Between the liberal democrats and the progressive conservatives, a tale of a country on the horns of dilemma.
When general Abdulsalami Abubakar handed over power to Olusegun Obasanjo at the eagles square on the 29th may, 1999 many Nigerians and indeed the international community thought Nigeria has turned a new page in its perilous and sometimes troubled past, but no things turned from bad to worst and Nigerians have tasted hell ever since; because this is what actually hell feels like—an unending cycle of suffering and pain in the hands of two political parties of doom. Such is the nature of evil out there in the vast ignorance of many Nigerians. It has spread and festered like wild fire consuming all on it parts. A Sleepless malice as black as the oncoming wall of the night, so it as always being and I pray it stops. Since 1999 when democracy returned little or next to nothing has been achieved by the political class; Nigerians have no access to portable water, no health insurance, no access to quality education, our infrastructure is in state of comatose. I am yet to see one dividend of democracy delivered to people in the right quantity and quality. The 18years of democracy in Nigeria has been a boon, boom and boost for the political class, the rich and connected while the poor masses have had a sucker punch delivered to their gut; the inequality gap has never been wider. Many have wondered why we have suffered such horrible fate, Nigerians have become inscrutable and ad nauseum to the injustice that has become anathema. One reason for our dismal failure is what I intend to explain with this article which is bad political parties producing bad political actors. There are only two main dominant political agent of transmission of evils in Nigeria, they are the APC and PDP. Both the APC and PDP are like two accelerating trains coming towards each other, competing for speed and at the end of the day they have created a state of “social dyspepsia”. They have divided the nation along ethnic lines, cleaving families, turning friends into enemies; and transforming children into unwitting enemies and surrogates for warring side. Together both parties form one hell of a wrecking crew destroying lives by their actions and inaction. Watching both parties rule this nation is like watching a car wreck in slow motion, where Nigeria is a car driven by two drunks with its parts flying in different directions, believe me it is not a good sight to behold and it is painful. Politicians of both liberal democrats and progressive conservatives are most times con artist (or call them weasels) selling shimmer and calling it silver to voters. Promising a pie in the sky to voters who in the long run don’t even get the crumbs; and when they perceive that voters aren’t buying into their cheap theatrical façade of empty campaign promises, they resort to deploying violence to install themselves in political offices and let me tell you electoral violence is the only way losers win political contest. The gap between big campaign boosts and promises and tiny achievement is so wide and deep under both PDP and APC, that many voters have been left frustrated in the morass vortex of discouragement. Many voters feel hornswoggled and abandoned when they see themselves live in peasant penury while the political class pay themselves outsize salaries and embezzle public funds to live in ritzy luxury. They often times craft their messages into catchy mantras like “Transformation agenda”, “Seven point agenda”, “Change begins with me”. After and during every administration of both PDP and APC most voters often feel like disciples of “false-prophet” that the scales in their eyes have been removed (or “participant of Ponzi scheme” whose feeling of unshakeable optimism have been turned to great disappointments). Both parties are changing the rules to suit their agenda, misinterpreting the laws and constitution. They are simply intolerant of opinions that differs from their parties narratives. Their goal when you oppose them and their ill-informed narratives is to guilt you into believing that you are: intolerant, stupid, an ethno-religious bigot, corrupt, uncharitable, unreasonable and low in intelligence quotient. They go nuclear and become ill-tempered when you confront them with facts because their parties are like buildings standing on foundation of lies and propaganda and of course such buildings collapse in the face of facts. Explaining your line reasoning to members of both parties make you see them in syrupy condescending voice— the smarmy, indulgent niceness of people who think they are more intelligent than you. Both party often engage themselves in dialogue of the deaf, in which each camp justifies its own intellectual laziness by pointing to the laziness of the other, but you cannot buy into their narratives, you must stay the course. No country should be faced with the choice between dying by hanging or dying by lethal injection which is what choosing between both parties feels like .Before going into the details of this article it is important to explain what I meant by the liberal democrats and the progressive conservative. The people’s democratic party (PDP) will be referred to as liberal democrat’s because of their liberal economic approach through privatization and deregulation of key sectors of the economy e.g. telecommunication sector, power sector, cement manufacturing e.t.c; and their extravagant way of lavishing the nation resources. While the progressive conservative will be referred to as APC because they favor more government intervention through school feeding program and conditional cash transfer. They also tend to preach conservative mode of spending, railing against lavish government spending, even if they don’t practice what they preach. The recent disastrous turn of things in the country coupled with my deep feeling that people might reprimand me for my initial opening monologue, where I placed both parties in one basket of rotten fruits and some might even say I am committing fallacy of hasty generalization; I therefore am compelled to expatiate by writing this article and I intend to expose how bad the two political parties are.
To be continued!!!!!
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