A former Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, has said that the time has come for the country’s elected representatives to settle down to governance instead of politicking throughout their tenure, with the drawback of not providing democratic dividends to the people.
Kalu said that since the return to democratic rule, politicians have made it a habit that an election year is hardly over before they start politicking for the next election year, which is four years away.
Kalu, a former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Progressive Peoples Alliance, made this observation in a statement signed by his Special Assistant (Media), Emeka Obasi.
He said that since the return to democratic rule in 1999, it had become a way of life for a lot of politicians to embark on electioneering almost immediately after they are sworn in without fulfilling the promises they made to the electorate.
The statement added: “For instance, even the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, has had to admit it publicly that the campaign for the 2015 general election had commenced, albeit discreetly, with the linking of his name to a second term ambition even when he was yet to spend a year in office out of the four years mandate he won in 2011.
“Reports also have it that some people, even in the Presidency, are already positioning some prominent Northerners for the presidency in 2015 in the case of President Jonathan not running, with the calculation that a serving governor from the South East will either be the running mate or the President of the Senate during the tenure of the Northern candidate.
“This has resulted in the governor abandoning the running of the state for almost a daily shuttle to Abuja and other parts of the country, campaigning for an election that is still three years away and frittering state resources in the process of winning converts for his ambition.
“Such attitudes as this will, definitely, distract these office holders from delivering democratic dividends to those who gave them the mandate to rule.”
Kalu said this accounted for why there is a “huge gap between the expectations of Nigerians and the deliverables by the political class.”
He said funds that could have been channeled into the betterment of the lot of the people are expended all year round on politicking.
Kalu thus advised that the time had come for the political class to slow down on politicking, based on the realisation that their mandate is to serve the people and not themselves.
He said for the present democratic experience to be strengthened, politicians must come to terms with the fact that those who voted them into power should be the focus and not self-serving ambitions.