As political campaigns for the 2023 general election kicked-off yesterday, stakeholders have called for the medical and psychiatric evaluation of those aspiring to contest the forthcoming general election.
The stakeholders, including university lecturers, civil society organisations and political parties as well as youths and students’ groups, disclosed this yesterday during a meeting organised by a good governance advocacy group, Unity House Foundation (UHF) in Port Harcourt.
The event was attended by the governorship candidates of the Action Alliance (AA), All Progressives Congress (APC) and Accord Party; Dr Dawari George, Pastor Tonye Cole and Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs, respectively, as well as representatives of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).
In his address, the guest speaker and director-general of the Nigerian Institute for International Affairs (NIIA) Professor Edoghan Osaghae, said a lot of persons who have chronic diseases tend to be bad leaders.
Osaghae, who is former vice chancellor of Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State, said: “In India, there is a system where people grow through the ranks. You start from the community level, then progress. Our system is so fractured that leaders come from nowhere; no foundation. You know this.
He said the candidates should undergo medical examination. He said there are two reasons why this should be so. “The first is the psychosis, the psychology of rulership shows that people that have chronic diseases tend to be very mean rulers.
“If somebody is sure he is going to die, they treat all of us like cold-blooded human beings. They are very mean. Not just those with chronic diseases, but for mentally deranged persons.
problem.
“Second, you have some leaders who are not so well in terms of health, a lot of our money will go into medical expenses. That can also be a problem.”
In his remarks, UHF convener, Wali, said elected leaders may have been behaving the way they do because of the state of their minds.
Wali said, “The issue of psychiatric evaluation; people who act the way our politicians act is not acting the way normal people act. Don’t you think that it is because of the state of their sanity that they behave the way they behave to think that to be disorderly is okay?”
Earlier, the chairman of the occasion and professor of science in the University of Port Harcourt, Prof Eme Ekekwe, lauded the UHF for organising the event.
Ekekwe, who expressed regrets that Nigerian leaders hate military rule but act as military leaders, said;
“I admire the convener of Unity House Foundation because he is a builder of leaders. That is one thing that struck me about Unity House; a group of young people struggling to hold themselves together in a very different environment.
“Struggling to find a direction. They are trying to determine for themselves what the principles of living in a society where beyond looking out for yourself, how do you look out for others. Beyond caring for your family, how do you care for your community? These are not easy question to answer.”
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