Fellow Nigerians, I bring you ‘Great’ tidings, for at least we are still afloat as a Nation, surviving one day at a time, even when most of us have given up on ourselves, and to say that, we still have a GREAT chance to recover our destiny and lost opportunities.
This is year 2022 I know, and I ask, where are we in 2022 as a nation? Would you believe me if I said that no Nigerian knows the correct answer? If we haven’t determined our destination, how can we assess where we are at relative to our destination?
The above question, as it relates to our current state of development as a society, it would appear has never really been interrogated and is therefore the reason why we are yet to figure out where we want to go, and thereafter where we are, what we need to do, why we should do it, who should do it, and ultimately how is it to be done?
I might be wrong but as simple as the above questions are, our failure to ask and answer them and galvanize behind the answers is largely responsible for our current realities and our future shall lie still in the answers.
So, we find ourselves in a geographical space called Nigeria, whose responsibility has been ours to govern since 1960 and created in 1914 by our British colonial masters who had taken an interest in our space for pecuniary reasons, of course.
Whereas our colonizers the British were clear in their minds what the objective of their endeavour to travel all the way to colonize a geography of disparate tribes far away from theirs was, and can be largely judged to have succeeded, what has happened since 1960 when we assumed the responsibility of organizing ourselves, can not by any stretch of imagination be construed as purposeful much less successful by any objective evaluation, and is the reason why we are in this state of underdevelopment, bedevilled by so many ills and have become a society of disparate and despondent peoples. A most dangerous cocktail!
Looking back, it is evident that while the British created plans of how to achieve their objectives in Nigeria, we upon assuming responsibility, did not appreciate the imperative of deliberately planning our own national objectives, rather we continued innocently with the documented national plans of our colonial masters, which truth be told was a formidable foundation on which we have even been unable to build.
Some Nigerians look back to the period 1960 to 1975 as our golden years of development with nostalgia, but what we don’t see are the very deliberate plans, handed over by the British and over which some hand holding mechanisms were in place till the early 1970s.
Our prevalent culture of non interrogation of issues is largely to blame, having been ‘tutored’ from childhood, not to question or interrogate but to accept whatever the senior or authority person ‘dictates’, as gospel. We have largely grown-up thinking that asking questions or seeking clarifications from senior or authority persons, is inconveniencing to them and maybe even insolent.
We have ‘worn’ this disposition through schools and work life, that it has become more like a culture, such that the answer to every ‘Do you understand?’ is almost always the answer, ‘YES’.
The unfortunate and overarching consequence of this disposition, is that we have become a people, who learn largely by memorizing as opposed to learning by understanding. Learning by memorizing, largely limits the application of related knowledge to same or very similar contexts, while learning by understanding is what opens opportunities to creativity, problem solving, invention, innovation and indeed development.
Pivoting back to the objectives of the British, which was to venture out to other lands, evaluate the extractive and exploitation opportunities for materials that could be useful back in their country, subdue the people therein with superior violence, organize them adequately, for profitable extraction and exploitation operations.
Who would blame them? For what other reason would they have risked their peoples and resources to come to Africa? Their venture was mainly for their benefits and their development efforts were all geared towards their major objective and if other benefits accrued to the locals, it was just as well.
When we thought that we had learnt and mastered the art of self-governance, we, like our other African brothers, in similar circumstances, started agitating for independence to assume responsibilities for ourselves.
Lame arguments have been adduced that the British, unhappy with the disruption of their enterprise, handed over to us a geography with ‘land mines’ for its unviability and unsustainability. My counter argument is ‘even if they did, whose responsibility is or was it, to remove the ‘land mines’?
One of these, is that they connived to have the North in charge, but someone had to be in charge and considering the circumstances and dispositions of the contending parties at the time, if you were in their shoes who would you rather have in charge if you had unfinished business? Did we imagine that the British would just disappear from our horizons forever after the lowering of the Union Jack? That was naïve to say the least.
