Money politics, bane of Nigeria’s devt

From Akinnodi Francis, Ore
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A public analyst, Chief Oladapo Ikudaisi has attributed Nigeria’s socio-economic woes, especially poverty and insecurity, to money politics.

The Ore based legal practitioner made the observation in an interview with The Hope at the weekend.

Ikudaisi said that the socio-economic challenges bedevilling the country were as a result of bad leadership by people who bought their way into offices.

“Nigeria has never had a state of hopelessness like we are experiencing; we have never gone through insecurity like we are having now.

“The rate of poverty has made people to align towards selling their votes as the rate of buying is alarming.

“In order to arrest this situation, people must understand and belief that money politics is substantially responsible for all these predicaments that we are going through in Nigeria.

“So, people must be ready to vote their conscience and not for money which is fundamental to good security, honest leadership and commitment of the people to serve their fatherland, ‘’ he said.

He said that the price to contest for election in the country, especially in the two major political parties are exurbitant.

According to him, “What we are going through today as a nation is a product of money politics; politics in this country has been turned into a business enterprise.

“People sell their houses; some of them borrow money with 100 per cent interest and immediately they are elected, they don’t remember the people anymore.

“All they care about is how they will recover their money and recoup the houses that they sold. All these are part of the problems that we have been having as a nation.

“In order to rescue this country, we have to make sure that we don’t make money the primary factor in our political parties.” he said.

Ikudaisi said that the reason why great minds with incredible leadership skills always shield away from politics was because they thought they did not have the finances needed to face the money bags in the system.

He urged credible Nigerians to be involved in politics to contest election in order to provide good governance in the country.

He however said that the trend could only be reversed by entrenching credible people into office “and these people don’t have to have money”, adding that the policy would alienate the money factor in politics.