by Eze Onyekpere
The 2015 elections provide an opportunity to start the process. Kick out corrupt and inept leaders and wait in 2019 to further kick out those who you voted for this time around but have disappointed the people.
Each passing day, Nigerians converge at different places analysing the challenges facing our nation, proffering solutions but the challenges refuse to go away. Some commentators have dubbed our interminable analysis and debates as “analysis paralysis”; debates that are sterile and not meant to solve problems but to create an industry of continued workshops, seminars, conferences that merely produce no forward movement but the barber’s chair gyration. At the shelves in different offices, you find tones of paper work called policies in different fields of national endeavour. From the grand vision of being one of the 20 leading economies by 2020 to policies in education, health, housing, gender, we are not short of what looks like good paper work.
But why are we still backward and on the back gear in many areas of life? In all of this, something is missing and it is the capacity and will power to move from the dry dusty files and electronic storing devices to implementation; it is also about the inability to organise, believe in ourselves, shake off the lethargy and docility as well as a decision to be producers, not just consumers; to lead in a particular field and to make immense contributions to the pool of human civilisation.
History will be unkind to our generation if we waste the golden opportunity to re-write our history, start climbing in the development ladder and prosper like other nations. We have all that it takes to be a great people and a great country- the good climate and geography, large population, natural resources, etc.
So what will be our excuse for being backward? Yes, we like apologies and continue to believe that the world is waiting for us to wake up from our slumber and drunken stupor. But the world must move on, with or without our becoming reasonable and occupying our rightful place in the comity of civilised people.
Do you know where we would have been if we had leaders who actually led, charted the course of development and harnessed the abundant resources and energy of our young and old? We deserve leaders who lead from the front, with a full understanding of our challenges and appoint the best men and women to direct the key sectors. A leader needs not be an expert in all sectors but the overall ability to manage human beings, materials and resources placed at his disposal distinguishes him from the crowd.
The ability to liberalise the entire economic and social structure, which in turn liberates the abundant and overflowing energy for the production of goods and services is one of the hallmarks of good leadership. Leading by example and ability to mount the ethical pulpit also enhances the discipline of leadership. This will make it easier for the leader to appeal for belt tightening and sacrifices and the people will easily and willingly follow. There can be no national greatness without sacrifice, discipline, savings and investment and all these are championed by a visionary leadership. This is the kind of leadership that draws up an agenda for action and goes ahead to market it to the populace to ensure a popular buy-in and in the iterative process, fine-tunes and finalises the agenda. The agenda will now be popularly owned.
The leadership we need should be able to craft a Nigerian dream or vision. It should be a big picture. It needs not necessarily be encapsulated in a document like Vision 20:2020 but it is a set of high level national ethical and development goals and principles broadly shared and bought into first, by the leadership, and with their example, by a very broad spectrum of our society.
Such dreams will include an empirical and demonstrable belief that creativity and hard work will deliver material riches and comfort; a relationship between wealth and contributions to society; the supremacy of the rule of law and its due process; law as an instrument of social engineering; that every Nigerian has a right and could aspire to any office or position of authority in as much as he meets the qualifications with non discrimination as the inner core.
We can visualise a society that honours its real icons while ensuring that criminals stay in jail. The big picture will include the belief in a Nigerian-centric economy and way of life to be projected to the world; not a mere wish but working towards becoming among the first ten countries in the world in all spheres of life from science and technology, manufacturing, services, sports, music and the culture industry, etc.
A target to be able to feed ourselves and have surplus for export; to produce the basic things we need from apparels, electronics, household goods, cars and later on to challenge for leadership in the big ticket capital intensive industries. A series of challenge funds for the conversion of scientific discoveries into applied technology will not be out of place. And with a leadership that leads from the front, made in Nigeria goods will be widely patronised leading to improvements and more quality production.
We will see the whole of Africa as the starting point of our expansion with the development of our productive forces. Starting from oil and gas where we have comparative advantage, nothing stops us from refining enough petroleum to satisfy not just local demand but that of many countries in the continent. Nothing stops our gas pipelines from traversing West, Central and East Africa. Our culture industry in music, films and literature is already popular in Africa and it just needs a little more push to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in performance and royalty rights for our people.
For the followership, we have also contributed to underdevelopment by refusing to take a stand, to ask the right questions and refusing to be led by the nose. When it is time to elect a new government, we put all manners of primordial sentiments in the forefront of our considerations and at the end of the day; we prefer to put morally bankrupt fellows and intellectual Lilliputians in positions of authority. We proudly declare that politics is not for clean men and women and we venerate degenerate fellows who in civilised climes should be behind bars for crimes against the people.
We are afraid of claiming our rights and speaking out against injustice or speaking truth to power. We prefer to complain in the silence of bedrooms and believe that one day, it will be our turn to loot the treasury or have someone close to us whose loot we will partake of. So there is no innate belief that looting the treasury is bad but the complaint is that it is not yet our turn. Until, there is a popular convergence of dislike and outrage against corruption and poor leadership, our development will continue to be stultified.
The 2015 elections provide an opportunity to start the process. Kick out corrupt and inept leaders and wait in 2019 to further kick out those who you voted for this time around but have disappointed the people. We need to engage the system after elections, demand full accountability and transparency of government expenditure; do not compromise on rights unless it is a voluntary decision and insist on the highest ethical standards in governance.
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Eze Onyekpere is the Lead Director of Centre for Social Justice
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.
