Is hope strong enough to arrest insecurity?

While speaking at the 108th Baptist Convention held penultimate week, former President Olusegun Obasanjo expressed the hope that Nigeria would not be consumed by its current security challenges. The former President said, “I am an incurable optimist about a number of things, but particularly about Nigeria. The situation may be threatening, but we will not be consumed.”

Obasanjo’s optimism of the country not being consumed by its current challenges were amplified by Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State and his Ogun State counterpart, Prince Dapo Abiodun, who were also at the conference as they both expressed the hope that the country would overcome its numerous challenges.

It is the place of leaders to give hope. According to Napoleon Bonaparte, a leader is nothing but a dealer in hope. A leader must always inspire his people to look beyond the current situation to a better future. As a matter of fact, life would lose its essence if hope is allowed to peter out.

However, hope does not operate in a vacuum. Hope is always anchored on a substance, a properly defined plan of action. The efficacy of hope is a function of its foundation. If hope is anchored on nothing, the end result would be calamitous. A hope that is anchored on a weak fabric can only produce frustration coupled with lamentation. So, hope cannot be a strategy. Nothing gets better because hope was kept alive. Everything that ever got better did because the hope of it getting better was backed up with commensurate actions to give the hope a life.

Hoping that the security situation would not consume the country would be a pipedream unless proper action to stem the slide is taken. Bandits have taken over the North West, insurgents are in control of the North East, killer herdsmen are on the rampage in North Central, murder and arson have become the order of the day in the South East, kidnapping is rampant in the South South, while the South West is assailed by killings and kidnapping. The military is overstretched, the paramilitary is overstressed and the police are overwhelmed. The president, insulated from the reality out there by the comfort provided by the state, is unbothered by the pains of his people. Ensconced by state-maintained aides and apparatuses, the cries of the orphaned, the groans of the widowed and the pangs of the abducted are muffled in the President’s ears. So, he neither sees the need to lend a hand to the oppressed nor give an ear to the mutters of the depressed.

But as the common saying goes, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” That means no situation gets better because there is a wish for it to get better just as no one becomes a billionaire because he hopes to become one. Situations change when people do, not before. Greece is regarded as the bastion of democracy and civilization. Greece produced Socrates, Pluto, Aristotle and other renowned political and economic thinkers. While other countries had no understanding how to build a society, Greece was already a flourishing and well-organised society. But what has become of Greece now? The country has gone to the dogs because the leaders got careless. No country is too big or too strong to fail once the leaders throw caution to the wind. So, unless we are deliberate about putting an end to the security challenges beleaguering our country, the slide would continue and our country may become the next Somalia.

The only group that can stop the slide and redirect the country to the path of peace, unity and growth is the leadership. It is for this reason that leaders are regarded as change agents.

Between April 7 and July 15, 1994, Rwanda was embroiled in genocide that claimed about one million lives. The Hutus made mincemeat of the Tutsi, killing as many of them as they came across. After the genocide was quelled, Rwandans could still not live together as one people. Suspicion pervaded the space and the human development indices continuously headed south. But after the resignation of the former President, Pasteur Bizimungu, in 2000, Paul Kagame became the President. Since then, the story of the former war-torn country has changed. Kagame didn’t hope that things would change; he worked to change the country’s narrative. Kagame stopped the slide in the country. He reset the country and redirected the people. He has successfully steered the people of the country from seeing themselves as enemies to believing that they are one. With that, the country has been growing by leap and bounds.

Rwanda, which was a pariah state two decades ago, has become a reference point for development in Africa. It is considered the second safest country in Africa after Algeria. It is rated as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and it has also become the choice of planners of international events, all because a leader was concerned enough to arrest the slide and change the direction of the country.

Peaceful co-existence is possible in Nigeria. Insecurity can become a thing of the past in Nigeria. But these would not happen if all we do is hope that things would sort themselves out because “what is gonna be is gonna be”. Our leaders have to rise to the occasion and stop the descent into anarchy. They have to arrest the slide into disorder and cause Nigerians to believe in their country once again. They have to obliterate tribal and religious differences by showing that indeed they belong to everyone and not owned by anyone. That is how to save the country from the brinks.

But if all we do is just hope that things would change without stepping out to stop the slide, not just would the hope be lost, the country too would be lost.

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