Can any person imagine why our presidential candidates for the February 2023 General elections are accusing themselves of plagiarism? They believe there is no difference in all they claim they want to offer Nigerians in the manifesto. It appears all of them are of same fold. It is like they have imbibed the same mantra and have had the same lifestyle, either acquired or imbibed. It is also true that they have been far removed from the people they want to rule, to the extent that they really do not know the difference between themselves and the people; the masses. The much they know is the fact that their votes will come from the masses, because they are the majority and the more gullible. They feel that the masses must vote for them, no matter what is in the manifesto, because they are hungry, poor, and all they need is few N500 notes and a quarter of a bag of rice, until the next four years. Suffice it to say that they sincerely trust that the tools for their victory reside within the powers of the masses who are the more dependable group to deliver the votes, come rain or shine. Majority of the votes come from the masses who never made any serious demand and will never get any serious benefit from the contestants, who they do not even know. But the contestants believe more on the elite voters who occupy the minority voting population but who get the huge chunk of the promises woven around their needs. They also know that the masses do not really care about what is promised them because they cannot question them. That is why they have always been taken for granted. Campaign scenarios in Nigeria’s elections never change. The attitude is to talk big to the mighty, too. The lesser mortals are assumed to be there and must not be part of the consideration for the manifesto, after all most of them are illiterates and do not know about manifesto. What they care most would be throwing quarter bags of rice on them. This is why when manifestoes are written in Nigeria, what you see are expressions like privatization, Infrastructure development, economic growth, debt service reduction, Paris Club negotiations, biodiversity, climate change, foreign exchange management, subsidy removal, market volatility, kidney transplant, national carrier and medical tourism among others. These are for the ears and demands of the very few who control everything. The so much publicized manifestoes prepared by the very prominent political parties in Nigeria for the 2023 general Elections have largely remained mum on prominent issues that afflict the over 133 million poor Nigerians, as the emphases have been on the ways and means of growing the wealth of the little fraction of the population that have positioned themselves to urge their friends and colleagues who are routing for leadership to increase their stronghold on the Nigerian economy, polity and freedom. This is why none of the manifestoes have made any provision on good and affordable water supply to the cities, and even the rural populace. Little would people wonder why Nigeria cannot implement any feasible water scheme. Because they feel that those who need water can usually pay geologists to provide water for them through boreholes, they do not think that such should be made as a promise to anybody. The reason is that the group of people who cannot afford it are usually out of the scope of the rich who are usually the political party sponsors, vote buyers, riggers and others who can facilitate legal tussles when tribunal takes decision over the votes cast by the majority. Campaigns in Nigeria have really focused the rich and targeted their abodes like cities where those they feel that can hold them accountable but are strictly held back by corruption and the hunger for the spoil of office live. Researches since the ongoing campaigns have shown that the rural areas with their hungry dwellers have been taken for granted as very sure voters, irrespective of what they know or do not know, and that is why considerations for their welfare do not matter so much. Nobody talks about sustainable rural housing schemes, functional scholarship for the under-privileged, functional free health facility, fairly good roads, and renewable rural financing schemes or small scale economy. Every campaign tends to target the big investment and development option which needs huge pockets to own and establish with value-chains that do not make any case for the welfare of the poor. This is why you can frequently hear politicians repeat their Privatization Plans. The fact has remained that the planners of the campaign programs are not aware that what matters so much for the over 133 million poor Nigerians are not the huge infrastructure developments they bamboozle the people with, but the efficacy of the small profitable activities that they can undertake in the comfort of their rural settings which add to the GDP rate. The huge infrastructures must be national development programs and not a people development program. While the huge programs emphasize the mega economic targets, the micro targets of the manifesto will be there to reduce the ensuing cases of hunger, insecurity, criminality and corruption which can grow from that point to destabilize national growth. No political party manifesto has told Nigerians that their support for Restructuring is to favour a constitutional framework that can back the removal of ‘immunity clause’ from our constitution as a way of reducing corruption. They will not want to include that in the manifesto because this is the soft-spot of the elite or the capitalists that run and rubbish the Nigerian economy. Let the manifesto tell us what the parties want to do when they get into power with those destabilizing contents in our economy like subsidy, deregulation, security votes, huge convoys for executives and their menace to the masses, plight of prisoners and detainees, awaiting trials, nomadic education, the Almajari education, obnoxious issues that are still hanging like Ruga, Water and Coastal fronts ownership and issues about flood. Let them tell us about the future of the police and military welfare on their watch. The manifesto as we see today is hogwash and ordinary paper signifying nothing. It is printed to lease the elites and show that they are together. It has been abused because it is false and demystified because it np longer has integrity. That is why some people feel that it is a blind alley. If our politicians and presidential candidates are serious, let them come out with the real manifesto that can address the fate of the over 133 million Nigerians, not just the 50 million aristocrats and the technocrats who make up the capitalists that squander our commonwealth. A capitalist manifesto will obviously produce a government of the rich that will maroon the poor. Nigerians will not want to have anything to do with maroon culture!! This is the fear of Nigerians come February 2023!!!
