Stop playing politics with Nigerians’ lives, Farounbi warns leaders By Lai Gidado
Stop playing politics with Nigerians’ lives, Farounbi warns leaders By Lai Gidado
Veteran broadcaster and statesman, Yemi Farounbi, has condemned the entrenched culture among Nigerian politicians of sabotaging policies and projects simply to deny their rivals political credit, describing the practice as “treachery wrapped in a party flag.”
Farounbi, in a strongly worded statement titled “The Politics of Destruction Must End”, said it was shameful that some political leaders now openly admit that their opposition to former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration had nothing to do with national interest, but was purely a strategy to ensure the other side lost.
“That is not politics,” he declared. “Every time leaders kill a good idea to deny their rivals a win, they’re not playing chess they’re playing Russian roulette with the lives of 200 million people.”
He lamented that such political sabotage manifests in abandoned infrastructure, stalled reforms and crippled services.
“When the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway is abandoned because the ‘wrong’ government started it, when the power sector reform is slowed down because the credit would go to an opponent, when vital security reforms are shelved because an election is coming, that is not strategy, it is sabotage,” he said.
According to him, both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have been guilty of this destructive rivalry, with ordinary Nigerians bearing the cost in potholes, blackouts, unemployment and lost opportunities, while politicians “cashed their allowances and laughed at the gullibility of the masses.”
“A road does not know if it was commissioned by APC or PDP before it carries traders to market.
“A working refinery doesn’t care which party cut the ribbon before it fuels the nation,” he said, urging that good policies should rise above partisan divides.
Farounbi called for leaders “who will clap for a good policy even if it comes from their sworn enemy,” stressing that the real allegiance must be to Nigeria, not to party logos or the whispers of political godfathers.
“History has a long memory,” he warned.
“When the roll call is made, those who played games with our future will not be remembered as clever, but only as reckless men and women who traded a nation’s progress for the thrill of a political point.” he stated.
