Instead of working together to build the country, everyone is busy looking for who to worship or who to worship them
During the week, I received the
following message. It attempts to explain the Nigerian situation from
the viewpoint of the average man. As usual, I have tinkered a bit with
the grammar but I promise you the sense is intact. Please read:
… Two million of the likes of Buhari
cannot change Nigeria. Everything is wrong with Nigeria. The Director
won’t give you a contract except you pay up front. The banks won’t give
you a loan except you concede a certain per centage. The man supervising
the contract won’t pass the job except you play ball. The clerk won’t
pass your file for payment except you rub his palm. The accounts
department won’t raise your payment voucher or cheque unless you see
them…
The worst thing is that it has become a
norm and no one sees anything wrong with it. If you think otherwise,
they begin to think you are sick and not normal. If you stand in their
way, you put your life at risk. If you get killed, there is no justice
system in place to seek redress and bring the perpetrators to book.
The police are corrupt; the judge is the
same. Nobody cares about anybody. No law and order… everybody is only
desperate about one thing: MONEY. They will kill anybody and anything
that stands between them and money.
I am an electrical engineer contractor
with MNSE and COREN. But the system doesn’t care about my
qualifications. (Power) Distribution and transmission jobs are given to
Alhajis, pastors, friends and relatives without any basic skills. I
started to ask myself how I would convince my children that education
and hard work are rewarding when fools, agberos and touts are running
the country from the national assembly to the presidency.
Don’t put yourself in harm’s way for any
reason. The problem of Nigeria is in the hands of Nigerians living in
Nigeria… Everybody there thinks about himself and nobody is thinking
about Nigeria.
That lamentation almost has you in
tears, no? It fair broke my heart. I am sniffing so much I may not be
able to come up with my usual jokes today. I will still try though.
I agree that the problem of Nigeria is
in the hands of Nigerians, but not in the way you think or the writer
thinks. For one thing, I do not believe that the generality of people
were participants in the orchestration of this gargantuan failure. Most
of us have become victims of the charade. Even when we have joined in
doing the wrong thing, we are still victims. Not excusing your
wrongdoing though but, I quite believe that this debacle was planned and
executed at the very start of Nigeria’s birth. It was not an accident.
This is why I find it really amusing
when people play the blame game and point fingers at President Buhari.
Like I always say, I am not the man’s PRO or his media man (or woman)
but any short-sighted fellow can see that deducing that he is the source
of Nigeria’s failures because ‘things are hard in the time of Buhari’
is myopic. I think, and I know many will agree with me, that the failure
we are witnessing today was planted the same day the country was born.
Nigeria came DOA. The failure is not in our stars, brethren; it’s in our
genes.
Nigeria was very unfortunate to have had
the first set of elites she had. It was that crop that planted the
disorder, deception, wreckage, chaos, plunder, destruction, insanity and
abnormality that have become part of our national life and psyche. In
planting a cancerous ethnicity/tribalism seed, encouraging a divisive
religious atmosphere, and pursuing an arbitrary political system, the
nation’s first set of elites sealed Nigeria’s coffin, set her
independence ablaze and made sure she never found her freedom again.
That system benefitted the personalities at that time; it was exploited
by the army; and is being fine-tuned even today by the nation’s
neo-politicians.
For a system to flourish, it must be
inherently utilitarian, i.e., be of benefit to the average man, not just
a few personalities or families. Nigeria’s system is at present
cult-based, which puts personalities at the centre of action. This is
why it is possible for us to turn a few individuals to demigods and
worship them as such and place them above the law – executive members,
legislative members, institutional heads, service heads, corporate
heads, just name them. As gods, they can do no wrong. They are above the
law.
I have a post in my phone showing
Russia’s president, Putin, serving himself fuel at a filling station
with no attendant in sight. I have another one of the former Iranian
prime minister taking a bus to work as an ex-minister. It’s different
here though. Recently, I heard that the former IG of Police and the
current were having a spat on the number of cars the former hooked home
with his finger when he retired: twelve or twenty-four. What?
The present cult-based system is also
why it is possible for an ex-governor to be welcomed from prison like a
conquering Hercules just returned from a war. This is why it is possible
for fellow senators to worship another senator like he was Caesar
leading some Roman campaigners to expand the empire. Instead of working
together to build the country, everyone is busy looking for who to
worship or who to worship them. And, as of a man, everyone has chosen
the emblem of worship: money. It brings power. This is why the system
has failed. It never existed.
These evidences of systemic failure have
spread through all the nation’s institutions to result in zero
productivity – power, civil service, school systems’ failures, etc.
Erroneously, many of us have attributed these failures to the nature of
the African man’s heart which I have heard is ‘wicked, black and evil’. I
have found this a little strange. I do not believe a Nigerian’s heart
is any more depraved than a Briton’s heart for example. The heart of man
in general has a depravity depth as long as the north pole. What makes
the difference is the presence or absence of well-defined systems.
So, there are no scientific measurements
for ‘wicked,’ ‘evil,’ ‘black’ hearts, but there are scientific
measurements for whether one has done one’s work or not. Everyone’s work
schedule is clear enough. If there is a failure in a civil service
office, then the head should be held responsible. The failure on a
police station floor should be put squarely at the door of the
supervising inspector. The failure in a classroom should be accounted
for by the teacher or the head of the school. If every officer takes
responsibility for their jobs, then it should be possible for the
policeman to arrest a wrong-doer, be he the president.
Foundational errors have been committed
with respect to Nigeria. I still maintain that it was arrogant of
Britain to have yoked three disparate groups together in the first
place. However, Britain’s error has been compounded by the error of
governance adopted by the early elites for Nigeria. Good statesmen would
have built the people rather than focus on tribes or personalities. The
most powerful instrument for developing a nation is not so much the
material as the human resources. That we built personalities and tribes
rather than people has become our millstone now.
Nigerians should stop behaving like
criminals. Many a criminal prefers to recriminate his reporter
neighbour, the arresting policeman and the sentencing judge for his stay
in prison rather than himself for committing the crime. This is what
Nigerians are doing – pointing fingers. We do not need two million
Buhari; we need just you. Begin to hold yourself accountable for this
country today.
credit: http://thenationonlineng.net
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