By Udukhokhe Odalumhe
One of the silent and unrecognized wonders of the world is how the political class in Nigeria has successfully bamboozled the rest of us to rely more on ethnic rights and opportunities to access political offices or benefit from our national wealth, rather than capacity based on merit and equal rights.
The manipulation by these cyclical political elites is a reflection of the poverty of thought that stems from long years of depravity and want. So, the tacit weaponization of hunger to gain the allegiance of the poor and the false narrative of the superiority of ethnicity over the Nation has made all of us almost always seek participation in national affairs from the ethnic prism.
It is amazing how this practice has become the norm in a Nation that is still groping in the dark, searching for true nationhood and development. Our flawed constitution indeed anchored the qualification for Nigerian citizenship by birth primarily on ethnic affiliation.
But it is becoming crystal clear that living a good life by the greater number and living in squalor and hunger have no regard for tribe or tongue but for development based on patriotic thoughts and democratic ethos.
It is time to jettison ethnically induced thoughts on development and policy implementation that seek to massage sectional desires over the general good of all. The manipulative political elites do not have recognized differences in their midst. They are united and cyclical in nature and character in the plundering of our collective patrimony.
They’re a huge but single tribe of oppressors who know how to say what we love to hear and put us on a collision course while taking advantage of the ensuing crisis to better their lot. They’re not hungry when we cry hunger. Neither are they in lack or want of anything despite these trying times.
The common man must learn to love his neighbors and understand that his fellow commoners, irrespective of tribe or Creed are not an enemy. The manipulative political class is our greatest enemy. Let us begin the change by knowing where our problems come from as a Nation.
