Is Nigeria Truly Golden?

Independence Essay by Ify Adenuga

I make no apologies for the rule I am about to break by writing this note so soon after the passing of my dearest dad on the 16^th of this September 2010, after a brief illness.  My dad lived to the graceful age of 86 as of July of this year, 2 months prior.  Somewhat therapeutic is how his passing is making me take a hard look at my own life as a Nigerian having listened to his age-long tales of ‘bacon and egg’ as food items for English breakfast during his colonial master’s days.  Life was sweet and free from my standpoint as a young school girl enjoying free education in Lagos where I was born until the civil war.  He told me a lot about Dr. Azikiwe et al stories that made me yawn for good life as I imagined Nigeria as land of hope and glory and aspired for better lifestyle in my adulthood.  Since the advent of the civil war, our nation in my view turned into a thing free and up for grab for greedy and self-interests.  These have continued to date irrespective of military or civilian rule.  We have had leaders displaying successions of mismanagement and malpractice and the once prosperous nation (when in the eighties you had N1,000 to £998 UK sterling) is on the brink of extinction.

 I really do hope to see a changed Nigeria that my father talked and sang to me about of how he’d planned for all his 6 children to access free and good education to travel ‘abroad’ but for such governments that did not have a clear vision for free and effective education agenda.  Let’s bring back our values for good life, neighbourliness and community spirit.  Let’s not be cooked up in fear of the ghost of our old politicians that many of us love to hate so much for their leadership style and the state it has left our nation’s economy and well being.  Let’s make unaccountable and non-transparent government a thing of the past; we can do it if we set our mind to it.  We need to do it if we think of the globalization race ahead where we need to be strong enough to compete on the world playing field that knows no mercy.

 We need fresh leadership to take us to the new level of the World order that most of the world leaders are raising their stakes to; from Obama (USA) to the UK coalition Prime Ministers (Cameron and Clegg) and even the newly UK labour party leader (Ed Miliband) – these are young men in their prime and of the ‘CHANGE’ generation class of intelligence, assertiveness; determined people committed to change the old play of things for the best for their citizens and their countries at large.  In showing his appreciation for the old, the new labour leader paid tributes to his predecessors for giving him the opportunity to develop his leadership skills and grow politically.  One couldn’t help but be appreciative of the old labour politicians such as Tony Blair who rightly or wrongly took us to Iraq war, but drove the new labour change initiatives from late nineties and  Gordon Brown, as unpopular as he became towards the end of his tenure, he managed the country’s purse at the critical recession period running up to the election of the current administration and, those before them.  We should do the same to move on.  Lunacy as defined by Einstein as someone doing the same thing same routine and same process over and over again but expecting different result.  If we want different result to current political climate, we need to usher in change into the life of our nation that is poised to celebrate half a century of existence.  I think it is time we faced the truth that unless we really want to change the state of things, we are going nowhere, backwards!

 What would our old politicians be doing I hear you ask?  Quite a lot!  They need to relentlessly be on hand to consult / advise our young leaders in shaping up policies and strategic partnerships with key stakeholders stately, national and internationally to build the future of our nation that cares for everyone irrespective of our respective subjective status.  I would propose that they be provided with world class retirement packages to thank them for all their efforts particularly holding the forth through these years of political, religious and tribal divides and bribery and corruption.  We are included in a world gone global – nothing wrong with the old politicians becoming our government advisory board and freeing the young and optimistic politicians  to drive and steer us to world positioning.

 We cannot go wrong with encouraging our past and current leaders to graceful return to back benchers (and/or equivalent of the Lords on UK’s House of Common) from where they challenge the new not to disrupt or obstruct but to facilitate and enable the fine-tuning of the new and changing political systems for the betterment of the nation at large and its people.  For whom that is given more, more should be expected from.  Therefore, we need them to share in the highest level of assessing, exploring and evaluating government policies and public services in support of our young generation leaders.  We MUST build an everlasting enshrined national treasure of our leaders since independence in their honour for posterity and historically raise the awareness to our generations to come.

 Nigerian citizens should make sure they cast their votes come 2011 sensibly and tolerate no bribery.  It is time we stopped being taken for a ride.  Let us show the world that we are hungry for change and will engage appropriately to affect that change that we so desire.  Let us show that we are determined to put a stop to our consumerism and replacing this thirst with the ideologies of those of our new generations who want to give the nation more than Naira could buy such as sense of belonging to communities that take pride in their togetherness, their environments, their positive contributions to their nation’s growth and productivity and the will to aspire and access various opportunities to develop socially, mentally and physically.

 It shouldn’t be too difficult to see a changed Nigeria where the forthcoming election could go down in history as the most transparent, positively engaging, bribery-free and coordinated by an INEC effectively run by impeccable executives that are second to none.  We need young and forward-thinking individuals not afraid to make tough decisions such as carefully balancing their judgment when agreeing with international neighbours for example, to supply us 4m Naira worth of dustbins as we perhaps, have less graded plastic back home to self produce.  We need leaders who would focus on the cost effectiveness of such trade agreement against the various options possible such as buying in materials or technicians to upgrade  our plastics or  to train up our workforce back home, respectively, to produce the desired plastic bins ourselves whilst creating jobs; or even subscribing to inward investment where research and refuse collection is nationalized or contracted out thereby strengthening the nation’s economy overall.   Just as we like to name and shame our corrupt politicians so should we take our blame of trading our liberty and freedom of choice for few naira that finds its way back (by the time we’d spent it) into the pockets of the corrupt givers who probably are the main national investors in all what we consume. 

