–Blank NEWS Online (NIGERIA):

The year preceeding the general election year in Nigeria is always an interesting one. This is the time when political gladiators, both the serious and the pretenders, jostle for space in their political nests while seeking for attention of the electorates across the nation.

But it is equally very easy to identify and separate the serious from the not-too-serious, the grains from the chaff and the pretenders from the determined.

Some of the key ways to identify a pretender, in Nigeria’s type of party politics is the obvious lack of a grassroot political base and the all important and the much needed financial war-chest to prosecute their visions.

In Nigeria, those who thinks that winning elections is based on eloquence, oratory and polemics often found out that grammar and the use of the Queens English language, does not confuse nor endear the speaker to the average pauperised Nigerian citizen that is ready to vote anymore.

The days of Zikism, laden with sugar coated speeches are over. And so are the days of those who often do not prepare but yet, insist on contesting elections just to fulfill “the clarion call of the people”

Any aspirant that doesn’t have a support base with proven positive antecedents of performance, capacity and an identifiable means of livelihood is a pretender.

In this season, we will yet see more of them. Some have become perennial contenders such that they are no longer taking seriously in the scheme of things. Their posters are almost always ready with myriads of phantom associations of hustlers, masquerading as support groups, ready to do their bidding provided there’s cash to throw around.

Let those who wants to genuinely take us to our eldorado come out with all readiness, seriousness and demonstrable capacity to lead without recourse to primordial prejudices of ethnicity and religion that has kept us bound up until now.

• Austen AKHAGBEME is a Columnist with Blank NEWS Online
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