Nigeria and the Black Race will never in the next 100 years catch up with modern civilization. This is no curse; just a statement grounded in pure fact. Many who read this will scream and those who are hooked to “religion” will be begin to add, “oh my God, what a view, how can any person make sure a negative conclusive statement about their people and country,” but then I have just said what is the truth, a fact many won’t like to be said but which in their heart of hearts they know is the truth and nothing but plain truth.
What we are doing in Nigeria, extend it to Africa and elsewhere in the Black world and call it development is no march to real development, and we know it. What we term developmental efforts are only very clear moves in stagnation and in some cases outright backward reintegration. Many of us know this much but rather choose to hide under the misleading belief that Roman was never built in a day. The parable though points to sense in working in phases, it is no license to stay in a circle of stupidity or no reasonable action for decades. Majority of us do know we are not on the right path. I don›t need any special encounter with you my reader to know you are not happy with our approach to national development.
Few days ago, a young Nigerian, who must be very well educated, put out in a video what proved to me that majority of us do not know we are still trudging on the wrong lane of classical development. What did the guy in question do? I guess his mind was so traumatized by the level of development of critical infrastructure and organization he saw in England. Yes, excellence can be a provoke. He decided to make a video to show the entire world how disgusted he was with development back home and in Africa generally.
In the video clips, he showed streets in London, with their names, in different areas. He took particular interest in the kind of development that made it possible to have surface and underground worlds each thriving and bustling with human activities. He showed in very clear pictures how businesses were running on the surface and underground of same areas all at the same time. We could see rail systems in the air, sky monorail conveying people through the air on electric lines and dropping them off at well designated points, similar activities going on underground and massive transit trains going to and fro.
The roads were not just pothole free, they were beautifully laid out in different colours decked with inscriptions detailing their functionality. The zebra crossing signs even on highways made kings, queens, princes and princesses out of citizens. He showed European school kids step on the signs and cars screeched to a halt and waited patiently for those kids to complete crossing before they moved on. At this point the angry young Nigerian couldn’t hold back anymore. He screamed and began to shout: “Imagine! If this is Nigeria,
parents of these young kids would have had a story. Our drivers won’t see the signs and even if they do they lack the patience to observe simple rules.”
In places where real development is taken seriously even the handicapped have special rights, particularly those who were visually impaired. They had concessions that allowed even the blind to move on all streets unaided. On each of the roads there were paths for different categories of users. There are things on the road to enable the blind walk on the streets, a hand railing with distinctive features takes the blind right into the path designated for them, the end of the sign on the ground leads him to impaired to any point he desires to go, whether a shop, hospital, or his residence.
This guy was virtually screaming and cursing, asking: «I think our leaders like to come to the whiteman’s country, don’t they see all these? Why are they not capable of replicating same in their states and countries? The big question!
Truth is the man like the rest of us had only seen the superficial, I mean top surface or better still outcome of visionary disposition, thinking and development. Almost all of us do see it, either when we embark on money wasting junkets abroad, and once we come into contact with the product of other people›s efforts, we don›t waste time to take it in, the reason we like to take pictures inside very beautiful airplanes and in those very beautiful surroundings when we touch down. Black man and other lazy people around the world love easy life, our souls caress end products.
Our mindset has been distorted and disfigured by years of wrong pictures and negative orientation. The subconscious of the majority is not attuned to rigours at all. These days, we want to dance and play football. We hardly want to think. We forget great vision doesn’t just come about. It is a product of hard process, deep introspection and processes that don’t come cheap. We prefer to wait out challenges, believing that time has a way of setting things right. But the law of matter is settled: everything stays in the state of rest until moved by a higher force. This attitude has been part of the bane of our country. Now it is important to state this: what the guy in the story saw and his anger grew are not the drivers of the development he saw. The enablers are most intangible yet very vital development forces. We can enumerate a few for our education.
The first is agreement to establish a country. There must be this or you have no country. European countries we know today began on a note of conquest but that option didn›t serve thd need of bonding and building, so, further search became inevitable. Law of homogeneity began to receive attention. It is for this reason their countries are small and most of them are similar in racial origin. Even with homogeneity they still went the extra mile of negotiating the terms of social relations, call it national conference to create a vision around which nation building efforts would revolve, exact reason nearly all of them have high regards for unit autonomy and great respect for civil rights. When they say rule of law it is not about going to court to get justice, it is more about strict adherence to the dictates of individual liberty.
We are told to allow private initiative run all aspects of our development process but those who force this ideal on us started with government doing virtually everything until they grew to the point private initiative could compete with established standards even at this government provision is still in place in nearly all aspects of their national life. In those societies education is free, public schools are still in existence and are as good as private schools, it is left for citizens to make choices. But they teach us to believe education is such an expensive venture government cannot do anything about.
Those who have read history of development in the first world countries knew the priority areas in their nascent years included education, mechanized agriculture and setting up of allied industries. Social enablers like electricity, road and rail followed after the others mentioned. Few weeks ago, before the general election that ushered in a new set leaders into power, various leaders showed their achievements on television. About two-thirds of them made a showcase of gigantic buildings which will serve as offices, flyovers and roads, many of them with open drains in the 21st century. None spoke in an elaborate manner on real drivers of sustainable development anywhere which are productive education built around human capital development, affordable, if not free, education, health services, agriculture and industrialisation.
At the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where I studied in the Faculty of Social Science, we many arguments over the real meaning of development and what it should be for us in Africa. We agree that imitating the West, and wanting to translate their kind of edifices, may not be it. The consensus was that we needed to find a model peculiar to our cultural reality. A friend who visited Libya under Gaddafi told us the country had her model of development. He told us it wasn’t about big edifices but cluster of low buildings that were well equipped and very functional. Libyans saw the desert turned green, don’t forget Libya is oil producing. The people witnessed well organized education sector. State of art hospitals offering citizens free medical services. Food was available and affordable. Power was available, 24/7, uninterrupted. This is development.