Professor Mills was not looking at Nigerian Society but the world’s society in his sociological imagination and the ingenuity of man to build a better tomorrow for himself from his history and experience.
This sociological imperative, today finds a deep expression in the politics and living conditions of Nigerians, since the country opened its democratic corridors in 1999 till date.
Every period indeed provides its answer to real or imagined problems but can we unequivocally say that our politics as it is being played today reflect our value system? Or poverty and inequality as it is being experienced across the land is our answer to equity and good governance?
Evidentially No. This therefore suggests that things are not being done the way they should be or ought to be and that it is time we begin to inject morality and ethics into our politics.
We must agree that lack of honesty, rigour, and common sense in our policy, debates which in most cases are influenced by ethnicity or religion have continued to defeat our efforts to move our politics to an enviable level.
Again, our political leadership particularly in certain states of the federation have in no small measure indulged in the propagation of a continuous menu of memorandum of understanding (MoUs) of both real and imaginary projects for their personal advantage or political leverage.
Indeed, the real grievances of the electorate particularly in the choice foist on them on who governs or represents them can no longer be ignored if Nigeria is to reclaim the promise of its founding fathers to build a virile, dependable, and prosperous nation.
In the past, we have allowed our undefined passion for money, the activities of political spin masters, and negative peddlers who embrace the politics of anything to be our political vision.
The result is that we end up producing leaders who in no time forget the significant challenges of their society or state and ignore the clear vision that brought them to power. And instead of building on the legacies of their predecessors, they destroy them; invariably destroying the hopes and dreams of the electorate on their chances of growth and better living conditions.
It is a trite fact that government has a role to play in promoting opportunity and prosperity for all its citizens, but to do this it needs politicians and technocrats of goodwill whose passion for growing the nation’s democracy is unequaled in all ramifications.
As former President Obama of the United States succinctly put it “those who are re-engaged in the project of national renewal and who see their self-interest as inextricably linked to the interest of others and the nation as a whole”.
In this context political leaders who are open to new packaging, irrespective of their political leanings to meet the demands of time.
We can no longer afford the trivialization of our politics to the extent that many times it has been used as an instrument of diversion over important issues of National interest.
Put differently, we must avoid ways in which the nation’s current political discourse unnecessarily divides us.
Surely, the nation’s democratic journey, since 1999 has been without hitch, nonetheless, we know where we started but we still seek to know where we stand and where we are going.
This is why we must make the right choices irrespective of the political polarization we have been witnessing all over the country in recent times.
All said and perhaps, more than any other time in our recent history, we need a new kind of politics, one that can excavate and build upon those shared understandings that pull us together as a nation.
For this to be so, we need committed men and women whose interest in politics is to render selfless service to the nation and not those who see politics as a money-making venture.
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