Tunde Leye: Mr. President, the only acceptable response to failure is success (Y! FrontPage)

by Tunde Leye

In Nigeria, we need citizen efforts in our little corners to build this nation. I was in a gathering to discuss Chude Jideonwo’s upcoming book last Saturday and I made this point repeatedly.

There are things I can do in my little corner to make Nigeria better. Sometime last week, on my way home after a particularly tiring day at work, I stopped at the filling station to get fuel. Sadly, there was a long queue. These days, since one is unsure when scarcity will hit town, I fill my tank the moment it is half full even when I have to queue for it on such a day as this. Suddenly, about four cars pulled into the filling station and formed their own queue, attempting to buy fuel before all those who were on my queue. I was incensed. One of them even had a certain bank’s ID card around his neck as he attempted to “be smart” and jump the queue. The fuel attendant was already anticipating the tip he would get from them for cooperating and therefore turned his attention to the first on their new queue. But I was having none of it.

I asked one of the guys in my car to take the wheels and then went to the pump and prevailed (not without great resistance from him) on the attendant to sell only to the correct queue. Now, the guys who had formed the illegal queue gathered and began to abuse me with phrases like “what is your own” “you will just die of hypertension” “is it only you” and so on. To worsen it, those on my queue (who stood to benefit from my actions) also made statements IN SUPPORT of the guys on the illegal queue. It was not until I identified the bank the guy with the ID card works with and the consulting firm another one works with and mentioned the names of their Human Resource managers and other top staff in their officers that they scurried into their cars with their tails between their legs and hurriedly sped out of the filling station. The right thing was done in that filling station that evening, because of the effort I made.

In Nigeria, we need citizen efforts in our little corners to build this nation. I was in a gathering to discuss Chude Jideonwo’s upcoming book last Saturday and I made this point repeatedly. It bears repeating here – the magnitude of work that needs to be done to build this nation is greater than most of us imagine. We need all hands to be involved in building in all our various corners.

Having said that, there are limits to what citizens in their little corners can achieve. This is the reason we have government. When citizens become part of a state, either by choice, force or accident of birth, what it means is that we have given up the prerogative to do certain things to those chosen to govern that state. Even if we want to and we know it is the right thing to do, we cannot do it for ourselves. In fact, we would be committing a crime or breach of public order if we do it. It is what we call a social contract – we surrender some of our rights and prerogatives to the state and even make payments in taxes and in return the state provides those things we have given up in a fair manner, whilst keeping us secure. Hence for example, we cannot dispense our own justice. Rather we depend on the state to do it for us based on laws made that have been adjudged fair. Something happened recently to illustrate this to me. At some point early last year, business took me to Allen Avenue, Ikeja in Lagos a lot. To get home, I had to connect to Ikorodu Road after making a u-turn on Mobolaji Bank Anthony just after Sheraton Hotel. The situation was chaotic disorder and we would spend hours making this u-turn on really bad days. On a good day, we would spend between 45minutes and an hour. It was clear to me that this madness was occurring because the u-turn spot was located too close to where those of us coming from Allen Avenue met up with those already on Mobolaji Bank Anthony way. Moving the u-turn spot much further down the road would solve this problem and this was clear to me. But you see, because I am a citizen, I could not simply move the u-turn spot and solve this problem. Only the government had the power, resources and legal backing to do so. So we continued to spend hours in traffic.

I went to do something in Sheraton last week and tried to rush and finish before 5pm when people would close from work. I didn’t finish until about 5:30 and I hit the road anticipating hours of traffic. Alas, it was free. Someone in the government had blocked the old u-turn spot and moved it much further down the road.

I have gone to these lengths to drive a point home. Citizens, who have paid taxes and who have given up many rights to be part of the Nigerian state deserve a government that fulfils its part of the social contract in return. Contrary to what I have heard the defenders of the government say, one of the prerogatives citizens have surrendered to the government is their security and safety. Where this is threatened by anyone, whether another state or non-state actors like Boko Haram, the government must not only act to save and secure the citizens, it must be seen to do so and reassure the citizens it can continue to do so. It is the responsibility of the government to save the Chibok girls and not that of the girls’ parents or the citizens outside the armed forces. Where one has responsibility, one must be willing to take the responsibility for failure and whatever bashing comes with this failure. The only acceptable response to such failure is to succeed, rather than trying to use the security forces expected to rescue the girls or spokespeople who are meant to inform the people on what you are doing to cower citizens who ask you to #BringBackOurGirls.

By the way, i have a simple solution to the sleeping crisis at the Confab; Reduce the air-conditioning.

—————————–