Weekend Arena - Identifying The President Nigerians Need In 2023

We are so unlucky in Nigeria that our political space during elections are overtaken by mundane issues that we forget to focus on the right ideals and before we all know it, the wrong person is declared victorious and we continue another round of endurance, even in the face of electoral laws that make it difficult for the electorate to firmly determine who leads us.

Let me start with elementary human physiology. The human head is a mesh of sensory organs, consisting of the eyes, nose, tongue and the ears. All these organs work in concert with the human brain, the key processing centre, to keep our bodies active and working every day.

 They all do this function by relaying their sensory activities to the brain, which is protected by the strongest bone in the human body, called cranium. God knows the importance of the brain and supported it against easy damage. This will help you appreciate why Aso Rock is the most protected house in Nigeria, because the ‘head’, ‘which’ carries and processes all our activities for our optimum performance lives there.

Going further, the interpretation the brain makes of those senses being relayed to it, defines how the body will see them. That is what makes us appreciate that cake is sweet and bitter kola is bitter from the tongue. That is what makes us see OBJ on TV and refuse to call him Donald Trump. That is what makes us feel pain, when the body is pricked with a pin. However, the activities going on inside the head can be disrupted by certain situations, predisposing it to wrong and strange judgments. 

If you encounter a drug addict, whose brain functions need a little resetting or outright formatting, he could burst into laughter because you slapped him, when in actual sense he should be ‘cutting’ his ‘short fuse’.

Advancing this, you will appreciate why social scientists believe that the way someone’s ‘head’ processes some of those information is very key to one’s level of success in life. Some radical thinking or rationalising power is needed to break certain ceilings, which is why the champions in business, technology, sports, academia, art are associated with some level of mental ability, that is way beyond processing information for the normal daily routines of human existence.


If you are wondering why I am sounding like this, it is because this is 2022. We have just one year to the end of Muhammadu Buhari’s government, and of course, to the general elections, which will usher in the next set of leaders or ‘heads’ in Nigeria. With the gale of declarations and ‘informing the president’, going on, it is obvious that governance for now is on a pause. The political class will be too absorbed with who-should-get-what next year to disturb themselves about the political promises they made almost 4 years ago. 

 Anything you get out of them now is just ‘jara’, or parting gift to hoodwink you and sustain your hopes in their abilities.

But this is where the citizens have a role to play. It is our duty to participate fully, beginning with rationalizing all the information about the prospective aspirants and weighing those against our expectations for the next four or eight years. Following the picture I painted about how the human head works for optimum activities and results, you can appreciate the kind of ‘head’, the country deserves at this point. Of course, there would be promises; realistic and unrealistic, just to hoodwink you, but at this point of our despondency as a country, let us endeavour to ask the basic questions about the aspirants. Inability to ask the basic questions has left us more frustrated as a country, due to unfulfilled expectations.


Since the 1960s we have been expecting constant electricity and have been so promised by successive leaders but have failed individually and collectively as Nigerians to ask how the leader intends to achieve it. Leaders, world over, are known as problem-solvers and some of them, before ever getting into office, would have come up with solutions to the problems afflicting their societies. This is lacking in Nigeria. In other countries, leaders impress with the blueprint of their ideas to change the society, here they do so with bullion vans of cash. As the politicians woo us, let us not be looking only at the recharge cards or the rice or the money, which cannot last for four years, no matter how miserly we become, but at what the candidate is bringing to the table.



If Boko Haram, UGM (Unknown Gun Men) or killer herdsmen are tormenting your community, please ask the person aspiring to lead you what he will do to protect you, which are practicable and beyond the usual rhetoric. If you need a job, ask him or her how he intends to create jobs. They may tell you the problem is the exchange rate and that they have the ability to make the naira equal to the dollar, please ask how!



We are so unlucky in Nigeria that our political space during elections are overtaken by mundane issues that we forget to focus on the right ideals and before we all know it, the wrong person is declared victorious and we continue another round of endurance, even in the face of electoral laws that make it difficult for the electorate to firmly determine who leads us.


Another kernel is for those of us basing our electoral support on ethnicity; do not forget that when you end up with the wrong head, the market you are going to buy from later will not judge you based on where you are from but on how much money you have. Musa cannot sell a bag of rice he bought for N20,000 to Idris at N15, 000, because they are both northerners and Muslim, never! But he would sell to Ekong, Se3gun or Amadi if he can pay the right price.

That is why marriage counsellors will tell you how important it is to avoid a toxic marriage than embracing it with the hope that things would get better