...We find it difficult put our issues out in public, to take jokes resulting from our mistakes, laugh about them, learn from them and move on. This has helped some of the nations we want to be like.
Many Nigerians argue that nothing has changed in Nigeria.
Maybe that is true, depending on what their definition of ‘change’ is, as well as the areas of our national life to which they refer, and from what time period.
Yes we are not where we should be, in many areas. But we have made some progress. And you need peace and stability to make any type of progress, whether personal or national.
Be that as it may, may I remind us again that we have only gone about eleven years into this ‘experiment’.
I stand to be corrected, but I think this is the longest period of time (1999-2010) as a nation that we have had civilian rule.
We have managed somehow, to change the occupants of Aso Rock three and a half times. We are warming up to try for the fourth time, which I see as another opportunity for a win-win situation for Nigeria if the WAZOBIA politicians somehow find it in themselves to think ‘Nigeria’ first, not party not zone!.
But is that going to happen? Well, let’s wait and see.
Change, is a process and requires some time. It is not an event. It is our attitude and behaviour, coupled with the consistency we apply towards the discharge of our civic and other socio-economic responsibilities as individuals, and then collectively as a people, that is the key to the development we all crave.
An eleven year old child that graduates from a university programme with first class honours, would be considered, and would indeed be a genius.
Political office seekers or holders in Nigeria need to understand and exhibit to the rest of us, that national interest is far bigger than personal, tribal, religious or party interest.
They do really need to stop practicing what I think it was the late Mallam Aminu Kano that referred to it as the ‘politics of bitterness’, which is portrayed in scenarios like if they ‘win’ an election, destroying or discarding everything done by their predecessors, even the good ones; and if they lose, they engage in endless selfish court cases, with individuals working at folding political parties into their pockets, and should they fail to achieve that, tear up the party, cross to another one or form their own parties and glide right back to the ones they had worked at tearing up, at will, with the people they had left welcoming them back with open arms. And then go right ahead to quote to the rest of us, ‘…in politics, there are no permanent friends or enemies. Only permanent interests…’
I am still trying to understand what those ‘permanent interests’ represent for Nigerian politicians. But to my mind, it should be Nigeria. It however does not seem so, so far.
The tragedy of this kind of attitude and disposition is that they apply the same strategy to national issues, and our nationhood.
They work at folding the country into their pockets, and should they fail, they start to play the tribal and religious cards, beating drums that call for tearing Nigeria apart screaming ‘marginalisation’, and then encourage the military to come and take over.
And then we start all over again, wishing and waiting, for ‘Godot’ Maybe...
----BIAFRA:LEST WE FORGET!
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