Reviewing the journey so far, the tragedy of the Nigerian situation is that the country is endowed with all necessary resources that could make a nation great. Nigeria’s condition is not similar to that of a ‘poor’ country, which has the seeming insurmountable task of turning rags to riches. In the case of Nigeria, the challenge is how to manage a boom and sustain prosperity. The measure of achievements recorded in the First Republic was eroded in subsequent years by the mindless looting of public treasuries by the military class and their civilian collaborators. However, events since the restoration of civil rule on May 29, 1999 have left much to be desired, as notable ‘leaders’ have been consistently exposed for fleecing the country. There is no indication yet of such practices abating. The reason is because of the fixation of most politicians that political offices are avenues for sharing the proverbial national cake. The urge to serve is largely immaterial. They do not consider it imperative to fix the country so that we can obliterate the era of harvest of failures.
For Nigeria to rediscover herself, the leaders must purge themselves of the mentality of the cow and the milk. This has to begin with the realization that time was running out for the nation after groping in the dark for more than half a century. South Africa, for which Nigeria made enormous sacrifice to secure its freedom from its imperial masters and Ghana, whose economy was in shambles to the level that many of its citizens became emigrants in Nigeria, are on a steady rise to economic boom and prosperity. The latter is now the toast of foreign investors, a couple of whom fled Nigeria because of the unfriendly climate and culture of sleaze and visionless leadership.
Nigeria is analogous to a corporation, and our current leaders should be seen as ineffective and inefficient managing director and board members. Nigeria is a corporation into which Nigerian citizens are heavily invested. Nigeria should be seen as a corporation which currently has poor return on our investment or no dividends at all. The prudent thing for any smart investor, shareholder to do, in order to earn dividends, profits and return on investment, is to oust the errant managing director and board members. But instead, most Nigerians engage in advertising the corporation to which they are heavily invested, as the worst company in the world. Nigerians publicly excoriate Nigeria, as a corporation which makes the worst products in the world, and then, we all wonder why no one would buy products made by this same is not attracting customers interested in products and hence a lack of profits, dividends and return on investment.
Finally, the score card for Nigeria from my own perspective on a scale of 100% is 5%. This could be seen in terms of every aspect of the Nigerian existence, it could be seen on the poor state of our infrastructure, poor state of finances, low energy generation, high unemployment rates, redundancy in our educational and health system to mention just a few. In the course of enforcing our rights to good governance by those we elect to manage our country, we shall encounter the brutality of the agents of governments. If our fathers failed us by remaining silent because they were afraid to die, thus allowing our country to degenerate to this abysmal level after 50 years of independence, are we prepared to allow our own children suffer the same fate like us? If not then it’s time to make a change.
Thank you.
Onakomaiya Adekunle .O.
onokok@yahoo.com
