CHUKS
OLUIGBO
The need for good men
to take active interest in public affairs, especially by getting involved in
politics and governance of their localities, has been amply expressed by
several generations of great minds, often highlighting the dire consequences of
not doing so. This was the point made by the great philosopher Plato when he
wrote in The Republic, “The fate of
good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men.”
Edmund
Burke, the 18th Century British statesman, is also known to have echoed the
same thought when he wrote in his ‘Thoughts on the Cause of Present
Discontents’, "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to triumph is
for enough good men to do nothing."
Theodore
Roosevelt, Jr., the 26th President of the United States, put in more
elaborately and explicitly in his April 23, 1910 speech at the Sorbonne in
Paris, France, titled ‘Citizenship in a Republic’.
“It
is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and
again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does
actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great
devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the
end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at
least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those
cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat,” Roosevelt had said.
John
Eidsmoe, a American professor of constitutional law who previously taught at
the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, Faulkner University, Montgomery, Alabama,
narrows it down to Christians in his God
and Caesar: Christian Faith and Political Action, where he encourages
Christians to join politics.
Against
the backdrop of the oft-stated excuse that politics is a dirty game, Eidsmoe
agrees that politics may indeed be dirty, but adds, however, that so is
business, law, labour, education, sports, and just about every other imaginable
human activity under the sun.
“But
if politics is dirty (and it is), is that any reason not to get involved? If
Christians stay out of politics, they remove the light of the gospel from the
political arena and abdicate their responsibility to be the salt of the earth
that savors and preserves society... the Christian who refuses to become
involved in politics consigns the realm of politics to the secular and the
unregenerate,” he writes.
Eidsmoe
quotes Senator Mark Hatfield, the late American politician and educator, who
once said, “For the Christian man to reason that God does not want him in
politics because there are too many evil men in government is as insensitive as
for a Christian doctor to turn his back on an epidemic because there are too
many germs there. For the Christian to say that he will not enter politics
because he might lose his faith is the same as for the physician to say that he
will not heal men because he might catch their disease.”
In
Nigeria today, in light of the cloud of bad governance that currently envelopes
the country, there is an increasing clamour for more good men in Nigeria – in
this case successful professionals in different fields of endeavour – to get
involved in politics to rescue the country and the citizens from the present
quagmire.
Alex
Otti, immediate past group managing director/chief executive officer, Diamond
Bank plc, while speaking in Lagos recently at the launch of a book of essays in
honour of Phillips Oduoza, outgoing GMD/CEO of United Bank for Africa plc,
encouraged the retiring UBA boss to go into politics and use his wealth of
professional experience gathered over a period of 30 to get his home state of
Imo out of the woods. He also urged other Nigerian professionals to join
politics now or watch the country further descend into a cesspool.
“When
you go out there and see the quality of people who make decisions that affect
you and me, you will be ashamed. You can go to Youtube and watch a legislator
at the House of Representatives talking about our economy. I don’t remember the
name of the gentleman but I remember what he said. A legislator, a House of
Reps member was asked how the economy was doing, and he said, ‘The economy is
sinking; it is doing like this, like that, like this, like that. If not for
this strongman called Buhari, the economy would get under water’. That was his
own economic analysis,” Otti said.
“Quite
frankly, we need to get involved in how this country is run, and the more of us
that get in there the better. Otherwise we will be left with nincompoops,
mediocre people who will be answering governors, deputy governors, House of
Assembly members. As we know, everything is garbage in, garbage out. If you
garbage in, you will garbage out,” he said.
The
book, Dynamics of the Nigerian Financial
System: Essays in Honour of Phillips Oduoza, is a collection of a total of
30 scholarly essays edited by Michael M. Ogbeidi, a professor in the Department
of History & Strategic Studies, University of Lagos.
Otti
bowed out as GMD/CEO of Diamond Bank in 2014 and waded into the murky waters of
Nigerian politics. He contested the 2015 governorship election in Abia State
under the auspices of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), but lost to
Okezie Ikpeazu of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Not convinced that he
lost the election, Otti had gone to the Elections Petitions Tribunal in
protest. The case later went to the Court of Appeal, and then the Supreme
Court, but Otti’s bid to wrest power from Ikpeazu failed as the apex court
ruled in Ikpeazu’s favour. Otti has since retired into journalism where he
writes a back page column in one of the prominent national dailies while
waiting for another opportune moment.
Earlier
in February, Bob-Manuel Udokwu, ace actor and senior special assistant
(creative media) to Anambra State governor, Willie Obiano, had told this writer
in an interview that creative industry people were best suited to rule the
country.
Asked
why many entertainers were going into politics, Udokwu said the motivation was
to serve the people in a different capacity.
“You
can’t sit on the sidelines and keep complaining that things are not working
right. I went to vie for a position in the Anambra State House of Assembly and
people asked me this question a couple of times and my answer is this: I have
children who are in secondary school now and they know their father is
influential. The things I saw as bad happening to our country when I was their
age are still there till today. Now they grow older and ask me: ‘Dad, at some
point in your life as a young person you had influence, you were well-known and
people loved you, you had the opportunity of going into a political office
where you could help to change things. Why didn’t you explore that opportunity
to make the country better by becoming involved in what was going on?’ What do
you think I would tell them? I would bow my head in shame,” he said.
“But
I had to try, and they know I’ve tried and will keep trying. I know it’s going
to work but if it doesn’t, my children will give me a pat on the back and say,
‘Dad, you tried. It’s an evil system out there.’ If I succeed, they will say,
‘Dad, you see you have encouraged us and we are proud of you that when you went
in there, things changed for the better’,” he added.
Udokwu
said a number of big-time creative people have successfully done politics and
returned to their creative career, citing American actor Arnold Schwarzenegger,
who was a two-term governor of the State of California but is now back on the
movie set, as well as Nigerian actor Richard Mofe Damijo, who moved from
special adviser to commissioner, and is also now back to the movies again.
“Let
us come to the critical analysis of this whole thing. What is the qualification
for somebody to vie for a seat in the House of Assembly? Primary Six. What’s
that for House of Reps, Senate, governor? Cheap. And for president? Most of us
have better qualifications than what the country has prescribed for its rulers.
These are my leaders today for crying out loud, but I’m sorry to say, I watch
some of them on television; some of them are two terms, three terms in the
National and different State Houses of Assembly, they go there to warm the
benches because they find their way any way into those chambers and they have
nothing to offer. And so it becomes business as usual,” he said.
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