Once upon a time, it was “Restructuring” now or nothing! It was so loud that even the deaf could hear it!

Some even said, “No restructuring, no election”!

Attentions then shifted to constitutional amendments by the National Assembly which gulped Billions of Naira that led to nowhere!

Even, our own Eminent Elders Forum proposed their painstaking “resolution” on a new governance model to the National Assembly and still went further to present a “draft bill of a new governance model” (constitution) for Nigeria effective from 2023 to the National Assembly to no avail.

Issues then suddenly shifted to political parties National Working Committee elections and thereafter, the unnecessary long debates as to which geopolitical zone, North or South should produce the next President of Nigeria come 2023 took the center stage.

Meanwhile, people are being slaughtered everywhere daily even in sacred places of worship without any hope of it abating soon while the governments, particularly at federal level, are very busy doing nothing and “politicking”.

Meanwhile, arrowheads of some ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria are languishing in incarceration while known terrorists from a section of the country are being pampered, romanced in high places and “compensated” with huge ransoms in addition to being integrated into key governance structures including security apparatchik of Government!

So much motion without movement are evident everywhere while the politics of the stomach continues to the detriment of all and the country.

Some people just got killed, numerous people have died and many more are still dying in the hands of terrorist! – a thing that was alien to us hitherto!

So many people are being maimed, raped, kidnapped and still being held hostage in inhuman conditions while many are suddenly rendered homeless at unawares in their ancestral lands but, the in thing now is politics of where the next President will or comes from as though human lives no longer matters!

Are they seeking to govern the dead or the living?

Are they seeking to be President in the land of death, of the dead or the living?!

Wouldn't there first be a country and people before we talk of who governs?

Doesn’t it make a better sense to first have a foolproof instrument of governance that takes care of all before labouring on who/where is to govern?

To add insult upon injury, same people who are the architects of the present sorry state of the country are still scheming and desperate to retain power perpetually at all cost to the exclusion of all others without blinking even an eye to the reality that, their cumulative bad ‘rulership’ over the years have painfully transformed Nigerians from human beings to human beasts and the country Nigeria to a jungle where anything goes!

There is a saying that, a dog destined to die will not hear the call of its owner!

We wait to see how/if this axiom is applicable to Nigeria in the immediate future.

Tomorrow is pregnant!

•Prof. Echefuna’ R. G. ONYEBEADI writes from FCT Abuja.