#EndSARS ended but…Part 2
I have watched many election campaigns for years in Nigeria, Old politicians have a lot of narratives for the masses and this works because they keep it simple.
“We will build roads, build schools, bring 24 hr. light”.
Older politicians do better with retail politics despite that they have no plan nor vision (or strength of young men) to execute all they are saying. So towards election, they share some “dopamine cash” or (stolen palliatives) which gives the masses a temporary sense of fulfilment of those promises and afterwards you see them going out en-mass to vote. “XYZ is our man!” is the shout and whisper you will hear on the streets.
The English speaking, twitter hooked, idea packed parties of young people start to wonder where their votes went.
“TRUMP MUST GO”
If you watched the recent 2020 American campaigns, especially from the democratic party, you can see highly diverse political views and ideas ranging from Elizabeth Warren on one side, Bernie Sanders on another, You hear Kamala Harris criticizing Biden's plan on women, Sanders opposed Joe Biden tax plan saying it will only favors corrupt billionaires.
But they all agreed on one thing: Trump must go. With that in mind, there was no trouble aligning behind any of the candidate with the slimmest chance at defeating trump. Which is Biden. Trump himself emerged as a representation of an wholesale shift, Americans were just tired of the establishment.
Politics was no longer about ideas, but about strong personalities who could provide any needed radical and wholesale shift in the system per time.
Any generation that must change Nigeria must hit the presidency head on. At least that's what I believe. The seat holds unimaginable political power but under what unifying umbrella? If that unifying umbrella is some technical jargon and plenty analysis, you will not be able to interface with the street guys and the plan will fail.
We can we all agree on? For example, one can be “No person older than 60 will be voted for again in Nigeria in the foreseeable future”, that itself becomes a binding cord across all efforts and coalition by the young people.
Core #EndSARS groups may say, we don't care if the president is 90 years but we can only back him if he/she will in first 100 days of getting to office ends SARS ( as in delete, make to disappear, not dissolve) and immediately commence police reforms based on agreed recommendations.
Another Group may say, Young or old, we don't care, but he or she must ascend to restructuring in the first 100 days.
Finding this wholesale alignment is important.
In 2023, this is what I predict will happen. The fathers 60+ have taken notice of all the requests, heart cry and issues of the young. What you will start to see as the race commences is that, they will address those issues in their campaigns.
You can expect e.g. an “Atiku figure” for instance to come out appealing to the youths to give him a chance and that his number one agenda is to EndSARS, and form a team of experts from the youths to think about the next police system promising to diversify his portfolio of ministers with young people and women. Stuffs like that.
DATA FIRST!, EJO…
I have had to boost my data science skills over the last 15 months and I can categorically say that the reason any plan in this world fails is because they don't have enough data to validate their hypothesis. Cluster Analysis is one such methods needed in election planning for putting wholesale assumptions to the test.
So before many of the intellectuals among the younger generation starts to pen down any plan on paper, we need to start by doing some data gathering. Do some survey.
Ask each “thug” on the street, what they want in a leader, ask the CEO, ask the mother, ask the Gardner, Ask the worker, Ask the unemployed.
It is terrible for a movement to assume they have support of people because the emotion seems aligned only to realize when election day comes that the supporters they thought they had will not come out to vote because they are not convinced their interest is represented in the race.
All the data science wisdom on the streets must be deployed to understand what Nigerians truly care about.
Politics needs to be as retail as possible but this must be built on a wholesale agenda which must be agreed upon at first. easy to communicate and nothing complicated.
“Trump must go” is the democratic wholesale agenda for 2020. Any idiot can understand that. You are either for it or against it.
What do Nigerians want (young or old)?
