Don’t Be Shocked When It Happens Again: History Repeats

When we easily forget, ignore, and refuse to learn from our past mistakes, then obviously history will keep repeating itself. Looking around at the many happenings in our world today, I see a lot of history that may repeat itself if care is not taken, and for this prompt, I will choose to use Nigerian political space as a case study.

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The recent past election gave Nigerians an opportunity to choose their new leaders once again, but unfortunately, we keep choosing our leaders based on tribal sentiments and religious sentiments and not based on competence and capacity. But then, look at where we find ourselves today; the economy is terrible, the security is horrible, and unemployment too is on the increase, birthing all manner of crimes within the society, and there are so many more troubles that keep recycling without an improvement year after year but rather worsening, even more so. That same history can repeat itself if the coming election still goes again and repeats the same mistake.

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The last election came with many hopes for Nigerians. I was thinking that we have realized our past mistakes since for many years we kept voting wrongly and facing more hardship. A lot of people were convinced to get their voter's card and vote for a candidate we hope could bring Nigerians out from the mud. It was an unusual campaign to the point that top Christian ministers were highly involved, unlike before. Surprisingly, certain people didn't see what most of us saw but kept on pushing hard to maintain their old circles of leadership. Even people of lower class did everything in their power to put their own tribal person in the seat. I encountered many of them personally within my community. The guys practically begged me for my contact and money to help them convince my tribal people to vote for their candidate with lots of inferior promises. The circle continues, and I don't know when it will end. Good enough; all of us are suffering the outcome of the past elections, including the guys campaigning for their tribal person, whether he is capable or not. I will not be surprised if we have this current president back in the seat soon, because we have refused to learn but choose to ignore!

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What I think can be done to change this history from repeating itself..

One of the things we can do is, first of all, create a political awareness, which will be about educating people, especially those in rural areas. People that are easily vulnerable, people that are easily deceived by all those petty, petty gifts, 2k each, cups of rice, and the rest—you know, all those people that are not politically aware. They don't know the consequences of voting in somebody handling your affairs for four years. They don't know the irredeemable damage it can cause. This should be the first step of changing these narratives in our political space, which is simply creating political awareness across the country.

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Secondly, a coalition party can be formed. You know in Nigeria there is no room for an independent candidate; you must form a party to contest for election. So a coalition party where like-minded people would come together to form formidable opposition against the ruling party is a great step for this change we are seeking.

Thirdly, we can now find a credible candidate to support, push the person through the coalition party that has been formed, and make sure that the person comes out victorious.

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This is my response to the #Hive Learnerscommunity contest on the topic titled, History Repeats.

Images were taken from Canva.