Politicians are good at studying the mood of the citizenry to craft messages that resonate with the masses.

In Africa for instance, many people blame their political leaders for being puppets of western governments. A true leader of the people is one who is bent on industrializing the country, thus creating jobs, alleviating poverty, reducing inflation and cost of living… Because Africa is known to have lots of resources mined by foreign companies with no major economic benefits to the locals in the area.

To win elections, a presidential candidate makes big talks of industrializing the nation, sounding so convincing that unemployed youth and parents finding it hard to make ends meet are forced to buy into the idea, risking their lives on unpredictable election day to vote for change, for a better life.

The politician, having undertaken a national oath to gamble with the destinies of millions, and knowing in his/her heart the insurmountable obstacles, prays hard for some pandemic or global economic crises to show up so that failure to bring the national hopes into fruition can be nailed to that cross.

Usually, at the end of the president’s tenure of office, there is usually his or her vice who reminds the nation of the big dreams the current administration had and how they were all shattered thanks to some pandemic or crises. The morale of the vice president’s tale : vote for me, in my time there shall be no more excuses because we have learnt our hard lessons.

The political opponents of the current administration, realizing that the nation is fed up with the tricks of the ruling government, cooks up a nice slogan, a simple one that summarizes their vision when voted into power, a vision that every logical being realizes is not a scam and is doable. In fact, they explain in detail how they will get it done, and it usually wouldn’t require a lot of money so one does not see why it can’t happen.

The party that has been out of government comes to power, months roll by and people begin asking what happened to their dream of transforming the nation. Their answer : we just assumed power. It’s too early for drastic changes.

Soon, months run into years and surprisingly   about a year to the next elections, the new government suddenly knows what to do and how to do it.

It’s like a game on the intelligence of the masses, just that it’s played so seriously that people sometimes forget it’s a game after all. And as years roll by, a nation grows saturated with many unfinished projects, many unfulfilled dreams, many unanswered questions.

This political game is lucrative in places where people don’t hold leaders accountable, where leaders are not made to pay dearly for their tricks,  where the populace are not particularly concerned with what government does with the nation’s resources.

The games intertwined with the frequent changes in government makes one ponder over the wisdom of a single ruler, like in ancient times a monarch, king, emperor, who rules till death. A careful study of nations that have had one leader for a very long time shows that on average the nation prospers.

As political parties keep proving their incompetence at running a nation, where do you think we are headed? Is this some cycle where we are headed back to the one supreme leader status?