Against the background of the increasing ethnic and political schisms in the country that have left the country in dire straits, is the emergence of some new kids on the block. They indeed looked like kids on the political plane. For a group of middle-aged men and women who have made good success in their diverse various professional callings, the task they have set for themselves could undoubtedly be daunting.
The political battle can only be compared to a David and Goliath rematch. But for these new political kids on the block, comprising medical doctors, architects, lawyers, journalists among other leading lights in various professional endeavours, they are joined with the common aim of upturning the political landscape.
The Alliance for a New Nigeria, ANN could be the next big thing to happen to Nigeria, Dr. Jay Osi Samuels, a Havard trained physician and an alumnus of the scholarship programme of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation enthused as he sat down with a team of journalists in the Ikeja area of Lagos last weekend. The mission of ANN he said is “to be the driver of a new movement to retire and replace the old generation of leaders.”
Having been on the political sidelines, he had seemed satisfied to occupy himself in his profession of medicine which has seen him evolve into a medical entrepreneur having pioneered the country’s first medical aesthetics and cosmetics dermatological supply and distribution company; he said he was comfortable enough not to be bothered by the malfeasance of the system. But Dr. Samuels said the more they stayed out, the more he discovered that no one could be secured from the failures of the government.
Hence, he and some other professionals got around to form and register ANN as a political group to take the baton away from those he termed as professional politicians who he said have made a mess of the country. “Why do you think Tu Face was successful? Because Nigerians are looking for someone to show leadership and they are not seeing it,” he said of the initiative by him and some fellow technocrats still presently engrossed in their professions but still putting out their time and money to form the ANN.
Giving his experience of the challenges he faced when he returned to Nigeria, he said: “When I came back from the US, my friends asked me whether I was serious about staying in Nigeria and that I had better go back, but I said I am not going back and that this is my country and that this is where I am going to live. “Then they said I had better think of forming my own government! Then I said what do you mean by having your own government? Then they told me you have your own house, your own borehole, your own power and that that is the only way you can survive.”
Dr. Samuel continued with his own business but increasingly saw that the failures of government continued to push at him. “Some of us have said we will do our business and I will have nothing to do with government. But over the years, the government has been encroaching on our space by not doing the things that they are supposed to do regarding bad policies and bad policy implementation.” The ANN, Samuels said, has filed papers with the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC and is presently in the final process of being registered as a political party.
The group meanwhile through its website, www.alliancefornewnigeria.org has been waging a massive social media campaign to woo more and more members which according to Samuels presently stand in the thousands. Asked if the group would shut its doors to those who do not identify themselves as technocrats, he said: “This would not be a party only for technocrats. It is a party for every Nigerian, and we are trying to set a difference between us and the professional politicians.
When you say technocrats, technocrats are experts. We believe that a technocrat has a better chance of being a good manager of resources of people than somebody who is not.” “People who have been participating in the democratic exercise are less than 30%; so we are looking at those people who have not been participating, more than 70%.
Because the feeling is that those who get into politics are those who failed in society, but we believe that by coming out as a group of technocrats, that class of people who do not participate will be motivated to step forward to participate or even to serve.” “The difference between the group we are putting together and the other groups is that the professional politicians play politics, that is all they do, they don’t have any other means of livelihood. They want to be put in a particular position, make money, and that is it.
But we have the perspective of coming to serve; it is open to everybody.” “We are looking at students, young adults, and young professionals and they are the ones that form the bulk of the 70% that do not participate in politics, and we have strategies already to make them participate. So, what we are doing is packaging ourselves as a body that will be irresistible to that segment of society.
But that, even if you are a bricklayer you are still welcomed to be part of the body.” He said the goal is to get at least 10 million persons who are presently not within the captive base of the present political parties into their base.
On the prospects of the group and why it was formed, he said: “We see ourselves as the vehicle for the true change that every Nigerian desires. For me stepping out to take up this task was not easy because I could have stayed in my comfort zone and said to myself that I had nothing to lose.” “But when it comes to Nigeria, our children and our children’s children will have us to blame if we don’t speak up and come out and do something about it.”
Noting how the country was faced with difficult choices in 2015 and how four years that the country may have no choice at all to make, he said: “In 2015 we were stuck with two alternatives, and by all accounts, those two options were not palatable for most of us. But people still made a choice, and that choice is the reason we are here today. “Now we are going to 2019, and we may not even be able to have the choice of a platform because we believe that the two major political parties are nonexistent.
That is why we are creating a platform to make ANN that credible platform that people can have hope and trust in to lead Nigeria out of the current situation we are in.” Asked about the prospects of the group competing with the two major political parties now in the country, the All Progressives Congress, APC and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP he said: “We are coming up to destroy that political space.
We are using innovation and technology. We are actively as a first step going to register ten million members from that group that is not currently participating.” “We are not competing with them for space; we are creating a new space that they don’t have control over. They will not know what hit them and that is what our game plan is.” “We are not playing the game their playing, we are playing differently,” he affirmed.
(Vanguard)
