In 1985 when Nigeria celebrated her twenty five years of nationhood, the late Evangelist Sonny Okosun asked the rhetorical questions in his debut album titled: Which way Nigeria? The song took the nation back memory lane by probing the minds of Nigerians and challenging the leadership for wanton abuse of privileges while admonishing them to “let’s save Nigeria, so Nigeria won’t fall”. Just like many songs, we danced, we clapped and said: “well done boy to Okosun ‘’ for a nice presentation without reflecting on the message which the lyrics intended to achieve. Running through the lyrics again might not be necessary because we are all familiar with the song with the exception of the younger generation who bears the brunt of the official ineptitude of the Nigerian leaders.
In few days from now, the Federal Republic of Nigeria will clock 50 as a sovereign nation. Just like yesterday, Nigeria will be older by another quarter of a century in few days time. With this, she joins 17 other African countries who coincidentally gained political independence in 1960 from their respective colonial masters. The purported celebration of the nation at 50 has generated a lot mixed feelings amongst Nigerians especially since the government planned to spend 10 billion naira which was later reduced to 6 billion naira when the whooping amount was greeted with criticism by Nigerians across all walks of life. To the few, especially those who will benefit from the largesse in terms of contracts and patronage, it is a day worth celebrating, while to a large percentage of people in Nigeria it is a celebration of 50 wasted years of consistent inconsistencies that is unworthy of being celebrated.
The argument is: why spent so much money to celebrate in a country where majority of the people live below the poverty line; our hospitals are now ‘mere consulting clinics’ with no modern facilities and highly unmotivated medical personnel whose pastime is to embark on incessant strikes to drive home their demands for pay rise; decent, comfortable and affordable housing is elusive; water, water everywhere but none to drink; education is now exclusive reserve for the rich children as qualitative education is privatised and commercialised while government continue to neglect its primary responsibilities of providing affordable education for the children of the poor; electricity is a write-off; infrastructural provision is gradually being taken over by private entities courtesy of privatisation policy. In fact, we now have governance without responsibilities to the ordinary citizenry.
The few who believes the event is worth celebrating belongs to the aristocrat class who have benefitted immensely from the Nigerian project since independence and wish to encourage a system that shares the cake before being baked. While the large chunk represents the economically disadvantaged with no hope in the future of the country and who believes that such huge sum should have been invested in our decadent infrastructure.
The problem with our embattled nation has been identified in different fora as that of leadership and inconsistent policy thrust that engender growth in the economic and social wellbeing of the citizenry. We have since independence lacked visionary leaders endowed with the capacity to harness our collective potentials and transform them into physical energies for socio-political and economic growth. The fight against corruption is lost even before the battle begins as perpetrators of corrupt practices are perfecting their acts sooner than their strategies are discovered. Thus, Nigeria is growing at arithmetic progression while its corrupt leaders are growing at geometric progression. They use their ill-gotten wealth from the state treasury to fight a legal battle against the state under the guise of due process and rule of law. What an irony!
Recently, there was a report that Nigeria has expended more than one trillion naira in the last 4 years on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) without visible impact on the lives of Nigerians. This revelation threatens the full implementation of the programmes under the MDG at the target year of 2015 for the realisation of the policy thrust within the MDG projects. Nigeria is used to incessant policy shifts. When Gen. Ibrahim Babangida took over the leadership of this country in 1985, apparently to placate the restless Nigerians who were unhappy with the take-over, he quickly roll out policy which set targets for year the 2000 through the popular slogans; Education for all by the year 2000; Health for all by the year 2000; Housing for all by the year 2000 etc with billions of naira ‘consumed’ in the process by friends and cronies without achieving the target. When Gen. Sani Abacha took over in 1993, it became obvious that the year 2000 target for the provision of the infrastructure was no longer feasible. His administration came up with Vision 2010 and the vision died with his demise in 1998. This is year 2010, Nigeria is yet to realise any of her visions since 25 years ago. If it took a nation 25 years to see a vision without realising it, it then means that the vision is either not well articulated or there has never been any vision ab initio, rather what had been postulated are mere wishes that lacked substantive energy for it to blossom to reality. And yet the nation plans to spend 6 billion naira on the celebration of a visionless nation.
It is high time we spoke to the conscience of our leaders. This is time to face the issue and begin a process of leading this country aright. We urgently require national vision that is backed with absolute commitment to deliver. The problem with the country is not dearth of manpower or material resources but that of leadership. We want a leader with a patriotic zeal, determined to put the ‘extra’ behind the ‘ordinary’ to reposition this nation and take governance to another level. It is pertinent to ourselves these basic questions: Where are we coming? Why are we here? What does the future portend to us a nation? Finding answers to these questions is crucial to our development as geographical entity and a panacea for dealing with issues of moving one step forward and two backward. Like Alice in Wonderland, we are running so fast only to maintain a stagnant position amongst the comity of nations. God help Nigeria!
No comments:
Post a Comment