By Bobson Gbinije
It is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its’ interest – George Washington (1732-1799) Letter to Congress.
With peremptory magistracy and awesome gallantry our founding fathers fought with dogged obduracy for the political independence of our glorious country, Nigeria. They clamoured with no-holds-barred, like the Roman hero Horatius, who fought with Spartan intrepidity defending Rome from the Etruscan invaders. Horatius asked like our founding fathers: “And how can a man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods”?
Our founding fathers invested their dreams on Nigeria, but whither goeth Nigeria today? After 66 years of political independence Nigeria is still silhouetted in the sordid saga and tapestry of progressivistic labyrinth. We are still rumbling in the cabbage of unthinkable corruption, arrant poverty, HIV/AIDS, malaria scourge and arrested development.
We are submerged in the cocoon of human rights violations, including politically- motivated assassinations, extra-judicial killings and excessive use of force. The arrest and detention of people for political reasons, restriction on freedom of the press, speech and assembly, prolonged pre-trial detention and aiding and abetting of electoral malpractices still constitute some dark characteristics of our nation. We are still sunken in blatant illegalities, tragic criminalities, prebendalistic graft and wallowing in unmitigated sleaze.
After 66 years of independence Nigeria still remains shipwrecked in the island of gloom and doom, leadership doppelgangers, political gridlocks, socio-economic cliffhangers, tribal jingoism and utter planlessness. We have no functional hospitals, no roads, no affordable houses, no jobs and no food security, no light, no effective transport system, no water, no affordable education and no road map and viable blue print for strategic repositioning of our country, Nigeria. The statesman, Alfred Rewane, captures the scenario thus: ‘Yesterday, we yearned for a better tomorrow. Today, we mourn the loss of a better yesterday. How sad”? Whither goeth Nigeria after 66 years of political independence?
The politicians and their military cohorts have completely bastardised our psyche. We are crestfallen and despondent. They have made and continue to make half-hearted efforts aimed at salvaging our prostrate fatherland from the abyss of despair. We have seen endless constitutional reforms, adjustments of economic policies based on the Breton Woods institution’s conditionalities like FEM, SFEM, Economic Liberalization, Deregulation of the Petroleum Downstream Sector, Operation Feed the Nation (OFN); Green Revolution, school to land project, privatisation, liquidity mop-up, cash squeeze, devaluation, Universal Basic Education scheme, civil war, MAMSER, KAI, war against indiscipline, subsidy removal, industrial revolution, etc.
These weird economic, socio-political policies successfully bedraggled and befuddled our nation. It asphyxiated our people and manacled them in the epicenter of parenthetical placidity. After 66 years of independence Nigeria is still gallivanting and rigmaroling on an undulating political topography interjected with complex volcanic rocks. We are steeple-chasing on a horrendously deadly political land mines and canons that will explode to consume our country, Nigeria.
We are tired of perambulating in the concentric circles of backwardness, buck-passing and trading of blames. What is the way forward? Hence, a Chartered Member of the Nigerian Institute of Management, Chief LEA Aimiuwu once said: “First, we blamed the colonial masters; next, military blamed military. Then politicians blamed military. Now, party blames party, Legislature blames Executive, Executive blames Legislature; tribe blames tribe, zone blames zone, private sector blames public sector, public sector blames private sector, followers blame leaders, leaders blame followers.” Who blames self? Now we turn round and say: “Nigeria has failed us.” But who makes up Nigeria?
Nigeria has not failed, we have failed ourselves! Working together, mission driven, with shared passion and vision-focus, Nigeria shall rise again. Things work only if we make them work! They work only as we make them work. So Let’s work the work!” This could be a peripheral and simplistic overview of Nigeria’s problems, but it bears a ring of the horizontal and vertical integration which Nigeria needs to move forward as a nation.
