Director, Abuja School of Social and Political Thought Dr. Sam Amadi, has warned that Nigeria may be no more if maladministration and mismanagement of the nation’s resources continues in the next three years. Dr.
Amadi in a keynote address he delivered at a capacity building workshop organised by Political Commission of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) for leaders of political thought, accused President Bola Tinubu of playing “exclusionary politics” and ruling “with the tiniest minority of any president.” Said he, “There is an extreme urgency to get Nigeria out of intensive care unit and into a general hospital ward where recovery, revival and regeneration can commence. “The country is terminally sick.
The only difference between Nigeria and a person in intensive care is that Nigeria is presently not receiving any care.” Dr. Amadi stated that the threat to destroy the country was evident during the last national protest, where northern youths marched in Kano, Kaduna and other states without fear of their lives.
“It tells us the recklessness that could become Nigeria’s revolution if the current hunger and hopelessness continue,” he said. He called for electoral reform and “real and radical party restructuring.” The Labour Party, which he used as a basis for his analysis, Dr.
Amadi stated, has the chance to reform itself and rescue Nigeria from her present problems. According to him, the Labour Party is important to sustainable economic and social development of the country because “it is difficult to conceive of a working democracy without a working political party system.” He decried the absence of aggregate of opinions and ideology among the existing political parties, noting that although the nation’s “first republic ended in a civil war and the second republic ended with military coups, the quality of democracy in those periods are far better than today.
” Political parties of the two republics, he added, “tried to aggregate opinions and perspectives about the natural question and tried to mobilise intellectual and human resources to present a vision of national development.” Amadi regretted that existing parties in Nigeria failed to aggregate any coherent ideological vision of the country’s developmental future, nor do they evince any organisation strength. “We don’t have the luxury of well-managed parties anymore,” he stated, describing the existing parties as Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) only used for getting to political offices.
“Politicians proudly talk about parties as mere SPVs, vehicles to get to power and either discard or mismanage,” he said. He described political parties as the heart of politics and for advancement of public interest, warning that politics will descend to the level of unconcealed and unmediated fight for private interests if political parties do not act as “arbiters and moderators of incommensurability and incompatibility of plural societies.” Acting Chairman of the NLC Political Commission Prof.
Theo Ndubuaku, blamed Nigeria’s developmental challenges on what he called broken politics. Prof. Ndubuaku called for political reconstruction and committed political leadership hoisted on ideological and pragmatic persuasions to remedy the ill of the successive years of bad governance.
“As a Political Commission, we are committed to changing the narrative not by mere polemics or sloganeering but by active engagement with the political process. “In this regard, we are conscious of the paramount role of knowledge as an enabler of effective political thought and action. “This is the reason the NLC Political Commission developed and disseminated a Workers’ Charter of Demands in the run up to the 2023 general election,” he explained.
The Charter of Demands, according to him, covers the gamut of social, economic and broader political concerns in the polity. He disclosed that they were used to engage candidates who contested the 2023 general elections from different political platforms including those who contested under the Labour Party. “The NLC Charter of Demands became a rallying pillar for the advancement of issue-based politics and popular participation in the 2023 general election.
“The impact of our engagement with the political class delivered some measurable markers with which Nigerians are using today to assess the performance of public elected officers especially on the issue of the petrol subsidy and the payment of decent wages to workers,” he added..
