‘Oh APC, where is the change?

I can almost see the scores of my friends to whom the above heading will offend. They will argue, wishing I hadn’t come up with this heading.

This must be a time for hard questions for Nigerians. About eleven months ago, the people poured on the streets to unseat President Goodluck Jonathan. The man of Otuoke was called or sort of name.

In the aftermath of the presidential election that held last year, Jonathan was sent packing from Aso rock. People jubilated but failed to ask a simple question: was Jonathan the problem or is it the case of corrupt politicians, irrespective party name?

The failure to ask this question has proved very costly. We removed Jonathan but failed to realise that all politicians are one. The politicians were smart, in switching allegiance and they were immediately rewarded with being part of the new government.

Unfortunately today, many Nigerians wish they could say like the man in the Bible who says of death, ‘O corruption where is thy sting’, but they are not saying that because nothing seems to have changed.

I have always said that the trouble with Nigeria is not that the country is corrupt. After all, every country has to deal with corruption at some level. The trouble is that corruption is still with us and becoming the way of life and we are playing politics with it.

The Police are so corrupt that some drivers who refuse to pay bribe to officers at checkpoints have ended up paying with their lives. The judiciary is still not the hope of the common man. Corruption has even invaded churches and mosques.

The way to find out if the country has experienced any change is to do a random market survey, chat with buyers and sellers about how prizes have behaved over the last few months. Try to win enough of their confidence to make them tell you about the curious eating habit they have now adopted in a desperate effort to survive with on-going fuel scarcity.

Or you can take a closer look at the faces of the people you come across. And even when you linger in a few stalls in any market, you will hear words “Ah-ah. I bought a liter of petrol for N180, Is this change we voted for? And what can we do? have become the dominant words of many.

“We have never had it so bad,’’ said Kunle Adebayo, a resident of Agbado, Lagos. “A lot of people are starving quietly because they don’t have food to eat,’’ he told me. Our situation needs to change if Nigeria is to move forward. That change cannot be if the ruling class continues to play politics with the people.