If happenings in and around the political space is anything to go by, the Nigerian electorate has every reason to be apprehensive. They are about to be taken for a jolly ride one more time as matters that affect their welfare receive scant attention if not total neglect by a political class in reprehensible disarray.
We make this assertion after a studied watch of the level to which the political class has placed their personal interests over and above that of the nation. It is a demonstration, in our view, of the absence of statesmen who, in moments like this, would have placed national interest over everything else. All the nation has, for now, is a bunch of political hustlers who are focused on the next election and what it has for them in terms of career progression or lack of it.
In our worried state of mind, we think of no other way to explain the insensitivity of the politically exposed persons, especially their rancorous disposition in the political arena, a tendency that has shifted attention from national concerns.
The situation would have been comic if not that it affects the very essence of a country that prides itself as the biggest democracy in sub-Saharan Africa and the largest economy in the continent. While this cacophony of voices is dominating the media space, no one is paying attention to the real issues which ought to, under normal circumstances, dictate the direction of political debate.
Instead, in the considered opinion of this newspaper, what the people are being served in the name of democracy is the inordinate quest for political power for its own sake, who occupies which office, who dictates orders and who gets what. These are the underpinning factors that are leading the politics of the nation to overdrive. These are the reasons why the politicians cannot agree on anything as they continue to view issues from the narrow prism of self-aggrandizement and influence-peddling.