Nigeria Content Online

A seeming threat to
the political warlords in the coming elections is a great, informed
voting population who are angry about the wasted leadership of the last
50 years – the youth. However, the antidote to be administered against
this teeming power is those of their generation who have long traded
their franchise and very dignity for daily bread; franchise for
protection and for the faint hope of redemption from the dregs of
society.

May I welcome you to the food chain of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW).

They may go by
different names in different states of the country but in Lagos, the
name, ‘agbero’ gives a vivid, annoying image of only one variant of
humans: the vexed, coarse, sloven; a husky, agile person who
deliberately maintains the local tongue in his confrontation – his
first gambit at unsettling your confidence.

They too are a
teeming population, albeit not an informed one. They hail from a very
deprived background made whole by past administrations which mark our
peculiar history. Yet, they are a great population which could have
been diminished, simply with good exposure. Unfortunately, their
exposure now settles for the filthy rationale of temporal wages –
commissions from tolls squeezed from market women, street traders, bus
conductors and in some cases, beggars.

For as long as the
NURTW remains that shoddy institution held strongly by ‘area fathers’,
themselves, former victims of this food chain; as long as the grass
root problems do not have multi-channels for the conveyance of
resources due them; these area fathers will always succeed in capturing
the interests and loyalties of a forgotten mass of our population. They
will ignite them and show them the ‘ways’ to earn a living. They will
buy their loyalties with the assurance of daily bread and make them
build their aspirations on the lavish luxuries of their executives.
When the time comes (and it comes often), set them against opposing
factions, where the bloodbath will leave a few dead, many injured and
most, terribly scarred.

Anyone who takes on
any neglected responsibility of any government, by providing for any
deprived spectrum of society, wields power over that spectrum.

But how does this
relate to the office-holder? How is it relevant to the government of
the day or the ruling political party? It is a sheer case of nemesis. I
do your job for you, and somehow, you compensate me for it. It makes no
difference whether you contracted me in the first place and it doesn’t
matter how well I did the job.

People of that
population, judging from their perception of their environment, are
almost always of voting age. Where they fall short, their solid build
compensates. For a country lacking data preservation, who dares
challenge them? The ‘area fathers’ can now sit on one end of the
negotiating table, with a muffled governor on the other, and say with
confidence, “My Governor, we can give you at least five million votes
on that day. You talk about the youth, Governor. We are the youth. We
have them in our hands. All you have to do for us is …”

It is a genuine case of quid pro quo!

Look carefully.
What is the majority of the calibre of voters you see on the queue on
election days; an informed youth or a traded mass?