A look at Wada Wasco’s campaign theme shows that it was tailored to address what Public Policy scholars now call the felt needs of the people. It was issues-based and carefully and intelligently formulated in answer to, or to address, the major concerns or issues of great importance to his constituency (the students’ body). In this case, he was promising to deal with issues relating to the gastronomic needs of ‘’the people’’, issues to do with the quantity, quality and variety of foods served to the students in the refectory by cooks and stewards of a certain pedigree.
Even in those good old days of Nigeria when students were fed on a heavily subsidized fee of 50 kobo per meal for a plate of food that is worth about 1, 5000 per meal in today’s times, some students with farmers’ children’s voracious appetites for food still complained that they were not given a hungry man’s portion, hence his promise that under his food prefectship, students would be guaranteed quantity.
While farmers’ children generally considered the meals tastier than what they were used to at home before they were privileged to come to the Ivory Tower to taste “continental dishes,” a few, especially those from aje butter homes and backgrounds(Westernised, Middle Class), complained incessantly about lack of quality. If a meal, or a part thereof, was boiled, they will complain that it should have been fried; if a chicken was fried they will gripe that it should have been grilled; if rice was cooked ‘naked’ they will jeremiah that it should have been garnished with onions, cucumber and leeks; if goat meat was cooked in tomato source, they will say it was not cooked tender enough for their delicate middle-class teeth; stuffs like that hence, his promise of ensuring quality. The bit about variety was of course in answer to the general complaint by almost all students everywhere in the world about the monotony of most diets in their menu. In my own secondary school days, our chorus of complaints about Madam Ikyatse “the cooker” (as we used to call our cook) was that we were being served more beans than was necessary for our tender body constitution!
Even in those days when things were good and people took their jobs more seriously than today and people generally behaved themselves more than they do today, cooks and “cookers,” waiters and waitresses, stewards and stewardesses had some issues with their appearances and character that often led to problems with students, hence Mai Wada’s slogan to ensure that he gave the ABU students polite, efficient and ‘hygienic’ waiters and waitresses.
In my own university, we had a student union presidential aspirant whose slogan was that he will neither “bend nor break.” What the man (he is a top diplomat now so I won’t mention his name) was saying here is that as is unfortunately true of some student leaders who compromise with the school authorities after some inducement, he will neither bend to the dictates of the school authorities nor yield to intimidation or blackmail. He will remain solidly loyal and faithful to the needs and interests of his constituency. The guy was elected and he lived up to his promise.
Why am I recalling some campaign slogans by candidates in elections to some Student Union Government posts of some three and a half decades ago Nigeria? It is meant to show to Nigerians that even among students of some three decades ago, politics was a game as well as a venture about serious issues. And the more interesting thing is that even the student politics of Wada’s times that was full of creativity, ingenuity and issues copied that style from the politicians of the Second Republic. Every politically conscious and active person of the Second Republic era recognized Awo for his four cardinal programmes and could easily sing-song his promised agenda for Nigeria. Same for Shehu Shagari, Uncle Waziri Ibrahim, Dr.Nnamdi Azikiwe and later Dr. Tunji Braithwaite.
It is, however, very lamentable that in the issues-less type of politics that we have noticed especially in the last three presidential elections, the leading candidates don the dress styles of the major ethnic groups and pretend that they stand for national unity. Dress symbols are fraudulent. You do not need to dress like an Igbo man, an Hausa man or a Yoruba to like them. In fact you may even despise those people and feel very uncomfortable in those ethnic dresses.
I am raising this alarm early in the day because Governor Ayo Fayose who gave an early indication to Nigerians some months back about his intention to govern Nigeria come 2019, has started on this note of clothes symbolism by donning an Igbo dress, apparently to show the Igbo that he will be more favourably disposed to them than the present administration has been. Let Fayose and others that will come out after him, come out with a concrete agenda on what they will do in all sectors of the political economy that can be summarized in five or less catchy slogans. I am also against those politicians who will showcase the number of wives married from other tribes rather than their programmes. Awo had only one wife to show, a woman he once described as a jewel of inestimable value and she was not a campaign point at all. Yet we remember his failed campaigns for the presidency. It is totally appalling that these days, our politicians invoke “in-lawism,” tribalism, regionalism, religion and everything else that has nothing to do with what they hope to do for the people.
This piece is a plea to our politicians who have an eye for 2019 to make our politics interesting as well as issues-oriented. I will love to see and hear Atiku Abubakar, for instance, weave his campaign around the themes of restructuring which he has been championing lately. “For merit, fairness, equity and true federalism, vote Atiku Abubakar” so that if he wins we can easily remember what he promised and hold him accountable. Someone else should talk about “stable power, good roads, decent houses and socio-economic infrastructure”; another should talk about “total and inclusive anti-corruption war, honesty, integrity and national rebirth.” Another can still campaign on the platform of “peace, progress, growth and stability.” We should demand from our politicians promises that are easily digestible and with which they cannot hoodwink us. The present style where they promise a thousand and one things none of which we can easily remember makes it easy to deny that they ever made such promises.
We should tell our politicians that from the word go; we do not want to hear them accusing their rivals of corruption since it has become public knowledge that almost all of them are corrupt. Let them just tell us in creative and plain language what programmes they have to tackle all the ills hampering Nigeria’s development which are also very well known to all; no need rehashing our weaknesses which we all know.
Above all, let them make the campaign for 2019 issues-oriented and at the same time make politics some fun. This country needs serious minded people and person who can at the same time lift our spirit with creative communication.
Idang Alibi is an Abuja-based journalist and can be reached on idangalibi@yahoo.com