It is sacrosanct truism that after 66 years of independence Nigeria needs the implosive surgeonisation of a moral rearmament, ethical revolution, attitudinal re-orientation, leadership altruism, political re-evaluation, policy screening, patriotism and change of psyche with everything and anything that has to do with Nigeria and Nigerians to enable our country make palpable progress.
We must don the toga of true democracy, rule of law, dialogue and constitutionality. We must realize as a nation that our rancid preoccupation with monocausality merely hardens our positions, fossilisizes debate and limits the boundaries of intellectual discourse. Our search for the panacea to our ever illusive El-Dorado will be brought to near fruition if we adopt a more responsible and constructive focus on:
(a) Leadership by example: It is a quintessential fact that absence of good leadership has been the bane of the Nigerian nation right from 1960 till date. We need leaders who can carry the vast majority of Nigerians along through policies that will alleviate the agonies and travails of the people.
Nigeria is a nation formed as a result of the agglomeration of different and myriad groups of heterogeneous peoples and the geo-political settings are complex. We need leaders who understand the political calculus inherent in the system. We need leaders that can build on this melting-pot foundation by self-abnegation and patriotism.
A leader that understands that Nigeria is a microcosm in a global macrocosm and that Nigeria must hold and take an enviable seat in the comity of nations. We need a leader that calls the totality of Nigeria his or her main constituency, a detribalised and cosmopolitanised leader. A leader who understands that leadership is all about people’s welfare through committed and honest leadership.
The essayist Aleng G. White said: “The greatest need of the world today is the want of men, men who will not be bought or sold, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men who in their innermost souls are true and honest, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who stand for the right though the heavens fall”. We need such men as leaders in a new Nigeria.
As the 2027 election approaches, we hope and pray that our leaders will not resort to thuggery, political assassinations, vote rigging, etc., to get power. It is clear that the political antecedents of our politicians remain hideously ghoulish, but we call on them to put Nigeria first before exercising their pathological quest for power. The political algebra glaringly shows that the next president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria should come from any of the geo-political zone. We hope that through coordinated dialogue the elections will go on without ethnic cleansing, genocide, social schism and the break-up of our country, Nigeria. Our leaders must hold their vaulting ambition in-check.
Psychotically corrupt and indicted politicians must not be part of the presidential race in 2027. If they try, it will be a devious attempt and epochal tragedy for the PDP, APC, NDC, ADC and other contesting parties and our dear country, Nigeria.
Economy: A good, progressive and functional economy constitute the matrix on which the growth and development of any nation can take place; Nigeria has been quite amorphous in its economic principles and logistics, although we have been called one the fastest growing economies in the world and the highest in Africa.
In the light of the new millennium, Nigeria must continue to make strides in economic development by adopting new global strategies. The importance of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), NEEDS, SEEDS and such-like bodies were not tapped for macro-economic impact. An economic “Think tank” must be set up to look into ways and means of diversifying the Nigerian economy and looking at the logistics of re-launching a New Agricultural Revolution in Nigeria. It is a shame that Nigeria still remain one of the largest importers of food in the world, whilst China with its over 1.5 billion people feeds itself. A new Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) and a new school to farm project must re-launched. It is a shame that 2/3 of 150 million Nigerians still live on $1 dollar a day. A leadership that cannot feed the people and a nation that cannot feed itself are doomed to perdition.
Providing food for the teeming masses should be the cardinal and fundamental concern and priority of government at all levels. The importation of farmers from Zimbabwe is not the answer.
In a recently released United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index sustained with scientific development indices such as employment level, quality housing, school enrolment and quality education, food, portable water supply, good roads, health care services used as barometric gauge to place countries in hierarchical order of development category, while relatively poor African countries like Ghana, Uganda. Zimbabwe, Gabon, Liberia and Niger were within the Medium Human Development category better than Nigeria. This is because there is collective amnesia, corruption and leadership inertia.
