WE are going to write about business and finance and politics; pretences and pretentiousness and decorum and indecorum, until a thousand pretences and ten thousand impostors shrivel in the cold. We are going to write about wasted opportunities and latent beauties, until a thousand new ways of life open to men and women. We are going to appeal to the young, and the hopeful, and the curious against the established, the dignified and the defensive. Before we are done we will have all life within this scope of the novel.
We at most, talk, write and discuss the Nigerian myth and leadership conundrum with a sense of fatalism. Sadly if only everyone thought as much as I did about justice and fairness, as a continuum and not some episodic spasm of pretence, life would be better.
The easiest and most attractive national past time continues to be buck passing, especially with the bunch of leaders that we have, a set that make mountains out of a mole and make simple moles become mountains. Their aides canonise simple going to mosque as rocket science, buying groundnuts as 5G wireless networks.
Not many of us want to take responsibility for anything from personal, family to national life. The blame is on the system. And we do not need to create demons out of our leaders because they are specimen of demons, so we hang our sins on them appropriately and inappropriately too.
And unfortunately their behaviour has made it easy for the critic to descend on them.
Sadly this is Nigeria where nothing works and some people are walking, and no one cares, when it works, it is because someone’s interest is about to be served or being served not the people’s interest.
We talk about our institutions despairingly and our leaders, so also heads of institutions. Not everything government does is wrong, but in these climes intentions are wonderful and final product is misery.
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I tread with caution when there’s a thin line between political sentiment and economic sense. All the politicking has not done us any good, the lives of the ordinary Nigerian has not shifted from point A to B, I often will say that the poor man during the last administration is a still a poor man now, but fact is, it is worse in terms of living standard and value for money.
Our problems have been over-exaggerated, it is not that it cannot be solved, but really do we want it solved. He that is cheated twice by the same man is an accomplice with the cheater. Where do we stand as part of this enterprise of Nigeria, is it ours, or theirs or for all of us, and them. What we are afraid of doing is a clear indicator of what we need to do, our worries in the lack of leadership gradually is becoming a master to us.
- Prince Charles Dickson PhD
pcdbooks@outlook.com
