Sorry this isn't an article or anything like that. . .

Day in day out, we keep hearing about this group of leaders/stakeholders meeting to discuss who their kinsmen will support, if it is not Ohaneze or Afenifere or Arewa it's South-south elders or Middle-Belters or something equally inane. . .

my question is, who gave this people the right to barter our votes? What achievements do they have under their belt? who elected them elders? what gives them the right to dictate(in their minds) who igbo/yoruba/hausa/etc will vote for? truth is most of the kinsmen they claim to represent dont know them from adam, but still these set of people will convene meetings where they will make demands in exchange for the votes of their regions etc.

What annoys me about the matter is that the government(politicians) takes these people serious and rewards them with patronage, thus helping to establish a cycle, no wonder there are so many vanguards, political associations, youth groups etc.

and we the people somehow always end up kowtowing to the nusiances' plans, isn't it time we showed government that it's business is with us, it's us they need to appeal to not all these phony elders and stakeholders?

Nigeria is a lawless country. And in a lawless country you have gangs. And with gangs anybody who isn't protected under one gang is in serious danger. These groups you've mentioned work like gangs and the government treats them similarly. You need gang leaders to defend you from other gangs.

None of these groups are leaving any time soon ever. Sometimes people in those groups have proven themselves loyal to their nation and worthy of representing them, and sometimes they're the only suitable people to head these. . . . gangs, or those who want to.

Nigeria's politics is number 1, ethnicity, then everything else revolves around that including presidency, each geopolitical zone might as well be sovereign countries.

Nigeria was not created by the hands of any of the ancestors of Nigerians, Nigeria has never been bold enough to identify any of it's issues or has tried to address the status of its identity, it's not a country that respects 'diversity' and it's going to vanish for several countries to rise in less than 30 years.