Critical thinking for strategic polls by Jesse Adeniji

Chairman Mao and the Communist party wanted to annihilate all forms of religion in their bid to build their own type of society.
When they took over in 1949, there were 1 million Christians who were soon forced underground.
Today, there are an estimated over 100 million Christians in China, more than the Communist Party members.
The irony is, the Communist Party now looks to the church to help stem the tide of greed and atomization capitalism brings, thus it’s now possible to be a Communist party member and a Christian.
However, most of the churches that thrive tow the official lines in regards to political beliefs.
Those who don’t are harassed and still firmly underground.
A lot of political ideas come and go. Unless some of the major actors choose the darker path of pogroms and holocausts, all ideas result in the loss of life and freedom.
Democracy, contrary to what the uninformed would believe, have been responsible for the largest number of the dead in the history of the world, especially through its evangelical platform – Capitalism.
Transatlantic slave trade is the worst form of human denigration, annihilation and moral debauchery. It all gleefully happened under a government which escaped authoritarianism in Europe, for freedom in the US.
They then went, under the banner of their democratic freedom to steal humans by their millions from Africa and turned them into slaves and chattels, using them to build the base for the Western economy and then throwing them out of that system. Their minds, inventions, labour, time, relationships and humanity were taken and traded with.
It was a democracy, a Capitalist society and a falsely religious one for that matter. {I wonder what Soyinka has to say to the witch-hunting of Buhari and military interventionist ideas of the 50s – 90s? Sour grapes?}
You already know that the carnage and antecedents of the British who under a system of ‘free markets’ deployed gun boats which forced China to accept the selling of opium to the Chinese citizens, the very base on which most multi-nationals are still vaguely modelled on today.
Instead of the Royal Navy gunboats, it’s media, trade agreements and financial market manipulations.
Socialism and Communism under Stalin/Lenin/Mao, has resulted in effective and direct murders of close to 1 billion people.
Theocracy, human official religious system, has instituted wars, after wars, after wars.
In order to understand the social constructs under which certain political ideas were birthed and conducted in history, you have to go back to the material time which spurned the ideas and actors, to properly understand the motives of decisions taken per time.
Nigeria, after independence was always going to go through a vortex of conflicts. That is inherent in the composition of the component units and the multifarious ethnic groups by a dishonest and scheming colonial master.
The political class were immature, not experienced and were not in proper grasp of the bigger picture beyond trying to grab a piece of the pie for themselves and their own people.
The next class of ‘rulers’, the military interventionists, took advantage of a global phenomenon – Cuba, Korea, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Syria, Egypt, Upper Volta, e.t.c – an ideological mindset, to take over the system.
Only neophytes will not expect the same socio-cultural issues of ethnicity, resource control, power grab and envy to permeate through the fabric of the Khakis and the Camos.
If you understanding is restricted to the individuals and actors, and short sighted on about the idealism framework which pervades the era, you will live and glory in the fallacy of using such outmoded and bigoted standpoint to scope, shape and act out the future.
Therein lies the Nigerian middle class dilemma. The so called educated class.
How about not reacting to the schemes and define when the themes will be for the next generation?
The issue of the 2015 elections is not about ageism, witch-hunting PR some unhealed ethnic and social scars. It is about the soul of the nation. IT IS BEING ROBBED BLIND.
IT LACKS THE STRATEGIC FOCUS TO LAUNCH INTO THE NEXT GEAR CAPABLE IN COMPETING ON THE AFRICAN SPACE, LET ALONE THE WORLD.
IT IS HEADING TOWARDS A SEISMIC ECONOMIC STORMS WHICH WILL EFFECTIVELY HAND OVER THE STARRING ROLE TO THE FOREIGNERS.
IT IS IN DIRE NEED OF REINVENTING ITSELF AND SETTING THE YOUTH FREE TO BECOME PLAYERS IN HER FUTURE INSTEAD OF STAYING AS SOME UNWANTED TOXIC BAGGAGE BEING TOSSED AND TURNED IN THE WORLD’S CITIES.
You start with the very first thing – STEM THE ENDEMIC CORRUPTION!
If you’re an accident victim in an A&E, the first thing a world class surgeon or the medical trainee will do, in the interim, is to stem the loss of blood.
If then, you understand the BIG PICTURE and your preoccupation is still with what happened in the past not relating to what is needed to be done, then your logic is in need is an updating.
It’s also a testament to the fact that the problem of understanding is not with the people on the lower echelons of the societal ladder.
It is with the so called intelligentsia.
In 1939 the British intelligentsia HATED Winston Churchill with a passion. When push came to shove, they were even more intelligent to recognise that in a situation which is dire, an emergency, Winston was the man with the requisite skills and character to take the centre stage.
Thankfully, men like Lord Halifax wouldn’t even allow his ego get in the way. He recognized the moment for what it was.
After the war, the British public were intelligent enough to vote the apparent messiah out of power after his WW2 victory mission was accomplished.
I wrote a piece not too long ago about having INTELLIGENT PUBLIC/ELECTORATE. PDP or APC or any other nomenclature which will inevitably come, once the political gladiators can sense that the people do not care what the container is, but get their way with the content, they will start dancing to the people’s tune.
As long as we have unintelligent public – rich or poor, educated or illiterate – fixated on individuals, the parties will serve up all sorts of shady characters and let you choose you shade of megalomaniac.