Dr. Austin Tam- George, a communications consultant and former Commissioner for Information and Communications in Rivers State was a guest on Channels Television programme Sunrise Daily where he spoke on defections by politicians and what the average Nigerian stands to benefit. TEMIDAYO AKINSUYI who monitored the session brings the excerpts:
As we approach the 2019 elections, do you really think all these ongoing defections is about the people or as usual, is it about politicians trying to secure their political future?
It is very disheartening actually to think about how these defections are happening outside of the context of insistence on good governance. It is a very sad commentary on the character of our politics in this country that in 2018, at a time when the rest of the world is moving forward in terms of development index, we tend to have politicians thinking only in terms of simply being in power without rising to the challenge of leadership and responsibilities of being in power. So, it is very heartbreaking frankly. I say this because I have been in public office and I have seen up-close the responsibilities that come with these offices and to think that we have leaders today who can’t seem to rise to the serious business of governance in this country is just heartbreaking. We’ve heard all kinds of excuses that they gave in terms of why they are defecting from one party to the other. But what seems to crystallise for the public is that these fellows simply want to remain in office.
They did not seem to recognise that being in office means to serve the people, change the material conditions of our people. We still have the largest amount of infant mortality in the world. We still have the highest amount of maternal mortality in the world. According to UNESCO report, we have the largest number of children out of school in the world. Only recently, we got the report that Nigeria is the poorest country on the surface of the earth. In all of these defection statements, we haven’t seen people defecting from one party to another because they are dissatisfied that the current leadership isn’t rising to the occasion of these challenges that we face. To that extent, I think it is a betrayal of the trust of the people.
Looking at all of these, when you look at these defections, in a democracy power resides with the people but these defecting politicians believe once they defect and have the party structures, their returning to office is guaranteed. How do we deal with that?
Even the vocabulary of structure in states, how does it conduce ultimately to service delivery for the people? I haven’t seen it. We still have one of the poorest infrastructural deficits in Africa for a country that has this kind of resource profile. So, having structures in states may actually benefit some individuals and politicians and the political parties themselves but my concern as a development enthusiast who has been in government for some time is how can we change the material condition of the people in these different states? We have 36 states and millions of people. According to statistics, Nigerians are poorer in 2018 than they were in 1960.
This is a scandal that should embarrass all of us but you don’t get any sense of urgency from these politicians. Look at the statement credited to Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue who has left the APC for PDP. He said he was leaving the APC because he was constantly being insulted by the local structures in Benue state. That seem to me a very unfortunate reason to want to leave a political party because this is a governor, who for the past seven months has been basically conducting mass burials of his fellow citizens in Benue state and one would have thought that this would be a reason for him to say ‘ I am leaving the APC because of the clear manifest incompetence of the federal leadership to provide security for my people’. But he hasn’t even referred to that. He left the political party on the very flimsy reason that he has been personally insulted by the structures in the state. So, when you look at the kinds of reasons these politicians are giving for moving from one party to another, it is a scandal. It is something we shouldn’t even be discussing because as former president Olusegun Obasanjo said, a lot of these things give the country a very unfortunate image abroad. If we are not ashamed about these kinds of things, I wonder if we have lost our national sense of shame.
You said the reasons given by the politicians are flimsy, but how do you deal with people especially in the rural areas who don’t see it like that?
The level of socio-consciousness of our people is low and I think that is also a result of a long history of bad leadership that we’ve had. But again, I would have thought that political parties ought to be animated by a certain level of ideological conviction. If you are going into public office, you have to be in public office simply because you want to serve the people. We don’t see that kind of sentiment in this case. People are leaving these political parties simply because they want to return.
We are hearing that the PDP likely has the majority in the senate now because of these defections that are happening but I suspect the question Nigerians want to ask is ‘ Yes, you have the majority in the senate, so what? How does that change the calculus? The question is if you have the majority whether in the House of Reps or the Senate, the ultimate question is: Of what use is this majority if you don’t use it to change public policy? Of what use is this majority if you can’t provide water for people to drink while politicians are flying around in private jets? Of what use is this majority if you can’t hold the Commander –in-Chief to account? I just told you about the series of mass funerals that has been happening from Sokoto to Adamawa, Benue and elsewhere across the country.
Of what use is the majority that PDP might have in the Senate if they can’t hold the Commander-in-Chief to account? Why can’t they say now that we have majority for instance, these are the list of impeachable offences and get these fellows out of office so that Nigeria can have a new dawn and then we can continue to move forward? Of what use is it if you have majority in the House of Reps when there is no clear-cut policy on how to tackle the complete decay of infrastructure in the country? We can’t talk about the decay of our educational system.
So, what I am saying is, beyond the statistics of fact of having majority in all of these places, I think that these things only add meaning when they somehow conduce good governance in the kind of discourse that we’ve been following; the kind of rhetoric that we have been hearing from these politicians. It is a very distant fact. Nobody wants to talk about it and I think it is a disgrace.
