Acquiring Power For Privatized Wealth:
A sermon for the last Sunday of November 2021.
I read the book by Ruth First about power that came from the barrel of the gun. According to her, it was the lust for this power that led to many military coups across Africa. Why was there a lust?
The power was a key that opened the door to the wealth of the nation and allowed the controller of the power to privatize or personalize the common wealth.
It is the same lust that drives a lot of people into politics. They see politics as an instrument for gaining access to our common wealth so that they can privatize. They have no vision for the nation. They cannot articulate or define their vision for moving the country forward.
And therefore when they get there by all means they have only one goal…control the political power for personal or partisan purposes. There will therefore be no definite plan for upward movement of the nation and the citizens. All you get is a staccato of knee-jerk actions and activities for which they want to be lauded.
Of course, since the desire is to access our common wealth and personalize it, nobody cares about competency in terms knowledge base, expertise, experience, skills and training.
Human resources experts will expect that there should be a knowledge of the job description of these positions to which they seek access. There ought to be a clear cut employee specification beyond proving attendance up to Secondary School Certificate. In normal circumstances, Secondary School Certificate will be good for clerical work not presidential or gubernatorial work.
Since the lust for power is based on the greed to access and control our common wealth, nobody cares about character of these people. Values like integrity, honesty, trustworthiness,self discipline, godliness, good neighborliness etc are irrelevant.
You look at those who seek political power in the First Republic, even Second Republic and elsewhere, their vision can be defined and established. Their competencies can be established and indeed proven. Their character was transparent and observable by all.
But what do we get these days…a horde of persons who do not understand clearly the functions and responsibilities of the offices; who can not evolve a clear vision and mission; who are bringing no competence ethical/moral/professional values to the positions and will therefore desecrate the positions and reduce them to their lilliputian mental sizes. Only thing they bring is a fat cheque book, ethnic, religious and partisan loyalties and of course a heritage of dubious and shady yesterday.
But we are all vicariously liable. We allow these people to seize the levers of power and the keys to our common wealth.
Then we begin to lament our poverty, underdevelopment, and poor governance. The way we made our beds so shall we sleep on them. Poor Executive, Poor Legislative, Poor Judiciary produced by mentally poor citizens result in a poor nation. The citizens must wake up, and elect or select right people into positions. Then our lamentations will end.
•Farounbi, a seasoned veteran journalist and administrator, is former Nigerian Ambassador to the Philippines.
