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We begin today’s outing with a quote from Bertolt Brecht who said, “Those who don’t know are fools but those who know the truth and call it a lie are criminals.” The truth is the leadership class isn’t what it ought to be.
We regret to say this but then the truth must be said, especially at this point in our national life. Only knowing, saying and acknowledging the truth would give us the freedom we have spent time, energy and resources searching for since our country became an independent nation on October 1, 1960. The truth is that we have become a country of pretenders. This is not restricted to the leadership, we all live a lie.
When our people are outside our shores, the world tells us “it is so easy to distinguish” a Nigerian from the pack of black people. How do they do this! It is very simple going by what they have said: “Nigerians are very confident, bold, loud and very boastful. At the least of a push, they don’t waste time telling you they come from a country that is ‘the giant’ of Africa.”
It is difficult to say if the giant of Africa is a title or mere appellation that was earned by sheer reason of size or by contributions to world civilization as is the case with countries naturally regarded as world leaders. If it was a claim assumed on account of size, the scales are beginning to fall off our eyes. What is on the ground is beginning to turn the tide, increasingly a far greater number of the population is beginning to understand that a huge population though an asset can also turn into an albatross when not properly managed.
In our case it has been well managed and the negative fallout is threatening to swallow up everybody. Administrative dislocations and dissonance are pervasive. Features of poor, ineffective governance system is right here with us. Hunger on a very large scale is plaguing the land. Hungry people are vulnerable people. They are available for the baits. They are directionless without a sense of mission.
Our citizens are found in all countries of the world including ones far less endowed like ours and this is much against their wishes. Unwilling exiles. Out there in the cold life pressures push them into all manner of crimes. In turn they bring a bad name to a country naturally primed to be one of the world’s leading nations.
The most painful thing is not about the dehumanizing treatment meted out to our citizens abroad, it is the fact that the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea have become burial grounds for our citizens, who in the first place ought not be where they met their Waterloo. We have everything to keep and make them very happy at home but by poor leadership, we have failed in those things we ought to have done and done very well.
One could leave out the issue of xenophobic attacks in South Africa for now, but from that came through a video that twists the heart. In the video, South African ladies were lined out on a road, beauties indeed, and men took turns to warn them against getting married to Nigerians and if they must do it for whatever reasons, they must ensure their husbands don’t benefit from the country’s healthcare care policies. “If they are sick they should go to private hospitals which are in every corner, get their treatment and pay from their pockets, a breach would spell doom.”
From their looks the ladies were shocked and traumatized. But those of us staying in this country who saw the video must have felt something far higher than being traumatized; we were dehumanized. We could feel the loss of dignity and the reproach that follows it. The strong-hearted and critical one could see that South Africa’s public health system is great and functional and has appropriate service which is almost free. We on the other hand have consulting clinics, offering skeletal services often priced far above the citizens’ financial ability. Today, many citizens can’t effectively cure a simple ailment like malaria.
During the week just ended, someone a very cynical citizen, wrote something on the social media where he said: “Our country has become a cemetery, our leaders get sick in the country, fly out abroad for treatment, eventually die there, after spending huge public funds and are then flown back to the country to be buried here.” He wanted to know what to call the trend. We are yet to come to terms with the damage the elite do to the standing of the rest of us when in a deluge they rush to developed countries for medical tourism.
As you, the ardent fans of this column, read this some of you may be aware that could eventually turn out a big crisis between our country and Ghana is brewing. A section of the citizens want Nigerians to leave the country. They say they have had enough of the boisterous Nigerians in their midst.
Forget whatever is at the heart of the disagreement. What is very instructive should be the points the Ghanaians hold strong to their hearts: “Nigerians say we are wise, we come from a big country, we helped Ghana to attain development.” They should let us remain the way we are, our country is orderly, calm, stable, we don’t have poor governance, no challenge of insecurity, no hunger, these are lacking in your country, the self acclaimed giant of Africa. Who made you giant of Africa? Since you are wise people, go back home and use your wisdom to fix your country.” This is how the world sees us. When they mistreat our citizens that is where the reason is located. But think of it, is there anything about us that qualifies us for the appellation, Giant of Africa.
We lack organization. Water isn’t flowing from public pipes into homes. Electricity, the bedrock of development is neither here nor there. Food insecurity is there. An atmosphere of general insecurity pervades the nation. We have very large units of security personnel yet terrorists stoke the land and remain free. They commit heinous crimes and barely are the criminals arrested.
Currently, there are citizens who want to become this or that, and we are talking about religion and tribe, two strong but strange variables that have retarded progress. We are not placing serious emphasis on under-performance which would have thrown up the question of competence. Late President Robert Mugabe expressed bewilderment with our country when in one of his outbursts he said he couldn’t understand why with our universities and so many graduates of different categories in abundance we still elect men with questionable tutorship and scholarships and afterwards expect them to perform like the Bill Clintons and Obamas of this world. Don’t we see sense in the immutable words of one of Africa’s sages?
Pretenders become losers. It is time for us to accept that we are down. Let the realization propel new resolve to build. Building would start with a vision. When vision isn’t in place , everything, everywhere looks like it. It is time sit down to design the new Nigeria. The model we have won’t work. We must redefine the concept of leadership. Currently, the electoral system is so crooked it is incapable of throwing up quality, visionary leadership. Those who want to lead see office as compensation, not a point for excellent service.
The plain truth is that office doesn’t define people. In the other way round, people define offices. When anybody goes into public office he is there to record achievements and to mend the broken. Our leaders in the last 29 years of the Fourth Republic haven’t taken a dig at the foundational challenges. No wonder the country still wobbles. It is time we begin to know.
