COALITION OF NIGERIAN MOVEMENT: WHAT FOR?
By: Abdulwasiu Mujeeb
It saddens my heart whenever I see people chorusing this evergreen music: “Nigeria go better; Nigeria go good O,” in abject mischief. It does make me wonder if at all the “go” in the chorus would eventually change to “don”.
Abraham Lincoln, a former president of the United States of America, once said “you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people at all the time.”
A few days ago, the former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, launched what seemed like an alternative to the two giant political parties in the Nigerian polity, Coalition of Nigerian Movement (CNM).
Needless to say, Obasanjo ruled this country for sixteen years all together, eight years under the leaky umbrella of PDP. Funny it sounds, however, that, today, the forerunner of a fresh “Messiah” party happens to be this classic thorn in the flesh of Nigerian development.
It’s just too glaring that this is yet another initiative to sell the fate of the Nigerian people. These old politicians would never retire. They just want to keep steering the wheel of the Nigerian polity, all by themselves.
Has Obasanjo so suddenly forgotten that democratic power was with him for good eight years, and moaning and mourning never ceased to be the order of the day? Was his “coalition” —or collision— in deep sleep that it didn’t notice Nigeria’s mischief until now? Haba! Baba. Na so we dense?
At the launching of the new movement in Abuja, I also heard Osun State former governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola saying: “the time has come that the youth should take the lead while elders only provide guidance.”
In all honesty, if “guidance” is what this movement is all about, Nigerian youths are not interested. What guidance? How to spend donkeys’ years in power with virtually nothing to show for it?
This time, we can’t afford to get our necks tied down with ropes of confusion. We don’t want guidance. We need no movement. The youth should be left alone. Who even knows, perhaps the “coalition” will finally end up being a “collision” with the already unstable Nigerian polity!