All well-meaning Nigerians should rather advocate for and help to actualize a political structure that ensures that politicians and leaders can be held to account for non-performance by the citizens that elect them.

For instance, what POLITICAL STRUCTURES do we need to ensure the following:

1. That the police “serve and protect” the people?
2. That elected local government officials perform their duties or are thrown out of office?
3. The governors and the state legislature perform their duties or are thrown out of office?
4. That the president, his/her nominated ministers and the federal legislature perform their duties or are thrown out of office?

Clearly, our current political structures are not achieving the above objectives. Having the best president cannot also achieve these objectives. Pleading with politicians to do the right thing are not working – tons of articles have been written on this. What we haven’t focused on is EMPOWERING THE VOTER!

If we empower voters they can collectively achieve the important objectives of holding politicians and leaders accountable. Empowering voters include the following:

1. Educating them (both locally and nationally) – most of this task falls mostly on the media to provide accurate information on political candidates and their ideas or objectives

2. Ensuring that they have effective and safe mechanisms to cast their vote – the media and local political and non-political organizations should convene technology and election experts to design safe and effective voting mechanisms and educate/urge voters to demand/pressure their local, state and federal legislators to create and implement laws for to support these voting mechanisms.

3. Ensuring that all politicians vying for the votes of citizens have effective ways to communicate their ideas and goals to voters – the media should provide avenues for politicians to communicate their ideas to voters in the language that the voter understands. Such media should be provided for free to all politicians contesting elections in exchange for certain tax benefits for the media houses.

4. Ensuring that voters have effective mechanisms to recall elected politicians that are not performing after being elected. The voting mechanisms advocated for in #1 may work.

These are ideas that may be further developed.