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I had options regarding appropriate title for today’s discourse and they all would have been very fitting. One of them would have been “Elasticity of stupidity”. Our country today is in deeper mess because of the pattern of doing the same things and expecting different outcomes. This is folly. If I had settled for this it wouldn’t be the first time a Nigerian has used the term stupid to describe how we have carried on in the administration of our space. Professor Wole Soyinka once used the words “cycle of national stupidity.” It stocked. Place that against where we are against our natural endowments one is sure you would nod in agreement.
The other one would have been, “The shame of a country.” Those who are a conversant with political science theories would be aware we grow from society through country to nationhood. Countries are founded. It is within the scope of arguments and discussions if we have founded a country. There are still so many who don’t believe they belong to Nigeria, it is not about the Igbo alone. Many for different reasons don’t voice out their resentment but in private they tell anyone who cares to listen they don’t belong here. The other group is those who profess Nigeria by mouth but their hearts are far from their profession.
This group is never tired of singing the unity song but their actions are antithetical or at variance with what they profess almost on a minute to minute basis. This is a trend that shouldn’t be allowed to grow at all for reasons of negative variables it would often throw into the system. It is a very dangerous “virus” in any system. It destroys relationships or the union of people. The social tension in our society is quite high and doublespeak accounts to a high degree for the trouble.
Also, “failure of leadership” would have served the purpose. Leaders should be ahead of the society they lead or intend to lead. One is not sure if we have been lucky on this score. We have made leadership look like private business. Leaders in our clime invest to gain. This is the reason they throw in everything: the bad, ugly and terrible. No sense of ownership at all. No vision, no sense of commitment to any positive ideal. Zig Ziglar, popular expert on leadership, said and I agree: “No one can lead people into places they are not willing to grow into themselves. Great leaders start with being great learners.” In this country a few months ago a former Vice President raged against religious intolerance in a tweet and within one hour denied his statement and pulled it down. Today, he wants to lead the country as President of a yet to emerge republic. Who will lead us into it? Himself or shall we wait for another?
Presently, our land is in a state of flux. From the preceding paragraphs we have a glimpse of why things are changing with a rapidity that should frighten everyone including our leaders. We have not founded a country, consequently there is no vision and we have been told “where there’s no vision, the people perish.” There is confusion everywhere from government policies and attitude to citizens’ contributions and reactions. There’s hardly any sense of bonding and no buy-in. We are into a race against individual and group aspirations and expectations.
The making of a country and subsequently a nation is an easy task. People think and later fashion pathways to realising the picture they have seen with the eye of the subconscious. This is not what we have done. We saw a race and joined without knowing the rules. The consequences are not pleasant at all. The country is beginning to unravel. This is the truth. We know the root of the challenges but like the proverbial ostrich we have chosen the path of ignominy fiddling while Rome burns.
The country has been down and we have been told we need reforms but none would be very specific about the kind of reforms. What our leaders have done is to keep borrowing concepts that have no relevance to our peculiarities and experience. The outcome is near total collapse of the economy. The citizens are dislodged, hungry and bitter. This alone is producing a different level of discontent. Who cares?
Sane statecraft would try to pacify and work assiduously to bind the people behind a given line of direction and actions geared to alleviating the trauma and keeping hope alive.
Insecurity has added to the woes in the land. Banditry and insurgents propelled by deliberate reckless acts and ambition of citizens who place much premium on the small matters that bring them huge personal gains at the expense of the good and healthy state of the far majority. It should surprise one that citizens, many of them well educated, place so much importance on religion than the development of human person, science and technology. At a time many countries in the world run on automation we are working hard to have one faith trump another.
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Vision, productivity, justice and fair play have lost both meaning and placing in our affairs. If this is not the case how would anybody who means well substitute to Muslim President and Muslim Vice President in a country with very high numbers of Christians and Muslim in their population – if not for contempt, short-sightedness and what will happen let it happen. Why would any right thinking person, who desires unity and congenial atmosphere for development ever run with this disruptive killer idea?
They did and returned to their closet cheering themselves. Today the country is in the furnace and the progenitors are hiding away in shame waiting to see the outcome to their schemes. Their expectations would fail because this country is cardinal to the rise of the black race.
If we meant to see the country calm and walking to build up peace, the Nnamdi Kanu phenomenon would have been handled with greater sense of nationalism. ‘Igbophobia” is real, everything about the group must be responded to with vehemence. It had been there but only got worse with the former President Buhari and President Bola Tinubu political alliance. We have heard whispers that was has been on the cards is that everything Igbo must be pulled down. It began in Kano with pharmaceutical business and arrived in Lagos with hunting against electoral participation and dovetailed into burning and destruction of market stalls.
If the North with its sloganeering about national unity didn’t panic over self-determination outburst from what was a small section in the South East and if they didn’t lead former President Muhammadu Buhari to work as a supremacist ideologue, especially against the young people from the South East, perhaps the fame Nnamdi Kanu has may not have happened. Kanu severally gave himself up for dialogue but who cared to listen? Today, the issue would have been resolved and every hand put on deck has become a matter of huge concern.
This is the truth power opportunists, and they are many in the land, won’t tell those in power, that in passing a life imprisonment verdict on Kanu, an entire race feels it has been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Nigerian state. Igbo feel that way today. For them, taking Kanu add insult to injury. The damage is done and would take quite some time to repair, yet it was avoidable.
Nation building is tedious. It takes pains. It requires structures and plans well spelt out. We can’t create chaos and want to reap some good from it. In sane countries they won’t enlist into the national security apparatchik children of parents who subscribe to what is injurious to the state. They have a right to work elsewhere but not in very sensitive security areas. But this is neither the policy nor what obtains in our country. Security agencies have become family affairs – those who retire replace themselves with sons and daughters. Also not all cases or challenges require force or the legal route, the government may get victories following those paths yet not win the peace. This is where wisdom is crucial in statecraft.
What then should be done? Simple, leaders must sit down to govern. Governance is a very serious task, it requires rigour. Governance must trump politics. There should be no room for sentiments. There is need for the convocation of national conference, let ethnic nationalities lead professionals to agree on the type of Nigeria we want.
On immediate solutions to insecurity, we need to in a legal way put more booths and guns in the hands of the citizens, what this amounts to is establishment of state and community police. Let the locals man their areas under the supervision of the Governors. This alone would put to an immediate halt supremacist ideologue many of them fueled by external forces. Economic buoyancy is important and Enlightenment of the citizenry. State police would restore sense on the immediate. Politicians know more about insecurity plaguing the country. They know.
