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Given the way governance has been going in our country, given resources wasted without corresponding development and given the way the country is tottering towards an obvious explosion, many right thinking citizens believe time has indeed come to sit down and discuss the future of this country and to in particular get a picture of what all of us want this country to look like in the next 30 years, for a start.
We have for a very long time left the fate of this country in the hands of few oligarchy groups and the result has been abysmal. Using that word is to be charitable. If not to avoid being accused of insensitivity, a harsher word would have fitted the most. Each oligarchy group had sought to translate its narrow whims and caprices as national policy and vision. The military’s unjustified foray into politics rather than help the situation, muddled up everything resulting in further complications of what was already a very fouled atmosphere.
The 20 or more years of democratic practice haven’t changed anything. The primordial lines have instead widened, power struggles run along the path and the result has been a richly blessed country ran down to its knees. It is true the country has citizens in various offices but the truth is that an atmosphere of political flux hovers over the the entire landscape. The people hear democracy but far more majority aren’t very sure if what is in practice is democracy or another kind of governance system entirely.
The electoral process lacks credibility. Sanctity of the ballot box has been done away with from independence. Every effort to rectify the anomaly has resulted in the creation of another variant that turns out far worse than the preceding one. This year the electoral body raised hopes of the ushering in of a new order in that regard with the introduction of technology but in the end what came through dwarfed past fault lines.
This is not talking about bastardisation of the agreed political architecture agreed to at independence, which gave birth to units that lack capacity to draw independent life. They lived off the central pool. One major consequence is where federalism would have served very useful purposes and helped to push progressive development, the country was forced, arm-twisted to stay with a unitary system. What those who engineered this mess thought was an advantage has turned round to become a bomb that has blown up in everybody’s face.
The economy is crawling, begging for life. The space is tight and suffocating. The sore point is what ought to be retributive justice for a few, has turned around to become the citizens albatross. Ours is not a society of statistics else the world, not just us, would have been traumatized by the degree of calamity we wilfully brought on ourselves. No sane people do the kind of things we have done to ourselves with our eyes very wide open.
The good thing about where we are is not beyond redemption, at least that is what history has taught. Closely tied to this lesson would be the twin lesson that our recovery must begin with open acceptance that things have gotten out of hand and the admittance that urgent efforts, well thought out strategies have become necessary if we are to put our about-to-crash vehicle on the reverse gear.
The biggest truth in the mix would be that we have gone past the competence level of small, very narrow groups. True recovery will hing on the citizens themselves taking back their sovereignty and insisting on a redefinition and subsequent reshaping of their dreams. Only then can we produce a working document that will receive the buy in of all. Now it is the “buy in” that is most crucial now given where we are.
The case for a national vision has become very imperative for different very cogent reasons. The first is there is non as we speak. Those who have had opportunity to provide leadership flew the national aeroplane without radar and navigational aides. Worse they took off without destination in mind. If we had a destination, the flight plan would be very definitive. Whenever a stray occurred it would have been very easy to understand we were off course. Perhaps, if we are unable to help ourselves, help could come, but how do you assist a man in the pit whose decision is never to come out.
Last week, General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd) was in a part of western Nigeria pontificating on the poor development of the country, how terribly underdevelopment the country is. He wanted more Christians to join politics. While he bemoaned, our general forgot he led the union first as military head of state and later for eight solid years as civilian elected president. He didn’t remember that countries like Malaysia and Singapore in under 15 years had successfully redirected their countries from the path of perdition.
The truth is short of a revolution, the most credible path open to us is sitting down to craft a vision. This vision will expressly bring out our destination. What kind of country do we actually want? The picture would create the pathway to be strictly followed by all successive governments. The vision would provide answers to some minor but very crucial matters we down play currently to our hurt. Today for instance nobody can say with certainty if we are capitalist or welfarist or better still socialist in our part to national development.
Pseudo-leaders, who are ill-quipped for the job they took on themselves ramble through all the known systems, producing a hybrid that ends up destroying everything. We started as a welfarist state with us managing a bit of free enterprise principles along communal system. Under this arrangement government took charge of commanding heights of the economy, putting in place those infrastructure and corporate entities individual initiative won’t handle with despatch. The component parts has reasonable autonomy. The communal aspect suited us, it was in tandem with our culture.
It worked. Citizens produced alongside offering care to less fortunate persons. Suddenly, we began to hear the expression “government has no business being in business”. Who taught so? Imperialism that push us into this path still operates firms owned by government. Yet they teach us nonsense insisting government shrink away from her core responsibilities. Now see the abberation. We chose private initiative yet government use public funds to support operations privately owned corporations. What do any very sane person make out of this?
The country is blessed with crude but for over 50 years it couldn’t develop refining capacity yet tertiary institutions are littered in every corner. Could it be our curriculum is not correct and relevant to our needs or our leaders see no need to challenge local expertise? Price of petrol has become such businesses are either closing or running at a loss. Citizens are cash squeezed. People are dying just anyhow. The hit is on. In all of this, it is as if all the leaders are under oat none should suggest refining of crude in the country. We have not heard mechanization of agriculture to achieve food security. This week food inflation climbed to 28 percent said to be all time high since we got nationhood over sixty two years ago. Terrible thing indeed.
The security situation has become something of a hobbesian state. From what we can predict harsher, more terrible kind of totalitarian would soon be added to the mix. Then we all would see the need to chase after a missing black goat before the night fall takes place. We need to sit to fashion a vision. Those who have ears let them hear.
