A seasoned politician, entrepreneur and philanthropist, Hon. Hilary Chinedu Onu, has on Saturday during a weekly radio interactive program, Freedom Square, on Solid 100.9 FM, Enugu, opined that the current absence of issue based declarations by politicians announcing their intention to run for public office in recent times may be as a result of timing and strategy adopted by the politicians.
Hon. Onu who served as Commissioner for Youths and Sports, Enugu State, expressed the opinion while responding to the issue of lack of engagement of the aspirants with the people on their plans or what they intend to do when they are voted into office, raised by the anchor of the program, Hon. Uchenna Cyril Anioke, Ph.D.
Hon. Anioke had bemoaned the current situation whereby most of the political aspirants seem deaf and dumb; they don’t seem to hear the people’s aspirations and they don’t talk to them. He observed that these aspirants only obtain nomination forms which in most cases they parade on social media claiming that a group of individuals purchased for them.
Next, they print posters and erect huge billboards declaring their intention to run for election. Meanwhile, they have no agenda; they’ve not articulated any plan to execute if eventually they are elected into office or so it seems because they’ve not said anything to the people.
Hon. Onu agreed totally with Hon. Anioke that serious aspirants must have well articulated agenda for accountability and performance assessment, and that there is need for these political office seekers to engage the people who’s mandate they are seeking to exercise.
He however pointed out that the fact that these politicians are not engaging the people with their plans now doesn’t mean that they don’t want to or that they do not have any agenda. Rather, it might be as a result of timing or strategy whereby the aspirant may decide to engage the party at the expression of interest stage with their plan and then take on the general public if they eventually emerge as candidates of their respective political parties.
On why the aspirants shouldn’t be morally bound to present their agenda from the onset instead of waiting to become their party’s candidate, which is not guaranteed, so as to have the document for posterity as was the case with him when he articulated his plans for Enugu State as a Governorship aspirant some years back in a book titled Dare to Aspire, Hon. Onu maintained that it was a matter of choice which strategy the politician adopts.
On a final analysis, Hon. Onu charged the media to live up to their billing as the fourth estate of the realm by championing issue based campaign. He therefore urged media practitioners in Enugu to organize and insist on robust open debates for all the governorship candidates.