2023: Kano State and Junk Aspirations!
By Bashir Kabir
One would expect that by now the campaign secretariats of the various public office aspirants would be busy churning out manifestos on how to go about tackling the various problems ravaging the respective societies they are vying to represent, instead of producing massive billboards and littering the town with ridiculous posters.
One would expect that these aspirants would also get busy hiring consultants to figure out what to do including making a comparison on the achievement (or lack of it) of the prior tenures and contemplating what they would do better. But, alas some have no clue where to head in that regard and just do the only thing they know best – print posters and hang billboards.
Still, those that are actually smart and have an idea of what they can do to improve the lives of their voters are heavily overwhelmed by the trash monetized politics system and straight-up feel the need to play the game as it is. Meetings upon meetings with no purpose other than seat and chant slogans like the congregation of ignoramuses.
This is the status quo in political campaigning in direct contrast to elsewhere where contestants debate their ways with intelligence. Here, misleading the polity is regarded as a game.
However, the bigger game at play is that of nomination.
Aspirations at all levels, and in both the giant parties are in a state of uncertainty regarding who muscles up and reaches the contesting podium. There is desperation and frustration prevailing among the aspirants. It is their time of sleeplessness, and blood pressure hitting the roof. Most of the time they are delusional and not in touch with reality. Coming down to the basest level and doing absurd things such as each trying to cover the other’s poster with his own as if that is what makes one formidable.
The game of politics can be quite amusing sometimes except when it leads to the wrong person getting elected into the office. Then, it will be four or eight years of suffering and that is not a joke at all.
The best opinion is that the polity can only elect from the nominees made available to it. If both parties nominated garbage candidates, then the only thing that can be done is to go for the one among the garbage that is not yet completely decomposed and rotten.
That is why it is crucial for those responsible for that holy nomination to know that they are generally electing that leader, imposing him or her upon the masses, and limiting participation down to a bare minimum.
It keeps on pointing out that perhaps the polity is in for a big surprise. The governor, understandably a huge stakeholder in the nomination of a candidate in his party, is clearly always full of surprises. He is one of those people one can term as unpredictable. It feels like this unpredictability will lead to the veteran governor blasting surprise in everybody’s face when it comes to who contests for the governorship under the APC umbrella.
The governor remains profoundly neutralized to display overt interest for or against various aspirations. Some will capitulate opinions concerning his interest in a particular direction for reasons logical to them while others will declare such as unfounded.
The reasons for his support for a particular aspirant are broadly presented to be stemmed from his or a family member’s closeness to an aspirant, the aspirant’s purse size, the political significance of an aspirant etc.
A critical understanding of the way the governor operates will invalidate most of the above assertions as the sole reasons to put an aspirant on the pedestal. So, regardless of most projections, it is the surprise factor that holds stronger up to this stage.
The PDP has its own share of uncertainty apropos who surfaces as its candidate. Factoring in the polynomials of betrayal, party quitting and conflict of variety of interests is making it difficult to formulate at what stand the party will consolidate and compete with the eight-year strong base of the ruling party. Nonetheless, it can be more predictable who is likely to surface in PDP than in APC.
While the nominations remain the final straw to put the matter of junk aspirations to rest, at the moment everyone can have a free ride without having clues about what to do and instead keep printing posters and hanging billboards to make our city look like a REMASSAB dumping yard!
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