ABUJA FEVER: A DISEASE OF POWER, GREED, AND POLITICAL MANIPULATION BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE
Since the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) primary election of May 29, I have been ruminating on one troubling question: Why are party officials withholding the results of the primary election? Whose interests are these leaders serving?
It is wrong to keep the people in darkness. Democracy is founded on transparency, accountability, and respect for the will of the people. In a true democracy, the collective choice of citizens must prevail over the pecuniary interests of an elitist minority.
During my reflections, I arrived at a disturbing observation. Since the advent of the present democratic dispensation, it has become increasingly rare for an incumbent to lose an election, regardless of poor performance. This statistical anomaly suggests that, in many cases, what takes place in Nigeria is not an election but a selection.
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These selections have produced a class of individuals who accumulate enormous power at the expense of the very people who voted for them. Elections have increasingly become cultural rituals in which the will of the people is subordinated to the whims of a privileged few. These individuals have evolved into political godfathers who trample upon the rule of law and make a mockery of the democratic process.
If party leaders believe they possess the authority to handpick candidates, why organize primary elections at all? They could simply announce their preferred candidates and spare the people the charade.
Since the refusal to release the results of the primary election, many individuals have been making pilgrimages to Abuja. Why? Are they attempting to negotiate the mandate of voters in exchange for the preferences of unelected party power brokers?
Who are these party leaders? How did they become leaders? It is increasingly evident that many of them were themselves selected rather than elected. Consequently, they remain accountable not to citizens but to their political benefactors.
This is why we continue to suffer. Their loyalty is to Abuja, not to the people. They cannot rock the boat because they are products of the very system they seek to preserve. Their mission is to recruit new acolytes who think alike and who will perpetuate the same culture of obedience to power rather than service to the people.
This is not democracy. Under the rubric of democracy, transparency is indispensable, and the rule of law is supreme. The absence of these values has nurtured the decay that now afflicts our nation. Progress remains elusive because we continue to drink from the toxic brew served in the dirty vessels of failed leadership.
Many of those who should be champions of development have instead become champions of decadence. Under such leadership, every essential public service has been compromised. The hospital in my village has become little more than a mortuary. Electricity is a luxury. Criminals parade our streets with impunity, sometimes in the company of politicians, taunting ordinary citizens because they, like their selected patrons, believe themselves to be above the law.
Politicians now negotiate and hobnob with armed robbers and kidnappers. Nothing appears sacred anymore. The moral foundations of society are steadily eroding. We have all become infected with what I call Abuja Fever—a disease of power, greed, and political manipulation that demands the sacrifice of truth, justice, and the people’s mandate.
DR. AUSTIN ORETTE, NDC DELTA SOUTH SENATORIAL CANDIDATE, WRITES FROM OWHELOGBO IN ISOKO NORTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA
(DEMOCRACY NEWSLINE NEWSPAPER, JUNE 4TH 2026)
