LETTER: Let politicians stop making thugs more powerful than police, good governance will show by 70%

The current State of the Nation in Nigeria has made it imperative for me to make my own suggestion especially as some concerted efforts are ongoing to amend the Constitution with a view to achieving a better country, positing that the business of achieving the dreamed Nigeria is falls in the hands both the leaders and the led.

It is believed that although there is hardship in the land but only when we resolve among ourselves to move away from the ugly experience, there can truly and effectively be solution.

The situation currently in Nigeria has the similitude of a state, where non-state actors (thugs, hoodlums and hoodlums) are made more powerful than constitutional authorities in terms of economic and security control, and such nation has no result more or less than is experienced.

If citizens want a better Nigeria, we should first realise we are in this bad shape not for lack of resources but for cheer reason of citizenship irresponsibility, large scale. How did Naira come to a point Mercedes Benz can no longer be purchased for N1,000. It was once that that, how did that negative change occur and economists of the country dont botger but only concern themselves with unrealistic theories daily defending capitalist way that sees no evil in thugs-run public transport and market activities in Lagos as inflation slips through their hands to put the country in the current mess? As a people in the street, we should make up our minds to, first and foremost, fear God in all our dealings knowing that even if the president, the governors and police agents do not see them, there is one supreme being who sees and from whom they cannot hide.

Therefore, when we fear and obey him, we should follow it up with patriotism that is love of country. Any Nigerian, who is not concerned by damaged reputation that his bad character gives to his country in the international community does not deserve to live in the midst of the people.

Then, we should obey the rules, regulations and guides as laid down by constituted authorities in our respective constituencies anywhere in the country and do not constitute ourselves into the category of law breakers. Anything we know as law and has been enforced, we must feel ashamed to break.

This patriotic behaviour is what is lacking that we now have a country that looks like lawless. No! There are laws that guide living system in the land except that we, as the people, must check ourselves.

To those in authorities, they should see themselves as representatives of the people voted into government to use the power of State to create a better shape of life and opportunities for the people. So, they should go and be aware that any attempt to compromise the responsibility of making a better society habitable for the people will always be faced with consequences.

Those in authorities should not see themselves as God. They are representatives of the people in power and so must use the power appropriately to do what is good, right and proper for the people they represent. The best way to make a better society habitable, well secured and peaceful for the people is to ensure justice is done to all. And the best way to make justice to all is when those that seek political office do not think achieving it must be by money and use of thugs. Only the Establishment can put the process under check to make it effectively so.

A leader that governs a cosmopolitan state of peoples from diverse backgrounds: religion, tribes and cultures must, as government, stand to protect the interest of the people by being able to recognise who deserves respect, honour and support and who does not. How many of governors, who have signed death Bill that makes death sentence as penalty for kidnapping and killing into Law have actually signed a death warrant for convicts who are guilty of such crime? Once a leader is voted into government, to play politics with lives of the people itself become a sentence on him. The Establishment must make it happen, if those in it are truly patriotic.

There should be no claim of rights to religion that requires human sacrifices in whatever form. God created the world for a purpose of security and peace and wants his creatures to live in peace while those in authority should naturally provide security and protection against evils to make his creatures live in peace. Anyone with claim that requires blood of the same human creature for whom those provisions of better life have been made (be it under religious rites or thuggery), such person should not be entitled to constitutionally guaranteed security and protection.

Outside of this, the priorities of any government that is practicable fundermental human rights, security, protection, welfare, food security, education and effective healthcare delivery system, should be responsibility of representatives of the people in government. It is evil and anti-people that people would vote in a government but they are governed by empowered thugs who are lined up alone major roads in so-called uniforms to cause make transport business and movement uneasy and market places unoperatable as seen in the various state communities.

Failure of the people in government to fulfill these responsibilities should be the very basis that makes legitimacy of their honour and respect, especially immunity, cease. And when the people decide to change them in accordance to constitutional pathways, the Establishment, that is group of people that must stand above others as watchers and monitors of events, must make the powers of state to work against attempts by the incumbent to use Constitution unconstitutionally to manipulate the process in order to perpetuate themselves in power.

To the Establishment, there should be a system by which the weak and poor can be protected and defended against the overzealous and corrupt elements who see power as means to squeeze good life out of the people after luring them through weaponised poverty to gain their votes, only to turn their back against them using draconian policies and programmes that add no values but hardships and hardened poverty to the living system of the people.

This should be the last time Nigerians will be taken through acclaimed reforms of whatsoever that render them into no more or less than abject poverty and situation that is far lower than tolerable even in the animal kingdom. If the Constitution is truly about the people and their better lives under God, anyone that comes into operating the constituted authority must be made to be on his toes at all times and to know that his time is up, the moment the people begin to feel or run short of those priorities of government: fundermental human rights that is practicable, security, protection, welfare, food security, education, effective healthcare delivery system and, above all, justice to all.

*Olurotimi Ojo wrote this cletter to the editor from Loloja, Kogi State.