OF CRIMINALS AND TOUTS

By Nick Dazang 

Making a submission on August 6, 2025 at the National Conference of Egbe Awofin Oodua at Abeokuta, Ogun State, with the theme:”Regional Justice, Security and Sustainable Development”, Femi Falana, SAN, lamented that our politics was in the hands of criminals and touts.

Mr. Falana said such criminals and touts paid scant regard to investing in the country’s economic prosperity and the well-being of its citizens. Said Falana:”During the days of late Chief Awolowo, politics was in the hands of intellectuals, but today, politics is in the hands of criminals and touts who are less concerned about investing in the economic prosperity of the country and the well-being of the citizens”.

Mr. Falana was merely underscoring what other prominent politicians themselves have said. The late Senator Nuhu Aliyu Labbo, who represented the Niger North Senatorial District was Deputy Inspector of Police (DIG), and was in charge of the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) prior to his serving three terms (1999-2007) in the Senate. He had expressed shock that some of his colleagues in the National Assembly were persons he had earlier investigated for criminality.

The erudite Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, who once presided over the Senate, had expressed dismay at the lack of cerebral and intellectually rigorous contributions in the Senate and the lack of dignified carriage by Senators in spite of the lavish allowances enjoyed by them. He lamented the dire lack of sound bites or “quotable quotes”, reminiscent of Dr. K.O. Mbadiwe of the “timbre and caliber” renown or the flamboyant and sartorial elegance of the types of Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh.

Those who recall with nostalgia the politics of the First and Second Republics – which were predicated on substance and improving the welfare of Nigerians – must rue the sordid pass at which we have arrived.
The politicians of that era were either intellectuals themselves or surrounded themselves with pundits possessed of profound knowledge and fecundity. They also believed in a set of ideas and they had an abiding concern for improving the weal of their people. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, apart from being an author, ran a chain of newspapers across the country. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was a prolific writer, an unrivaled believer in the power of education and the founder of the well regarded NIGERIAN TRIBUNE. The spartan Malam Aminu Kano was an intellectual who believed in the socialist reconstruction of Nigeria. He pitched his tent with the masses or TALAKAWAS and comported himself with high integrity.

The politics of the First and Second Republics were thus imbued with ideology and unvarnished principles.
Where the politics of the First and Second Republics were invested with ideas, high purpose and steadfast principles, the politics of the Fourth Republic (1999-) is bereft of these crucially important qualities. A number of reasons are responsible.
First is the protracted and labyrinthine political transition program on the watch of military president, General Ibrahim Babangida. In that program, credible politicians were willfully banned and unbanned. A preference was given to a “new breed” of politicians. This was compounded by General Sani Abacha who foisted five political parties on Nigerians in lieu of an abortive transmutation to be president. By the time the Fourth Republic arrived, most credible politicians had either suffered fatigue or disenchantment. Enter, in droves, the epigones and persons of lesser or no substance.

Second is that after pro-democracy activists had gallantly fought the military, following the annulment of the June 12 1993 presidential election, in which Chief M.K.O. Abiola won, resoundingly, they abandoned the commanding height of our politics. They retreated to their cocoons. This retreat gave way for all sorts characters to enter the fray and to take it over. These were people who had no commitment either to the democracy project or the delivery of good governance. Since theirs was not hard-earned, they did not value it.
But worse is that, by and by, we have seen a steady devaluation in the timbre and quality of our politics. Self-centeredness has become the order of the day. Politicians are in the game to feather their nests. Elections are subverted, using money and toughs, and with abandon. Poverty is being deliberately weaponized in order to subjugate the people and put them on leash. Our fault lines, of ethnicity and religion, are being recklessly exploited to secure political offices.

Rather than embark on impactful projects, the construction of bridges in State capitals and the renovation of Government Houses are the new fad. Meanwhile, our rural roads are impassable. Hospitals and schools are in a state of decay.

What can we do to stop these charlatans in their tracks, less they bring the country completely to its knees? Civil society and the Media must not relent. They should be in the vanguard of educating the people. Our people should be educated to vote only for candidates who have pedigrees of integrity and delivery of good governance. They should be told that each time they collect pittances or noodles from politicians during elections, they have mortgaged their futures and that of their children.

They also deny themselves the capacity to hold their elected officials to account.
The people should be educated to insist that all political parties must be informed and guided by lofty ideologies as opposed to the vacuous ones that now parade themselves. They should be educated to refrain from or stop celebrating politicians who savage our commonwealth and patrimony and deploy same to massage their vanities and frail egos. Instead, they should lionize those who deliver good governance and carry themselves above board.

They should be educated to vote for candidates that demonstrate and command exalted visions. They should be educated to appreciate that the havoc already wreaked by our carper baggers can only be mitigated by persons who lay premium on the delivery of good governance and those who genuinely empathize with suffering Nigerians.
Civil society and the media must continue to set agenda and call clarion attention to these challenges as well as hold our leaders to account in the most detailed and robust fashion.

We must all engage with our politicians to understand that they have a bounden duty to deliver good governance and put Nigeria in a better place. That the survival of the democracy project and its sustenance is contingent on it; and that it is in their best self-enlightened interest to do so.