned and voted for GEJ. Today again we are witnessing a massive social network and media war on the choice of GEJ or GMB and the crux of all these is anchored on CHANGE. Unfortunately no one has clearly defined what the meaning of CHANGE in our Nigeria context is. I have a right to my opinion and submission on the foregoing with the expectations of being rudely challenged by persons with clearly different beliefs and interests notwithstanding that I am and will remain a strong PDP member having just the PDP House of Reps primaries in Etsako Federal Constituency. Let us understand that virtually all the political parties are built on similar ideologies and principles. Every day we see members crisscrossing from one platform to other including my humble self who switched from APC to PDP. The difference between parties are the persons that have been elected under the various platforms to represent us. The dreams and aspirations of such men and women is what account for these differences. So let’s first and foremost shield our political swords and relocate to the round table of objective and intellectual reasoning and dialogue. If we believe like I do - that the measurement of ones success is the number of obstacles and impediments one overcomes to get to a particular stage in his journey, then I join other persons within this school of thought to give thumbs up to GEJ for his achievements thus far but given room for improvements. I am a responsible, objective, youthful, Christian and detribalised Nigerian who believes we deserve the best because we can afford it both in material and human resources. Suffice to note that I have great respect and admiration for GMB at least for his modesty and humility. But as an agent of this CHANGE we clamour for, I make bold to ask “what is the retirement age of a politician”?? Why is it that in a country of over 160 million resourceful and youthful people our only messiah is a septuagenarian whose business should have ordinarily being to rest in retirement after a meritorious service to his Nation. With all due respect to our retired General, I am born of a Muslim mother and vaguely understands Islam, but I am worried about the General’s sentimental pronouncements on Islam and Sharia in the past which he has consciously and desperately tried to put behind us. Remember one of the things we cannot take back are words. I am also very sympathetic with GEJ as there were provocative and treasonable threats to ensure that the nation becomes ungovernable if some persons were not honoured by the electorates with their votes. Some of these statements credited to GMB saw the emergence of the dreaded Boko Haram which some people already assume to be mere coincidence. The proverbial crow of a witch in the night coinciding with the death of a baby in the house would definitely not allow the witch to be vindicated from being adjudged the murderer. Both GEJ and GMB in my opinion are responsible and qualified persons fit to be Presidents of our dear Nation. We must look beyond our personal, political, ethnic and selfish interests to make our choice if we must succeed as one united and indivisible entity. If there was a possibility where one can deputise the other and form a government of national unity, we would have seen democracy in action. The issue of INSECURITY and CORRUPTION which are the core campaign points of some political parties is beyond political party affiliations but a collective responsibility of all Nigerians. For instance If we had allowed party, ethnic and religion interests overshadow our quest in stamping out the deadly Ebola scourge, Nigeria by now may have been heading to a point of extinction. Let us unite once again against these cankerworms eating deep into the developmental fabrics of Nigeria. We need CHANGE but we must CHANGE before becoming agents of CHANGE. God Bless Nigeria!
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 18:56:22 +0000
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