by Without belaboring potential readers, we are all guilty.
What is the way forward?
Leadership: If you are afraid to die for the sake of your country, then you are unfit to lead your country. Soundly wrought security arrangement is not same as ostentatious and bogus security architecture around the person of the president.
To save cost of running the government, it may be better for the president to operate from home and not harass us by daily long convoy of commuting from home to work.
The ostentatious and prodigal aspects of the presidency must be surgically removed.
The parliamentarians are supposed to be the closest to the people. In a sane society, they should be living among the people that elected them. If their actions are genuine and stimulated towards pro Bono publico, there would not have been any need for bullet proof cars and comforts in great disparity with those enjoyed by those who gave them the social contract by temporarily surrendering their sovereignty to them for specified period. Isn’t it weird that those you were eating ‘booli’ and roasted corn with have suddenly become security threat against you?
Sometimes ago, a post went viral on social media platforms on the analysis of the transmutations of religion at different locations from being a family affair, to being a handy in politics at the next destination, and becoming a business at another destination,which sadly is Africa.
The most divisive presidential election ever held in Nigeria can be said to be the 2023 presidential election. No thanks to religion. Some candidates wanted a shortcut through religion but it backfired; a lot of damage had been done to phenomenon of tolerance and trust.
Closely related to the above submission in the above paragraph is the evil of tribe and it’s sentiments and submissions. Right from the onset of the government that preceded the present administration,a campaign of tribal and religious biases was initiated.
It is weird to analyse a people swimming both sides of a tide; at elections you concur to “I do.”, and in the same breath, there is an unjustifiable suspicion of tribal shortchange.
The gamut of the security agencies with all apologies, deviate from their statutory roles. Cronyism, corruption, nepotism, and leeway for disorientation allowed through the elite, the criminal elements and very important figures.
The combined effects of the above adumbration anchors the flightiness in conduct and character of the country and her people.
To vanquish the inconstancy and entrench groundedness in our beloved country depends more on the cohesiveness of the chain of family, clan, community, tribe, faith against the exploitation and despoilation by the elite.
The yardstick for quality, capacity, and competence should not be determined by faith, tribe, gender, eloquence, occasional gratification but by the grit of a persona that aspires to lead. And those qualities must be deeply and unbiasedly probed by antecedent, consistency and age long principled position on issues of patriotic interests.
We have had such people in the past but because of the disarray in group of the real and precarious victims of persistent structural violence of successive governments, such breakthroughs were missed.
The scary aspect that is out of patriotic people’s wits is the negative paradigm shift of recent generations. The accumulated consequences of bad governance have destroyed the social fabrics of ethos right from the cradle of upbringing which in this instance is the family.
Kids are attracted as a dog is to bones, to all negativities and dysfunctionality that have brought real time education and morals to their abyss. Too sad! Very foreboding!
To marshal solutions out of the quagmire that is navigating towards a potential collapse of the State is an herculean task that is ready to burst the brain of the best idealists and the realists.
Democracy is adjudged the best system of government because it is imbued with attributes that safeguards human dignity and freedom within the framework of set values and law.
But in the real sense of it, can Democracy be said to be in practice in Nigeria where the already sapped people are influenced in their decision by religion, ethnicity, tribe, and on the spot gratification to compromise conscience with a loaf of bread and degrading cash gift to arrest the conscience and consciousness of a voter. What of threat of violence and reprisals from well structured goons of the elite for voting against their “capi di tutti capi”?
The fact of the matter in Nigeria today is that we are hanging on a cliff; child and adult prostitution; ‘colos’ generation, kidnappers in cahoot with security operatives lurking in every part of the country; religious bigotry and exploitation; no love lost among tribes engineered by the elite; get rich quick through dubious and fetish routes; goons as role models; social media has yanked the parental rights of their roles.
The cacophony of it all is the casting of doubts in the minds of good people as to w whether they are not the one in the rudderless wilderness.
The realistic questions are:
1. How do we guaranty the sanctity of the course of Democracy to reflect the true wishes of the voters who are enlightened and bold enough to not only vote their conscience but courageous to take on the goons of the elite whose only attribute is violence by intimidation?
2. How do we guarantee that there are more intelligent and enlightened voters whose sense of mind independence has been yanked from them and replaced with primordial sentiments?
3. How do we guarantee our own values are not condemned and influenced by foreign values such that a right thinking leader is not blackmailed by issues of human rights to succumb to gay rights, criminal agitators, and self serving critics bent on destroying the cohesion of the process of leadership just for ulterior motives?
4. What kind of state of emergency is acceptable to deal with high profile social malaise that is destroying the future of our youths albeit the future of our country?
5. Who is going to be acceptable to the majority to lead our own home grown satyagraha as spearheaded by Mahatma Gandhi for the freedom of Indians from the obnoxious policies of the British on Indian soil?
What is in dire need in Nigeria is the patriotic reawakening of the masses to speak with one voice against unpopular decision of any government.
Happy independence day Nigerians.
