2023: Politics Without Ideas - Reuben Abati

Reuben Abati has much to say about the 2023 Presidential candidates whom he said have no manifestoes or lack ideas on how they want to run the government if elected as President.

He made mention of Atiku of PDP, Tinubu of APC, Peter Obi of Labour Party and the like of them who want to become Nigeria's President.

On Twitter, Abati writes on 'Politics with Ideas' ahead of the 2023 General Elections and below are excepts of what he said.

"I am concerned, but not shocked in any way, that the most prominent reaction to the interview that Arise News conducted last week with the Presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar has been sheer tittle-tattle about location, and format and silly ego games. 

It is a measure of the confusion in the land, and the failure to focus on ideas and concrete issues. 

The big problem that we face in this country, six months to the 2023 general election is the obsession with minutiae and the irrelevant. This must be considered a national tragedy considering the challenges before us. Thousands, if not millions of young Nigerians burn hours on the social media/internet abusing persons engaged in productive work,

while they idle away in their ignorance and obscurantism. Times like this call for a greater deployment of time and intelligence, because Nigeria indeed, now more than before in the last two decades, stands at the brink of a precipice.

But alas, Nigeria is saddled with a growing generation of idlers who think that their lives are enriched by pulling down others. But while these ordinary, eponymously anonymous persons need not detain serious minded persons from forging ahead, it must be noted that the emergent political elite is not in any way better. 

Its members are worse in terms of intellect, capacity, and character. This forces us to ask that question again: what a country! Or as the sage, Chinua Achebe, put it: “There was a country!”. 

The race to 2023 is a painful reminder of how the biggest tragedy that has befallen Nigeria is the absence of ideas, the collapse of good reason, and the brazen triumph of mediocrity and selective amnesia.