Bravo… the country Nigeria deserves a lot of credit for its six decades plus a year existence. The country has waded through lots and lots of “murky muddy waters”. Her greater challenge happened when the country was barely six years old after independence. With little experience in governance, she was able to wade through a thirty month civil war that cost millions of lives and displaced thousands of families that never located one another. Frankly speaking, our Igbo brothers and sisters bore the greatest brunt of the war. Their recovery, to say the truth, is an on-going process.
From inception the country called Nigeria was naturally a divided group of nations that had undergone a lot of transformation and self-inflicted catastrophes before colonization. Inter-tribal and intra-tribal warfare were rife, slave trade through both trans-Saharan routes and the Atlantic Ocean, human sacrifice, social and religious segregation, etc. Life, to say the least, was just at the level of the great political thinker’s assertion nasty brutal and short (Thomas Hobbes). Only the fittest survive in the war of crude survival.
Everybody sees the world from their own sides of the prism. This behaviours, which had taken so much root in the families, peer groups, society and even within erst while nuclear groups in complicating simple existence. For instance, only God who own Churches and mosques can tell how many sects and independent organisations that have sprung from the missionary works of the initial people that started it all.
‘The people make the city’ is an old saying. All these people with diverse backgrounds and orientations are also the people in politics, directing the use of power at their disposal with the myopic and primordial instincts of their tribes, religion, affection, and orientation. This indeed was the fallout of both the first republic and perhaps successive governments Nigeria has been having since independence. Ever since, the agitation has been for a system of governance that is devoid of parochial interests.
Nigeria, a country estimated to be above two hundred million citizens, is blessed in all frontiers. Think about it, manpower, arable land, varieties of crops and diverse farming season, oil, gas, minerals couples with the Atlantic Ocean that facilitates import and export of goods and services. Blessed assured with more than two hundred and fifty ethnic groups, tell me, when all these ethnic groups are not robots, shouldn’t any sane human being expect at least some divisions? Borno State alone commands the presence of not less than eighty-eight ethnic groups including the most that are spread all over the Northern and middle belts of Nigeria.
Looking through the various ethnic groups, one can see truly how blessed the country is. I have been to all the states of the federation, in my voyages, I am in a vantage position to appreciate our God given resources in their varieties. You can see people who resemble your family members in several states that are not even within your geo-political zone. The difference is language and culture. I have lost count of several states where people I met admired me for looking like their family members or people from their communities. Some even speak their native language to me expecting me to respond to them alike.
Why is call for a break-up, division, self-governance, etc. rife at this stage in the nations’ political and economic development? Political intimidation, economic hardship, perceived injustice and nepotism, discrimination and segregation on the basis of tribe or religion, deprivation and dictatorial tendencies, etc. are but few reasons people may clamour to opt out of a union that offers little or no benefit. It is quite amusing seeing how Nigeria arrived at this juncture. From resources control to oil derivation, and now to calls for referendum. Now I wonder, is division the best solution to our problems?
Thank God for the present unity we are all toying with. In retrospect, the anthropologist who came before the colonization knew that the major problem confronting the various ethnic groups was that of cohesion. This was the reason for the various intra-tribal wars, it will be foolhardy to assume that it is the presence of a particular ethnic group or people that is causing problem for the country. None of us is ready to face the realities of a proud and buoyant country. An average Yoruba man should never delude himself by thinking that his race is superior to Hausa, Igbo or Fulani man, in the same vein, none of the two ethnic groups should feel any measure of superiority to any tribe in the union. The truth is Nigeria’s unity has shielded all the ethnic groups from their faults.
The challenges of running a small scale company are enormous, given the fact that the sole entrepreneur is saddled with the responsibility of sourcing for all the factors of production. The geo-political economy of Nigeria is such that every part of the country is richly blessed with one resources or the other. Fortunately, since the advent of the current democratic dispensation, educational attainment and literacy level have improved drastically. The twin problems confronting us notably are; Firstly, we have never been able to galvanize these resources with the level of our technological know-how. And secondly, over the years, we have jettisoned all the laid down principles and procedures of running a good government that can achieve positive results in the economy.
Be that as it may, from the foregoing, we can deduce that the myriads of socio-political problems confronting Nigeria are man-made. Ecological, climatic and weather problems have little or no hold on the economic prospect of the country as compare to several developed nations. There is no country in the world where there is no dissent in term of running of the country and the constitution foisted on them. Why is it that nothing works in Nigeria? I am sure it is not because we lack the knowledge or capacity that we are toothless bulldogs. The truth is, from independence, indices of decadence paralysis have been part and parcel of the norms of governance. Indiscipline from top to bottom in every nooks and crannies of the country gives room to open nepotism, tribalism, religious discrimination and mother of all laxities –overt display of corruption. What one is denied because he comes from a ‘lower tribe’ or ethnic group or religion, then he buys with money. It begun in a lukewarm manner from the capital of the country then in Lagos, and shifted to Abuja. It has gained quite wide currency in all the facets of the country. Namely; education, employment bureau, appointment or nomination into political offices, promotions and transfers to choice offices or ministries, etc.
Merit has long been thrown off, if not deleted from the lexicons of the country’s rule of engagements. Strange as the decay is, it has crept successfully and taken firm roots in the arm forces and other paramilitary establishments, churches, mosques, the so called ivory tower known as the universities, ordinary common entrance examinations, WAEC/NECO, polytechnics, colleges of education, science and technologies, etc. Private schools, including primary and secondary schools and private universities see it as a matter of compulsion to score their student very high in order to retain the patronage of their parents. Why? The schools were not established for the development and promotion of education but as golden goose commercial ventures.
Pay a visit to the Port Authority, immigration offices, custom border posts, police stations, public hospitals and mortuaries; you may not get a fair deal if you are part of those who believe in uprightness. The unifying culture in Nigeria is neither language nor dressing but tangible corruption. If social physicians cannot diagnose us, we should by our bestial attitudes realise that we are sick indeed. Tell me, if today a quick wish referendum splits the country either through fiscal federalism or even autonomous countries whom do you think will be the citizens of those ‘new found lands’? The same depraved, sick and ineptly corrupt people from the late country. God forbid this over Nigeria.
All the shortcomings that take ethnic or tribal and religious form would automatically transform to clan, class, elite, cultic, etc. forms in the respective new country.
It is high time we sat down and address our minds to the teething issues that can sour our union and trash them out. Every one of us must seize the opportunity of this independence anniversary to search his/her mind if they have positively contributed to the development of the country since they grew up as citizens. The terrorists attack, though protracted, is a wakeup call after all, security is not the exclusive duty of the armed forces and other paramilitary organizations. It is everybody’s duty. Building a virile nation is not a day’s work. Let us identify the clogs in the wheels of the nation’s progressive movement and remove them. The twenty first century posits new approaches to solving intractable problems. These negate the power holders who feel knowledge is their exclusive preserve.
Nobody could display any act of corruption in the olden days. The more we deviated from native knowledge and practice, the more we move towards disruption to the society. You can see the level of native intelligence displayed in African proverbs that show that morality, good mores and reasonable way of life had been in existence long time before the white man came. It is a shame that we have all thrown caution to the wind by relegating the courtesies in African way of life because of the so called white man’s education.
The social media, as vile as it seems, show that ingenuity in every aspect of human existence is the norm. The best blood-hound, at least, deserves a good portion of the game. In the same manner, comparative arrangements of resources should be developed and encouraged with commensurate with returns and rewards to achieve both equity and fair play.
Omitade, the General Overseer of Holy Trinity Authority Church International, sent this from in Ado Ekiti
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