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This article would have come last week so that it wouldn’t appear to be influenced by reactions after last Thursday, when the country marked the anniversary of its Independence. The discourse is better now that we have had President Bola Tinubu address the country and those in power have made their comments.
Certain throw ups came with this year’s celebration just as it has continued to be since we got sovereignty. Independence celebration is different from regime accountability season or day. It is more about state of the nation dissertation and not about what a particular president in power has done or left undone. If the President must speak about his activities and achievements those have to be footnotes and not more than that.
What we should hear would be stability around national political architecture, national well-being in difficult sectors, the leader would talk about national strength, political organization, economic transformation, critical services like health, food security, education and leadership roles in the country and world affairs.
The other would be to restate the grand national vision, not party programme and for the President to pledge to stick to it. In the years past we didn’t see this pattern and in the celebration on Thursday it wasn’t the case. The President kept to the old style and in the end everything ended on a dull note.
Elsewhere presidential addresses attract great attention because citizens expect to hear deeper things about nation building. This much we have highlighted earlier and repeated for emphasis. The citizens expect to be inspired. Unfortunately, this country has not been blessed with leaders who are well tutored and who also have the gift of oratory. The outcome is that presidential addresses appear drab and very interesting. Don’t ask me about the Thursday outing because you won’t get any answers.
In a time of great national despair, presidential speeches should be full of passion. They should inspire. The picture of the journey would be made very clear and the final outcome painted so vividly that all who care to follow can see and self-interpret. We are not that lucky. I once asked an elderly man in my clan why poor governance has remained a recurring decimal in my local environment and the reply was: “What has been the quality of the leaders that lead you?”
Perhaps many of those who belabour themselves about poor governance culture in the country should also pause and ask themselves the same question. It is very possible the answer will prove not very instructive but helpful in the search for good leadership for the country.
The biggest challenge is the poser a distinguished citizen threw at the people last week. He said: “Nigerians should try to find out the true meaning of independence.” He said he wasn’t sure any longer if he knew what political independence meant. When we checked, Google threw up this: “Freedom from outside control, influence, or support, allowing an entity or person to govern and sustain themselves.”
Which of the points approximate what we have since we got nationhood? Is it freedom from outside control? Yes, the British colonialists left but did this bring freedom? Don’t we see the pangs of imperialism all over? Have we seen the ability to take full control of our destiny and decide what we want?
Curbing outside influence and control and taking decisions for ourselves. Isn’t this what we do? We got political independence and rather than take the opportunity to build a country we would be proud of, we sunk deeper in the circle of imperialism. Foreign countries through different agencies determine our behaviour including the nature of our democracy. They saw the “downside” of our actions, they ordered “devalue your currency” and our leaders asked by what percentage? They teach our leaders “the government has no right to be in business.” Like children in primary school, our leaders accept and begin to display before their eyes, public infrastructure begins to deteriorate and decay. They talk privately with our leaders and dictate what they want including helping us to organize our elections.
Now we subscribe to a democratic order. The question we should be asking is,”how many of the players understand democracy and the principles associated with it?” What is the integrity of our democracy? So much is unpredictable. No one knows the rules until a few weeks to elections; even then there’s no certainty about anything because the courts could throw up new angles to rules many thought were long settled. Courts declare election winners. When elections are stolen, people know everyone becomes the loser. We know yet…
The political architecture we run currently was distorted while the country fought a civil war to keep the country one. Unhealthy balkanization was undertaken to weaken the rebels and to win the war. Successive leadership class, 56 years after the war, have kept the structure everyone agrees is unproductive. Various political parties have ascended to power riding on “restructuring” but once in power they look the other way even when they know it is necessary if the country must see sustainable development.
When we look away from what should be and pretend to play the ostrich by focusing attention on the minor, everyone, including the country, becomes the loser. Social tension would remain very high, misguided citizens would be led to think supremacist expansionist ambitions and the much needed stability won’t be available. People promote insecurity on the scale plaguing the country, insecurity has not only threatened food security it has virtually stalled development.
In a federal arrangement, the wish of a few won’t work because they would have to contend with the rest. Insecurity in the country won’t become the alarming evil it has turned out to be if neighbourhood, corporate and state police which are components of federalism were in place. Now citizens are begging to have it in place.
The economy is in doldrums. There are no jobs. The young ones are moving abroad on a self-economic survival mission that is beginning to look more like voluntary walk or run into slavery.
It is important that we must sit down to decide the country we want, get a buy-in and then draw what it should look like and the pathways to getting it realized. This is what countries that went from Third World to First World did. History suggests this is the path we too must walk.
