Nigerian politicians are intellectually lazy - Pat Utomi

A former presidential candidate of Social Democratic Mega Party, Prof. Pat Utomi, has berated Nigeria’s political class for being lazy intellectually.

According to Utomi, leadership failure, weak civil society and anti-thinking political culture have become a hindrance to the nation’s development. Utomi who is also an activist, while reflecting on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States of America’s World Trade Centre buildings, posted on his Facebook on Thursday that the abduction of more than 200 Chibok schoolgirls from Borno State had divided the country.

“What is it about America that made 9/11 the great unifier and Chibok girls abduction the great polariser in Nigeria? “To my mind, there are three things: leadership failure, weak civil society and anti- thinking political culture which makes it difficult for the elite to define the mission of their generation,” he argued.

        Utomi also lambasted President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaigners, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and the main opposition party, the All Progressives Congress. He said, “When the Washington Post published the editorial condemning the parody of #BringBackOurGirls by those who are campaigning for Goodluck Jonathan to be brought back in 2015, they captured the heart of these three points.

“You have to be intellectually lazy beyond redemption not to see that the advert mocks the kidnap of the girls not found after four months and reinforces the view that Abuja never gave a damn about the girls. In truth, few of the political opponents preying on the matter do either.”

Utomi added that politicians had “managed to laugh off values that glue society together” to the extent that the international community does not regard the Nigerian government as being serious about good governance.

He stated further that until the dignity of the nation’s citizens was central to how and why government acted, the country’s development and image would continue to diminish.

“For some reason, Nigeria’s political elite seem to thrive in being divisive in pursuit of narrow personal power and material goals. This seems to be getting worse by the day as I cannot remember a time in history in which people in authority have had more divisive tendencies than today. The progressive loss of the North-East is just one manifestation of a loss of attention by an elite focused on personal power and wealth rather than building strong institutions that make for nation building.

“Why is Nigeria so challenged with finding in authority positions people who can give up self so the nation may make progress and draw from experiences like the civil war and the injustices that led to it to prevent Niger-Delta militancy and the North-East insurgency?”

Utomi said he was happy that the American government criticised the Presidency for allowing his political campaign handlers to ridicule the social crusade efforts to rescue the abducted pupils.

He also berated the country’s security operatives for allegedly failing to act when they should have prevented the insurgency from escalating.

“I added in unsolicited advice to security operatives the warnings from Robert Kaplan’s Coming Anarchy and West Africa’s gloomy future. Policy response was tepid because people in power in Nigeria neither think long term nor are they accountable, as agents, to their principals, the people. Importantly, people in power are not put under enough pressure to right by a well informed citizenry through civil society,” he said.