What presidential candidates should tell us

The date of the elections is getting closer day by day and the campaigns of all the candidates are intensifying. The candidates of the main parties criss-cross the states to market themselves to the electorate. It's one of those things that I love about democratic governance beyond militocracy where someone works their way up to the highest office whether you like it or not. In a democracy, at least, the electorate has the opportunity to determine who rules them, rightly or wrongly, through the ballot box.

The election period is also the time to measure the strength of each candidate in terms of health and party funding. Parties with sufficient funds sponsor and organize elaborate campaign activities in many states. A good candidate covers a lot of states physically campaigning and telling people what they can expect from him or the base of the electorate to make him the preferred candidate. However, this may not result in winning or losing votes in the end. It may be recalled that the late President Musa Yar'Adua was unable to physically travel to campaign due to health issues during the campaign period and that he "won" the election as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2007. Leader Obafemi Awolowo, using the helicopter, unlike the pedestal campaign mode of his fellow contestants, has covered more states than any other candidate during campaign periods since 1965, but he did not win as prime minister or president.

Things are changing though. At that time, no one was watching the ingenuity of the election campaign. I remember the action group, Chief Awolowo's party, distributing campaign leaflets and other campaign materials by helicopter in the early 1960s. Young people like me were fascinated to see papers flying from the sky but unaware of their ingenuity while the ancients, I suspect, viewed such acts as magical rather than an invitation to see a bright future from a brilliant mind. The electorate, who could grasp the innovative campaign method, just felt that the leader came too soon for the Nigerian environment.

I also remembered how we waited for the leader to land air for his campaign in Makurdi, Benue State in 1982. Many people in the crowd weren't just interested to meet Chief Awolowo for the first time as a national personality, but also to see a helicopter that some have taken for an ordinary plane. With higher levels of literacy, rapid advances in technology and particularly information technology, some economic development and the use of private jets in a number of religious outreach programs, the use of helicopters for the campaign today would be seen as the height of the delay. I imagine if Chief Awolowo were alive today, he would have told today's politicians what the 22nd century election campaign demands!

The above is a long preamble, but it is worth sharing with young people who did not know that Nigeria was such a forward-looking country where the first space election campaign in Africa took place. The same country is now among the poorest and educationally lagging economies with the highest number of out-of-school children in the world. It is necessary to return to the forefront of development. The 2023 general election could be the turning point.

Proposals for political activities emerging in the first week of this year have shown that politicians at different levels, especially those running for the highest office, will go through a timetable packed with interviews. It is necessary to answer our questions and tell us more for their own good. In fact, the campaign environment is more competitive than before. Now, we have three or four main contenders so far, unlike before between two main parties. Even one or more of those that don't show high levels of visibility until the end of 2022 could create a surprise in the new year. When it was essentially two big parties like until 2019 it was possible for one party to ignore the debates and get away with it, that is no longer the case. Not even when Nigerians realized that their lives had been cheapened, cheapened and degraded by corruption, incompetence and greed.

If we are to refer to the top contenders for president for anyone challenging that position, we should frame our questions assuming that all have public service experience. This implies that anyone running for president must have experience of having served the nation at some level of governance, at least at the ministerial level. With this experience, the candidate has some working knowledge of government.

Fortunately, the main candidates have been executive governors or vice-presidents. So, outside of what we've seen in the files, each candidate...