By Austen Akhagbeme

Since Nigeria’s return to majoritarian rule in 1999, so much has happened in the area of organic party formation and our leadership recruitment process in the build-up to general elections, and subsequent emerging democratic administrations and their political actors.

In most cases, these Politicians and their Political parties have had their fair share of opportunities to demonstrate their professed manifestos and vision for the nation. More often than not, they have failed us in such a way that only a positive alternative can help to rekindle hope for the vast majority of disappointed citizens.

Back home in Edo State, many of us have been living witnesses to several administrative tenures as they performed, underperformed, raised our hopes and dashed them commensurately, to the consternation of all.

Edo State has been left as a hopeless victim of the fight between political Godfathers and their recalcitrant godsons on the one hand, and that of a damaging vendetta of incumbency and its tributaries, on the other.

Today, the state lies prostrate, ravaged by flood, bad roads, uncompleted and promised white elephant projects, a dangerous debt burden, showmanship in education policy, brazen land-grabbing initiative, insecurity and total abandonment of the Agric sector where we have a high comparative advantage over sister states in the federation.

It is against this backdrop that the emergence of the New Nigeria People’s Party, NNPP, in the Edo political scenery and its homeboy candidate, Dr Azemhe Azena, a well-known and garlanded Philanthropist, must be given the pride of place in our bid to rescue the state from the strangulating hands of political Godfathers and their vicious cronies.

The New Nigeria People’s Party, NNPP, is a Party that prides itself in its clarity of vision, as enshrined in its robust manifesto. Its slogan, “Education for all,” is an innate policy gesture that Edo State needs, to rejig and breathe life into our feigned motion and notion of populism in our education sector, which has been used over the years as a conduit pipe to syphon state resources to private pockets and that of “foreign” contractors.

As an Educationist, Dr Azemhe Azena is more than equal to the task of bringing life into the education sector in Edo State. For example, he has been shouting in several fora to those who care to hear, that the State University at Ekpoma, needs urgent attention. The lecturers and other Staff need to smile again, moreso the students.

Above all, Edo State needs a change of drivers and the cocoons from where they emerge, to enable dispassionate, altruistic and new leaders who weren’t hatched by diseased political mother hens and Shylock Godfathers, to take over the rein of political leadership in the state and take us to the promised land. Dr Azemhe Azena of the NNPP, is top on the list of these emerging new leaders.

• Austen Akhagbeme is a Columnist with Blank NEWS Online