In his transition to civil rule programme, President Ibrahim Babangida tried to create a regime of political leadership recruitment process in which the content of the brain and the mind would trump the content of the pocket. He believed, and I could not agree more, that the rich, inelegantly called moneybags, were the lice in the lock of our leadership recruitment process.
It is easy to see the general’s logic. A leadership recruitment process in which money and money alone is the deciding factor is deleterious to the health of the government of people by the people and for people. Money shuts in the rich and shuts out the poor from the leadership recruitment process. In simple arithmetical terms, this means that good and honest and competent people with permanently shallow pockets can never offer themselves for service to the people and the country. A perfect level playing field you can never find. But a democratic process that has room only for those who cannot count their money and none for those who have no money to count, is actually a sham.
Babangida’s attempt fell on its face. The rich fought back and money reclaimed its pride of place in our national politics. The nation is paying a stiff price for the failed attempt to revolutionise our leadership recruitment process.
In 2011, a close friend of mine was a governorship aspirant in his state. He went into the ring with a good mind, a good head and brimming with ideas that would lift his state from the mire of leadership failure to the apogee of success. The snag was that his pocket gave the disagreeable sound of emptiness.
Someone who should know, told my friend that he would need at least three billion Naira to be reckoned with in his aspiration. That huge amount of money was not meant to help him to market himself and his ideas to the public. It was money meant to bribe the stakeholders. So, a good man with shallow pockets had to leave the field for the charlatans with deep pockets and the godfather pikins.
If you thought that was bad enough, spare some thoughts for what is happening in our country today, leadership recruitmentwise. Our approach to the leadership recruitment process has taken a turn for the worse. I shudder for the future of our democracy.
The billboards/posters war in all the states of the federation is the most telling evidence of the emptiness of our national politics and the flawed leadership recruitment process. It is evidence that our national politics are not issues-centred. We do not worry, of course, about the problems that bedevil us at all levels. The billboards/posters belong in the realm of dumb politics. Those who stare at you from billboards and posters tell you nothing. They do not need to. In dumb politics, the tongue is not needed. And so men continue to emerge as presidents and governors who have no obligation to the public to demonstrate the quality of the content of their heads and their hearts. Such a patently flawed leadership recruitment process will continue to saddle the nation at all levels with men with two left hands.
And that is why I am pained by what is happening in APC. Presidential aspirants on its platform pay N27 million for what they call expression of interest forms. I am sure that PDP, the much richer of the two parties with men and women with extremely deep pockets, would likely charge much more except that since the endorsement of Jonathan has shut the gate in the face of all those with evil intentions of contesting against him, we may not know what the party has imposed on its presidential aspirants.
I am sure APC has good reasons for charging so much money for its expression. Its reasons cannot be any different from what I have heard since our return to civil rule in 1999: the stiff charges are meant to keep in the serious-minded and keep out the jokers. This is a badly flawed logic in democracy and the leadership recruitment process. Anything that narrows the field is an unnecessary obstacle to our struggling democracy.
I have no details yet of what APC charges for governorship as well as national and state legislative aspirants but the forms would not be free. I find it truly sad that this party is not for the poor with demonstrable competence.
It worries me that APC is unable to play the game differently. I thought the party would be the authentic party and the voice of the talakawa, the poor. I thought the party would be the first in our country to make the content of one’s head and heart the basis for its leadership recruitment process. I thought the party would provide genuine refuge for those whose desire to serve our country is thwarted by the emptiness of their pockets. I thought the party would demonstrate that although money is important in politics, there is a limit beyond which it would not be allowed to continue to foul up the system.
In playing the money game, APC does not really offer us an alternative to PDP, It gives us no reasons to hope and expect that it can throw up men and women capable of pulling our country from murk of corrupt, venal and incompetent leadership at all levels,
I have had a quick check with the Americans from whom we borrowed our current form of government. Their political parties do not sell expression of interest forms. They have room for the rich as well as the poor in their leadership recruitment process. That is what makes the process sound and enviable. It has consistently and generally produced competent leaders at all levels.
APC has much to gain from promoting itself as the party with room for the rich and the poor. It can start by not charging its members who want to contest elections. It does not take rocket science to know that the triumph of money politics is the triumph of mediocrity and incompetence.
