Fellow citizens of Nigeria, how prepared are we ahead of 2019?
By Bashir Adefaka
They are today openly seen as framing all manner of evils to discredit the government that is the first-of-its-kind to be owned by the masses of the Nigerian people. But instead for us to stand with our own government of integrity, we allow those self-based politicians to want to get away with their sins and crimes against the humanity and nationalism of Nigeria. What then is the need for us to complain when we do not have access to good life?
I have observed more profoundly that some Nigerians realise they have problems but usually do not behave like they need solution. I have my reasons.
Some five years back when I was media guest of former Acting Military Governor of Katsina and botched Third Republic Senator at his Isa Kachako Street, Otooro, GRA country home in Kano, Col. Isa Kachako (Rtd) told me in an interview engagement why in most cases a particular leader was the problem but either the people around him or the led themselves.
How? Megida Kachako started counting and from Tafawa Balewa to the current President at the time, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, and he said, “Most of these leaders are not the problem but the people around them who misadvise them.” Although we have some of the leaders who cannot be forgiven by history as they confidently engendered corruption and impunity in Nigerian national political and administrative life, but quite well, one can agree more seriously with the retired military leader.
Again during his time in the David Mark-led 7th Senate, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, who had defeated Ayodele Fayose to represent the Ekiti Central in the Senate, had told me that the problem with Nigeria is that, “to many Nigerians, our yesterday has always been better than our today. The time we begin to see our today as better than our yesterday we will be good”.
And at this point I will say that the inability of some vocal Nigerians to decipher when they have a good leader and support him to help them make Nigeria better is the major issue that has left them in the hard life steering them in the faces till today. It is worse that many of the so called youths claiming they are the future of Nigeria do not believe in Build-Nigeria-Project. This they reflect openly and nonchalantly saying, “This Nigeria will never be better again”.
And instead of working hard within to help themselves so Nigeria along the line can get better to do great things for them, they destroy the country locally and take run to foreign lands through dubious and even dangerous means and when they get the consequences over there, they start talking to the media at home who, without asking “why did you have go in the first instance?”, help them sell the shameless complaints against the innocent nations, whose citizens are doing things for themselves for the love of their own country.
How many Saudi Arabian citizens are actually flooding the land of Nigeria, if I may ask? How many Americans are here saying, “Yes, we are here because we want to make money or boost our living standard”? Are we really a war zone to warrant seeking asylum abroad because we are unable to stay back in our own country to help build the country for our own good and the good of generations after us? But the truth is that, we are not a war zone. Even people in the war zone like Rwanda, Central African Republic and so on do not even run away to other lands. Some of them stay back while others are in refugees in neighbouring countries. God forbid.
But here in Nigeria, we not only help, in collaboration with “irresponsible politicians”, cause situation leading to creation of Internally Displayed Persons (IDPs) but also, we join in the misinformation and distortions of truth that organisations like Amnesty International all of those pro-“irresponsible politicians” do about the situation on ground which was how we got to where we are.
So much that we are even the ones, youths, who help them spread falsehood and fake news on the social media, even many youthful journalists now do same in the supposedly respected traditional media (print, radio, television and online). Or how do we explain a particular award winning television headquartered in Lagos reporting from its Abuja office open falsehood and fake news that the APC lawmakers were the only ones allowed during the DSS Siege on the National Assembly last Tuesday while the PDP lawmakers were blocked from entering the Assembly chambers? Yet that particular broadcasting journalist who reported that obvious dangerous falsehood knowing that Nigerians would believe her is one of the people who have complained about how for many years things have not worked in Nigeria. Then, was that unethnical, unprofessional misrepresentation of facts by her a good contribution towards making things work for good in the same country that she also lives seeking her good living?
These youths claiming they are the future of Nigeria but never partake in anything that can contribute to the Build-Nigeria-Project, which they reflect openly and nonchalantly saying, “This Nigeria will never be better again”, when we scrutinise that show-of-shame keenly we will want to say may be it is lack of education that is causing it. But no, those that engage in this are the so called university graduates.
And when you ask they say because they went to school but they do not have jobs. And when you ask them what they have, at individual level, done to make their own lives better as Nigerians you discover that their own youthdom is miles apart from the youthdom of the old in the days of Nigeria where things worked.
As a special journalist to the Olowu of Owu Kingdom in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Oba Rev. Olusanya Adegboyega Dosunmu, he once told me that he had choice among many employments awaiting him even while he was still writing his school certificate examination in those days. Oba Dosunmu is now 85. So much that when he finally passed out of secondary school he had three pronounced employments with P & T and two ministries and that at one point or the other he switched among them depending on how he felt about working in the respective employments.
Why is it not so today with us in our own generation? Too daft of us, we claim population explosion. But we are real blunders to ourselves. Our own evils to our nation under the pretext of religion, tribe and politics defending are the cause.
