This title is not original to me. The credit should go to Mr Ibekwe Okey, my friend on Facebook (and I am hoping he didn’t pick it from somewhere else.) We are in an era people pick the work of someone’s else’s efforts and won’t give the courtesy of mere acknowledgement. It is evil, it is unacceptable. It is sacrilegious in scholarship. The title captures the trauma facing our society called Nigeria. Many call it a country but in truth we are not a country. We have for more than 60 years after we got independence elected to remain at the level of society, just a habitat of different people, not united by a purpose or vision.
It is an elementary thing to teach that countries don›t just drop from the blues. Countries emerge from the strenuous, deliberate efforts of committed patriots. Countries are end products of efficiency; leadership of a given people who know leadership is to be sold out to ideals of greater good for the greatest majority. Wonderful leadership is to be sacrificial, to know that greatness flows from knowledge that in a given endeavour there must be challenges, and in the challenges are the blocks for building great and rewarding enterprises. No one decrees a country into existence; societies could come that way but countries are worked out by grand vision, getting the people to understand and to key in and then to see possible problems and have a resolve to tackle or confront them head on.
Nothing great is built by shying away from problems. In our case we side track challenges, or pick areas of least resistance in the false hope that time will heal, amend or straighten rough edges. It doesn›t work that way. Building great things definitely would require the physical effort of men and women strategically applied. Today we still feel tribe and religion are banes of development, we prescribe quota system, federal character and processes by which one citizen would have to suffer deliberate hurt for another to go forward, when the right approach would have been to emphasize citizenship, citizens’ rights, affirmative actions and a merit driven system so that citizens grow on account of excellent principles and loyalty to country over narrow group aspirations. Sixty years after gaining nationhood we are still being hunted by threats posed by tribe and religion. We have North East, North West, Northern, Middle Belt, South East, South South, South West Governors meetings, not to forget Ohanaeze, Arewa Consultative Forum, Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) and Afenifere socio-cultural unions, some of them more potent than civil authorities found in areas of their influence.
Religion should be a private matter and that will end the matter of constant religious bickering and crisis; that way we free the atmosphere for greater productivity in areas of science and technology so that unemployment is banished and life and living made more abundant and a song worth singing, but our leaders would never let us walk that path. Rather, to pray they must gather the whole world, the cameras must follow and the news must be on all communication channels. In public they are pious, yet they midwife most of the terrible political and economic crimes plaguing the society, which are halting or distorting development, making life a very sad experience for millions of others. Most of them will kill for minor issues of competition.
We run a democracy, we made the choice ourselves, yet again and again we observe that we don›t have democrats to run the choice. Increasingly, despots are finding themselves into power. A man who was very poor yesterday, who stayed in public eatery all day becomes a lord once he finds his way into a minor office. He begins to see the people as enemies that could kill him. He doesn›t pick his calls, and the funny thing is that he hires mean men, and in other instances security personnel to cordon him from the world of reality to one of grand illusion. There the despoilation of his people and society begins. A leader becomes a god and his wishes must be the rule.
What will make a government in society with very poor economic base moot idea of cattle colony when cattle farming is like other private business? Why would government want to use public funds, borrowed funds for that matter to run private business? What is so difficult in admitting that cattle roaming all over the place is anachronistic, and then do ranching in areas that are culturally contiguous to the trade, then develpo the railways and cargo section of aviation to move cows to distant markets. What is the difficulty in this? In a society where value placed on human lives has become so cheap, where lives of animals seem to be worth more than human lives, isn’t it embarrassing our legislators find it great to discuss preservation of donkeys, wearing of hijab etc, at a time millions of citizens don’t know if they will sleep and wake up the next day or where the next meal will come from?
Two things among others make democracy tick. First is participation in the process by all citizens, capacity of the system to ensure replacement of political personnel and then free exchange of views between citizens the sovereignty and the leaders. Simple challenges and simple solutions. Yet our leaders have become notorious for making complex of simple matters. Credibility of electoral process would have since dealt with many of the challenges we face with sound polls. Good thinking and selfless leadership would since have emerged but our leaders won’t go that way. Amendment of the electoral law has been an issue, and central to it, is going digital. The people want things done electronically but our leaders are hesitant of embracing a future already here with us. Senate few days ago said the electoral body could use digital process whenever it thought it was adequately prepared to do so, but certification won’t be by the electoral body but by an extraneous agency far from the electoral body, known as Nigerian Communications Commission, who must determine and receive Senate approval before the electoral body can think of going fully electronic in the electoral process, especially in the highly contentious aspect of transmission of results.
This was from the Senate. The Senate and another agency becoming part of the electoral body! Only in Nigeria›s kind of democracy can one find such absurdity and blatant erosion of independence of a national electoral body, and soon we will begin to hear that no two democracies are the same. Ours is a society paralyzed by wicked intentions, fear, excuses and manipulations. They talked of inadequate internet coverage, but most of those who held on this line of argument do financial transactions from their villages, they use their phones, many things in our society are done electronically. The greatest disgrace is that voting on such very cardinal matter went essentially along ethnic and religious lines not party as some tried to make out or party loyalty. Nnamdi Kanu has something to make him smile in detention. In the House of Representatives there is fighting and you ask, fighting over what? A simple matter of doing things well in the interest of the society!
In terms of freedom speech, the Constitution says freedom of expression but our leaders say we talk too much and that is not good. They want to destroy the Constitution through the back door. Ghana, here in West Africa and two countries away from Nigeria says no new law should be made to take away people›s freedom to talk, but the African giant is rabidly interested in gagging everybody. They say talking creates problems, they point to Rwanda but some of us who know say that is not true. What provokes is the reckless and insensitive manipulation by vain politicians and inglorious efforts to foist hegemony on the people, it is not talking. After all Obasanjo and Jonathan were presidents of Nigeria and we talked but heaven didn’t fall. It is vexatious to take mineral resources found in people’s backyard, destroy the environment, give them three per cent from the gain and hand over 30 per cent to non-oil producing areas. These are hate actions that lead to conflicts, not just agitations.
We have gotten to a point we must decide if we truly want a country united under one destiny. If history is true, it is difficult for one race to conquer and swallow another. It will be like a snake swallowing another; the tail will stick out. It is a painful experience we can guess.