The responsibility of recognizing the prevailing contexts and organizing to unify ourselves in pursuit of an adequate objective to build a viable nation was ours, not theirs.
So how well have we organized ourselves as a people?
The fact that almost all aspects of our development from 1975 when the last development plan, that had the imprimatur of the British expired, our ineffective selforganization to maintain the tempo, much less improve them, suggests that we did not and sadly, still do not understand what we needed to do then or need to do in the present.
Arguments can be made one way or the other but the truth remains that if we knew how to do better, we would have, because rational beings always do things in their own enlightened self interest or what they consider it to be, correctly or wrongly interpreted.
Course correction therefore, would require stopping where we are more or less and accepting that our direction has been wrong all along to answer the question, where do we want to go? The answer to this question would then enable us do an assessment of where we are in relation to the direction we seek and reveal all other action imperatives.
Let me suggest a simple acid test; If it is our wish to travel in the direction of insecurities, violence, poor human development indices, insurrections, despondency, perdition etc. etc. then we are currently on the right track, but if we wish to get to the destination of harmony, unity, peace, progress, development for present and future generations of Nigerians, then we MUST change direction.
Our experience post independence to our current realities should serve us well as valuable learning experience. Experience, they say is a product of bad judgment and good judgment is a product of experience. Let our 1960-2021 experience serve us well to leap into our future starting 2022. Like in entrepreneurship, failure has great value, only if we learn from them!
Quite frankly, there are no beneficiaries of our current state of affairs, not even the political leadership, who we all point to, as the architects of our current poor realities as they also largely live with the same or similar consequences.
Just like lottery winners are quickly parted with their fortunes, so it is with families, corporations, establishments, Societies, Nations and indeed any aggregation of individuals who find themselves with unanticipated, unearned and unplanned fortunes and opportunities, because individuals make up their leadership and how else would they lead but from their individual experiences and dispositions and is why people say, everything rises and falls on leadership.
Our turnaround is really not heavy lifting or indeed nuclear science, as there are so many global examples and experiences to learn from, to plan and position ourselves in the right direction. There is an urgency, if not an emergency to embrace course correction anchored on choosing the right management and adopting adequate plans and objectives (political leadership and governance)
Would I be wrong to suggest that the baby boomer’s generation who are today between the ages of 57-75, and to some extent, the first half of Gen X, 44-56, to step up and drive our desired change of narrative deliberately and consciously?
The former because they experienced everything that was good about Nigeria, but were unable to discharge their national stewardship responsibility and the first half of Gen X because they witnessed the lives of their baby boomer generation parents and are the bridge between what was good at the time and what it became just as they were becoming adults. They are the witnesses and can be the judges of how well we proceed hereafter in this the course correction quest and be the stewards of the New Nigeria, peopled by HumaNigerians!
The HumaNigerians, shall be that new tribe of Nigerians who, very aware of the challenges of our social and human development as a people and optimistic that every challenge can be challenged and overcome, prepared to give of themselves in thoughts, words, deeds and disposition, all they can muster in alignment with our national vision, mission and core values, never tiring in advocacy for a new Nigeria and patiently recruiting Nigerians (our brothers and sisters) to the possibilities that will be ours when our Nation, Nigeria begins to manifest and attain the lofty heights that are the possibilities, when we galvanize our inherent capabilities, capacities and competences. Essentially, the Humanitarian disposition to Nigeria and Nigerians.
The HumaNigerians will refuse to give into the prevailing despondency, challenging as our present realities are, but rather would be projecting into the future, that can be ours and the future generation Nigerians, if we individually and collectively commit to a new paradigm NOW. It can just be as simple as flipping channels with a remote control, well almost. It starts in our hearts
Our New Nigeria will require all our hearts, all our heads and all our hands and what won’t we give in sacrifice to our fatherland for the benefit of ourselves, our children and grandchildren? So where do we want to go? The National Memo No: 002 loading…..
There is HOPE INDEED!
#IamaHumaNIGERIAN
Harry Thomas-ODEY
2022