EDUCATION: Nigeria’s educational system is chaotically schismatic and in a state of miasmatic contretemps. It has tended to apotheosize certificate acquisition without making the certificate holder functionally useful to himself or herself and society. In the past our colonial masters prepared a system that could turn out clerks to help implement their colonial administrative policies. Their system is now anachronistic. The rhythm of development in the 21st century now entails scientific and technological and vocational skill driven educational system. We need an educational system that makes a man use his head and his hands to help himself and society.
The proliferation of universities and other tertiary institutions is a welcome development, but all educational regulatory bodies and directorates like Nigeria Universities Commission (NUC) must ensure that high standards are maintained. The Nigerian government must come in to launch an educational Revolution in keeping and consistent with the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which is aimed at reducing illiteracy.
In this regard, the Nigerian government should make education free and compulsory at all levels and. This is to enable Nigeria especially Northern Nigeria to catch up with educational trends and development in the world. We need a horizontal and vertical integration of resources to develop education not only from grassroots levels but from root hair base to treetop heights.
The free food for primary school programme is a wasted will o’ wisp programme because of inherent, prevalence of contemporary and logistical problems. The Almajiri free education must be commended. The government should make education free at all levels in Nigeria.
There is now more than ever before overwhelming need to rewrite our primary, secondary and university syllabuses and course content to reflect modern realities. There must be the uniformization and uniformity of school curricula all over Nigeria. This is to enable us do exact measurement of scholastic attainments and standards.
Nigeria’s education system must be structurally re-oriented to be not only a tool for technological development, but also as a weapon for moral rearmament and mass mobilization. A situation where so-called educated people remain moral reprobates, cultic demons, criminals and highly unpatriotic citizens remains one of the hydra-headed monsters confronting Nigeria, today.
The United Nation convention against corruption provides for international co-operation in the return of assets illicitly acquired by corrupt officials, as well as preventive measures to detect the plundering of national wealth.
We therefore call on the politicians and the electoral institutions to please ensure that the forthcoming 2027 elections are conducted in an atmosphere devoid of violence and rancorous posturing. We could learn a lot from the Indian elections by adopting the Electronic Voting Machine (e-voting). But no system will be full proof unless Nigerians, politicians and INEC decides to don the toga of integrity and honesty.
The successful conduct of the 2015 election is an absolute desideratum for the sustainability index of unity, survival and progress of Nigeria as a nation. No sacrifice is too great to be made for our fatherland, even after 66 years of independence. Let us do it right for once. Let it not be seen as a do or die battle.
Let us not spill innocent blood to enable us realize our political ambitions. The world will rise up in clamorous plaudit if we could conduct a successful census and elections. Let us apotheosize peace and not forget that we have fought a civil war (Nigeria/Biafra civil war-1967-1970) before.
We must learn from history. Nigeria must survive the 2027 elections. Nigeria leaders, citizens and the followership have no other country to call their own, except our own dear native land, Nigeria. As we celebrate 66 years of Nigeria’s independence we must make a new pledge and take a new oath to rededicate ourselves to building a ‘New Nigeria’ that we can truly be proud of. The leadership must be transparent and altruistic to enable it ginger the support of the vast majority of Nigerians.
Given Nigeria’s diversity it must be able to create a synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony. The leaders at all levels of government must realize that leadership is an esteemed position of service, demanding high standard of discipline and integrity. That leadership demands self denial, self sacrifice and dogged determination to service. It requires a vision and a mission in service. Let the shepherd be worth the followership and let the followership be worthy of the good shepherd. We therefore call for the total and all-embracing transformation of Nigeria for the general good.
We have come a long way as a nation and the time has come for us to strategically reposition our nation, Nigeria in the 21st century to enable us walk into the glorious but illusive EL-Dorado after over 66 years of independence. Let our programmes be effectively integrated, strategies coordinated and perfected for the battle royal. Happy independence! But we could be happier if we decide, here and now to rededicate ourselves to building a new Nigeria. God Bless Nigeria.
• Chief Bobson Gbinije, Mandate Against Poverty (Map), Sapele-Warri
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