Unpopular side with Yinka Ijabiyi
Twitter: @Yinkakan Instagram: @oneyinka
The journey to here did not start today. It’s not Buharis’s fault. Nor is it APC’s fault. It’s not Jonathan or Yar’Adua or Obasanjo or PDP. It’s not Abdusalami nor Abacha or IBB or Buhari nor Shagari or Obasanjo or Muritala or Ahmadu Bello or Tafawa Balewa. Maybe the colonial “masters” had something to do with it. Maybe our chiefs who sold us into slavery had small to do with it but what is wrong with us transcends all of these human beings and resides in each and every Nigerian almost like a bad code. The people under the political affiliation called Nigeria had been bad long before the white or other coloured interlopers came into our midst. There is something inherently wrong. Can we fix it? Hmmm…
First off, as Nigerians we seem to have a culture of mediocrity. We don’t want to do things or see things done excellently without blemish. We are settlers. We settle for less. Don’t point at that superstar government official or shining light in the private sector nor tell me the history of one Nigerian or the other who has done excellently well and what he has done can be pointed out as legacies or evidence of his/her uniqueness. If you cannot point out how that supposed excellence has positively impacted and elevated lives all around him and caused a success ripple across the length and breadth of Nigeria, then I posit that said Nigerian has failed. I actually posit that all of us Nigerians are nincompoops and users ready to settle for less than our potential if we will profit from it. Selflessness is rare in the world. I make bold to say it is rarer still in Nigeria.
But that isn’t our only problem. Except we find a system of governance that works for us as a people and as a nation, we will continue to fool ourselves if we insist on adopting a system that’s alien to us. Democracy is not Nigerian. Yes, it is romantic to have a system that promises general representation by the people for the people but time and time again, we have proven it ourselves that democracy is not us. From the First Republic to date, democracy has failed us. We have struggled to grasp the workings of it and adapt it to suit us but no luck. Democracy continues to cheat and rob us in broad daylight. Leaders who steal us blind under any guise aren’t what we want or need. A strong set of leaders not necessarily chosen nor endorsed by us would do a far better job than the current porous, sluggish, corrupt and inept system. There is no end until we end this foolishness called democracy. We have sampled her for so long. It is time to try something new.
We are where we are now. Obviously. It is time to ask ourselves what next? It’s not a difficult question in my opinion. What next is you and me. Yes, by all means let’s keep complaining about the humanity, weaknesses and the foibles of the noble and inglorious men and women chosen to sit atop our general affairs at the top because their every action does impact our lives in several ways. If they continue to appear like they have no policies and no goals or visions, we all suffer. If they appear to have some good policies but no good ideas for implementing them, we suffer. If they appear to have no good ideas or policies or direction or vision or mission or strategy, then they can’t implement what they don’t have and we all suffer still from their daily macabre dance and intoxicated fumble! Dear leaders, your actions affect us.
But dear followers, the actions or inactions of leaders is not the excuse we need. We cannot eat, drink, grow, pay bills or be merry on excuses. We must look inwards at ourselves. Enough of the bashing and gnashing of teeth. Time to get up and do the needful. Time to move away from talk talk to self activation. Necessity has always been the mother of invention. Our needs and tight circumstances should make a way for us. We must look inwards and take practical steps to solve our problems in ways that work for us. We must come together and collaborate more rather than compete. Competition is good because it brings out the best in us but right now, we need to collaborate and not compete. We need to activate our necessity bone so we can be more inventive to meet our needs.
As a nation we need to find local or home-grown solutions to our home-grown and local problems. Importing solutions wholesale and hoping what works somewhere else will work here is foolhardy. We must find ways of doing away with fickle concepts like democracy if it has cost us so much and has barely scratched the surface of our problems so far. The oyinbo type system isn’t the best and only way. There are unique solutions we can find for our problematic national situation that go beyond simplistically importing foreign solutions and adopting them ho-ha. And it’s not just about the governing systems either. Business solutions, technological advancements and other such imported-from-the-abroad concepts and implemented without any considerations for our local environment always fail. As a people, we need to invest more in research and local development. Every area of our individual and national life should benefit from the application of real knowledge about our peculiar environmental, cultural and psychological and mental situations so that the solutions we proffer will be the right ones.
We’ve been there before, survived it all before, and we’ve got the t-shirt to prove it. We must look back at what we did to survive then as individuals and fine tune those crude strategies so we can harness the brilliance in them to survive now. Way forward is partly to look backward so that we can learn forward. It also consists in adapting what worked elsewhere to suit our peculiar circumstances. We must learn that the power to do better for ourselves lies deep within us. We can harness it if we look deeply inwards.
We must stop celebrating mediocrity and “lootocracy”. If your neighbour suddenly comes into much unexplainable wealth overnight and you keep quiet about it, you are as much to blame for his crime as he himself. EFCC should stop prosecuting only these one-one individuals who were the arrowheads of our collective rut. We must all suffer for the crime of the few so that we can all be responsible for the good of the majority. We cannot sit, fold our arms, shrug and waka pass anymore. We must actively be citizen leaders, citizen change makers, citizen change managers. If things are to get better, it is not up to any clueless leaders, it is up to you and me.
