Once there is respect for the rule of law, justice, equal rights and peace are guaranteed. And to say that Nigeria needs justice, equal rights and peace at this time, will not only be stating the obvious, but an understatement. At the moment, many Nigerians are crying out against hunger and other deprivations, including shelter, safety and decent living conditions. This state of affairs was however, exasperated by a long period of bad governance and unpatriotism on the part of both the leaders and the led.
With Nigeria’s tribal and religious complexities, what the country actually requires is leadership of patriotic and selfless people who lead by example and live what they preach, as they work hard to ameliorate the sufferings and difficulties faced by the common man. The situation in Nigeria of today calls for less politics and more humanity to save lives from hunger, people from discrimination and long-standing banditry.
By the time President Bola Tinubu succeeded President Muhammadu Buhari on May 29, 2023, the need for safety of people and property had become critical and unbearably so. The one thing that President Tinubu needs to do is to quickly strike a difference from the poor work of some of his predecessors who set the tone for a debilitating economic down-turn. The President should reduce the cost of running government services in a manner that Nigerians would see that he has characteristically taken the real bull by the horn, just as he did in the case of fuel subsidy removal.
History made Nigeria a home of diverse people, in terms of ethnicity and religion, and also blessed it with diverse mineral resources. Having lived together for over a hundred years since amalgamation in 1914, the greatest threats facing its existence at present are neither ethnicity nor religion but in security, poverty and hunger, as it were. The stand of this advisory is clear and that is that the end, is not around the bend. President Tinubu should be spared political execution because he is yet to get to the mid-term evaluation time. All he needs do is to listen to wise and objective counsel from experts, experienced and patriotic people, and make amends, where necessary. Nigeria’s greatest and most abundant natural resource, land, is still under utilized and waiting to be optimally put to use in feeding and keeping the people productive in a secure and peaceful environment.
Legendary reggae music star, Peter Tosh sang: “everyone is crying out for peace, none is crying out for justice. I need equal rights, and justice”. And to facilitate justice, equal rights, and peace, without which agitations and protests fester, leaders at all rungs of society must be impartial and must be seen to be non-aligned to religious or tribal groupings or favouring one against the other. Although a few leaders have been guilty of this, it is certainly not a mark of good leadership, and has been known to fuel agitation and further divide the country along religious and ethic lines.
Nigeria’s climate, geography and abundance of mineral resources guarantee peace and progress but our leadership resource seems not to have adequately and economically husbanded these. India’s Prime Minister at independence in 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, said of India’s founding father, Mahatma Gandhi: “the ambition of the great man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. This may be beyond us. But as long as there are tears and suffering, so long will our work not be over”. Every leader, either in the private or public space should not stop at empathizing but do something about the sufferings, tears and safety of people under him or her, otherwise his or her work is far from over.
Peace is said not to be just the absence of war, but also a state of less stress, security of lives and property, not excluding food security. There is no doubt that Nigeria is not as peaceful and secure as it should be at the moment.
A new human settlement pattern in which a group of villages function as one economic unit for the purpose of decent and productive living, won’t be a bad proposal to government, both at federal, state and local government levels. Nigeria cannot particularly be blamed for its inability to provide or fix all the needs for food, shelter, jobs, education and, the other social problems its poor citizens are encountering at the present time, but it must be seen to be making conscious efforts to evenly and equitably distribute what is available, given the acute economic realities of the times. There is no gain-saying the fact that most developing countries such as Nigeria can hardly solve all the aforementioned problems, including tackling those created by environmental failures, pollution and natural disasters.
As it is customary, the media has an important role to play in the fight to reduce infringement on the rights of the citizenry and inform them where ignorant. Media practitioners also have a duty to highlight breaches to people’s rights by state actors and their overzealous agents who would rather owe their allegiance to leaders instead of the state or country they swore to protect and defend at all times. The Nigerian press however is not resting on its oars but it appears a lot still needs to be done to reduce the incidence of abuse of people’s rights and the prevalence of cases of injustice.
The press has always been in the vanguard of the emancipation of the oppressed and downtrodden.
When President Umaru Yar’Adua declared himself a servant-leader 2007, it was neither for the fun of it, nor an empty declaration. He went ahead to serve the people of Niger-Delta peace through his amnesty programme which has kept the region relatively peaceful, so far.
Justice, equal rights and peace can be achieved through corrective and revolutionary policies and actions of government and even public spirited individuals who seek to change the lives of the poor for the better. Muhammad Yunus, the author of the book ‘Banker To The Poor’, who now leads Bangladeshi interim government even as a private individual went ahead to set up The Grameen Bank, a micro-finance bank that gave interest-free loans to the poorest of the poor. It was for his work at helping the very poor and hungry that all the agitators and student protesters in Bangladesh invited him to come and head the interim government as well as keep the peace, after their Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country on August 5, 2024.
The Nobel Price Winner, Muhammad Yunus, once said about the individual potential of man: “… it is solely up to us to decide where we want to go. We are the navigators and pilots of this planet. If we take our role seriously provided we can reach the destination we seek”. Leaders and followers should be in it together. But unfortunately, there have been instances where the bad ones among society have been known to vandalize facilities provided by the government, thereby taking poor people in the rural villages many steps back. When infrastructure is willfully destroyed or not maintained or not protected, everyone and everything will suffer. When there is no rule of law, no security and no peace, every citizen, every foreigner, every prospective investor, local or foreign is adversely affected to the detriment of Nigeria’s economy.
It is the lack, or the subdued presence of the rule of law in Nigeria, that encourages the growth of all the other vices that plague the average Nigerian and rob him or her of all the rights, including peace and harmony.
– Nkire, a Veteran Journalist, Author and Publisher writes from Abuja.