 We also need to regulate our religious institutions up and down and across the country, Muslim and Christians alike and otherwise.  Our young generation leaders should be able to empower us to seek practical solutions to our problems and reach out to the state and national public services to provide guidelines and facilitate people’s ability to access development opportunities at all levels. We need faith to abide by our determination to succeed through hard work and access to stately and national support to enable us to foster the will to make positive contributions to building our nation.  Faith should also be charged with promoting in order to reinstate our self worth and moral characteristics to improve our spiritual health and well being and to get away from our duality sense of supernatural beliefs.  Our faith should be strong enough in Almighty God to undermine all our other subscriptions to supernatural entities such as ‘witchcraft’ and the somehow magical ability of the poverty-stricken neighbour to spend time and resources to see to it that they maim others!

 We should bring in the new generation politicians and ask them to spell out their manifesto (for all to view in order to bestowing the right candidate on our leadership throne).  And although I have yet to research more on who these young politicians are and to assess their managerial and leadership acumen, I welcome what I have read so far from some of them such as those of Nwaokobia and my visit to Utomi’s site where I had equal fun and quite a handful of others.   My overall message is for all members of the Nigerian public whose job it is to bring about change to distant themselves from the old political rhetoric of bribery, intimidation and corruption and cast their votes for the very able and articulated candidate they envisage for our nation to take us out of poverty, under-development and ignorance that have perpetually fanned our nonchalant and/or laisser faire political mindset that is stiffening our growth and productivity today.  Not to mention the personal and social impacts.  We need to up our antics -

 Basic skills deficiency – a huge percentage of the population are illiterates not by choice but by unstable and distorted educational policies that have failed to regulate and raise standard of both our lower and higher education, not to mention unrecognized internationally.  We need free for all education regulated up to secondary school level.  I had the opportunity to interview some 2011 Election's hopefuls - young and daring to go politicians on this and glad to report they all agree with me on this crucially as nations around the world are raising the stakes for foreign migrations to their countries. Some of these new age politicians are Nwaokobia Jnr (Presidency), Amadigwe (Federal House of Reps), Agwunobi (State House of Assembly); Ogbuehi (Fed House of Rep); Ezigbo (Mrs) (State House of Assembly) and Utomi (Presidency) all of whose slogans are respectively rooting for change and new ways of politicking in our great country, Nigeria!  We want more of these caliber and not surreptiously succumbing to status quo even where there are no credible and/or persuasive track records to hand.

 Security and safety – For a start, we don’t agree to foreign partnership to shore in such aforementioned dustbin deal lightly.  Not just foreign but also introduction of national and stately policies to maintain people’s safety at all times and eradicate fear of crime that kills as much as crime infliction itself.  Strengthen our security forces and in Chief Amadigwe’s opinion, he ‘.. would argue for sustaining what we already have - providing them regular training for their quality retention’,  fortifying the existing number and setting up a secure employment package to sustain and retain them in work to do away with the reliance on bribery and corruption, to say the least.

 Our young people deserve the right to their childhood the only period of 0 to 18 years when everyone around them cares about what they eat, what they did for fun, creativity and work, their education and development of sense of right and wrong and good citizenship.  We need role models in the home – adults that are single or paired, young or old parents so long as they have the means of regularly earning their living to look after the children in their care and most of all, they are able to access every national public support & services they need to raise these children effectively for better future. Overall, we need new and fresh leaders who recognise the part communities play in shaping up our nation and strengthen it and to be ready to give and share in the global financing process for the eradication of poverty such as plaguing huge percentage of our population and to promote freedom and liberty for all. 

 We should not lie down and be labelled greedy and money hungry voters, we should vote for someone with the integrity to thank us for suggesting they lead us through their regular engagement with us in discussing matters affecting our lives and our nation such as our health, safety, business and enterprises, New and high technology, education, agricultural productivity, our homes and family lives. Our aim should be to leave the nation in a better shape than we found it.  My father passed with little or no pension money after all his hard work to see me to where I am today. We need to look after our olds.  We therefore should nationalize old people’s care and regularly train our health & Care workers that may or may not include experts’ training from outside the country to provide pensioners a decent way of life as our own way of thanking them for their contributions into the national purse all their working lives as civil servant, farmer/ osofia or business men and women.  We should not pay out their pension once every 3-6 months, the times I found myself sending more money for my dad's upkeep to the next possible pension pay day!

 My wish is for a new young leader with new attitude, new way of politics and ideas and ability to engage with the people through strengthened local communities and decisions made from bottom up to benefit all.  We should vote for people not just out of pity, alliance or fear.  We should vote because we are convinced that whatever plan they have would include ALL of us in determining how our education is made better, our economy is made better, our workforce is made better our business growth is made better so is our foreign and national policies made better, better for us as individuals of multi- tribe and religious mix of blessed and emotionally balanced people of Nigeria.  Long live Nigeria and many happy returns on the 1^st of October.

 Good bye daddy and thank you for all the wisdom you endeared in me.  I promise to support a good, effective and all inclusive government to realise the Nigeria you painted to me that is forever fixated in my heart.  I hope to live long enough to continue your story telling of the achievable good life possible in Nigeria to your grand and great grand children.  And, my last wish before I  join you is to live to see the realisation of a Nigeria that  is empowered enough to guarantee  transparent and accountable government that operates improved public services and opportunities for all the able and disable, young and old, religious and non-religious people of all tribes of our nation and, playing its part on the world’s stage. All these I pray for 2011 Election!