Same thing former Kaduna State Governor Balarabe Musa told me at his Ungwa Seriki GRA home in the former Northern Nigeria capital city of Kaduna, when he was responding to my poser, “Your Excellency, I want to be like you” and he said, “No. You cannot be like me. And this is because the Nigerian society that produced me and the likes is not the Nigerian society that produced you and your likes”.
At that point I was face down and felt sorry for my generation. No wonder, in his 30s my father had achieved a lot as a successful banker and could point to legally amassed material gains of life, things that at 40 I was lamenting I have been unable to do. I still remember when my father was riding what they called Keke Ralli in the 60s, 70s before I was born, I was told they saw him as rider of the likes of Mercedes Benz of today. So much that when he bought his senior Passat Volkswagen car in 1976, not only that he was provided a driver but also he was given option to either return the driver or employ him after six months so that he would have thought him all he needed to know about driving. My father however employed him and I still remember that driver called Sunday Asheshe became so popular in Akure traditional affairs later in life.
Now, let us ask ourselves, was it that there were no ritualists at that time? But there were. Was it that there were no thieves or people who were corrupt in the society at that time? But there were. Now, why was life so good and comfortable for everybody in the country? I found out from both Uthokoneze of Achalla Kingdom, Anambra State who is former Press Secretary to the Head of State during Olusegun Obasanjo military regime, Igwe Ezeoba Alex Nwokedi OON, and former PRODA DG who built the bombs part of which was used by the defunct Republic of Biafra, Engr. Edmund Kaine in Enugu, that life was worth living in Nigeria at that time because they the youths saw themselves as children under the guidance of their parents and did not venture into level they had not reached but rather focused on developing themselves as they equally had their eyes on where they wanted to be in the future.
And because the youths of Nigeria at that time lived their lives as mentioned above, it was very easy and faster for them to have their required handshakes with greatness without delay and across Nigeria without hate and ill-feelings. Youths of those times seldom agitated, which was why each protest Nigeria had remained in subject of History in schools until a particular elected President that handed over to the current President abolished History in educational curriculum in Nigerian schools and leaders of such protests were attached to heroism because their protest made sense. Just like Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, mother of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti who became heroine because of similarly sensible protest and we also have in History, whether they allow us to learn it anymore or not, heroines of the popular Aba Women Riot and the rest of them.
So, the question we should ask ourselves is, how did we get to the sorry state of life we now find ourselves in Nigeria? First is that we became so bad as a people the moment a particular military President took over from a War Against Indiscipline (WAI)-led military regime that had been celebrated for rescuing Nigeria from the hands of political class playing hooliganist politics with our lives during the Second Republic, which should have made Nigeria one of developed countries if it was allowed to, at least, put things back to normal under well disciplined system for three years and then supervise a democratic process that would engender patriotic and democratic politics in the country.
But no, that military regime leader that ousted WAI-based one showed Nigerians how free money seeking was the best way to go; and who were the people found with him? The Nigerian youths. The Nigerian oil that was supposed to be blessing and added economic greatness to the existing cash crops thus became a curse as the nation’s very highly working agriculture-based economy had been jettisoned for oil-only economy. The mindset of Nigerian youths and even the elderly changed, so unfortunately, from “work for good living” to “sit lazy for free wealth” and here we are now, so confused about the situation we now have on our hands; lack of proper education such that even not all that went to the University are employable and even those that learn artisanship do not practice as many of them prefer to do Agbero and then get hired into thuggery by self-based politicians who sponsor them to kill either political opponents or cause conflicts in the land to discredit perceived enemies in other political party or personality in power. No one should forget how Allah saved President Muhammadu Buhari’s live early 2017.
This is the summary of the Nigerian situation. But currently, the situation is worse because even we, the media practitioners, have failed the expectations of journalism that is embedded in us. I still insist that a journalist can play politics just like he can be a successful religious and tribal person. What I do not agree with is for a journalist to be partisan, religiously or tribalistically biased professional. And the profession has been so perfected to make that possible: Journalism ethics of “balance” does it.
A Christian who is a journalist is supposed to report Islam and Muslims with all the required fairness, accuracy and correctness of words without distortions. Same is expected of a Muslim who is a journalist. Muslim Community should feel safe by the pen of Christian dominated media. Hausa/Fulani tribes should feel safe by the pen of Igbo or Yourba dominated media. Yoruba and Igbo tribes should feel safe by a Civil Service or military or government dominated by Hausa/Fulani, just like Hausa/Fulani should feel safe by Civil Service or military or government dominated by Yoruba or Igbo tribe.
Where these expectations are lacking from the professionals, religionists and tribalists who abuse and misapply these aspects of public life, what you have is confusion and the wrath of the creator of heavens and earths descending at intervals on the communities or societies where such officially or popularly accepted abnormalities are in practice in abject disruption of His calculations for humanity on earth.
Currently we have had since the last three years another opportunity to get things right, but many of us are now allowing the same people that brought us to where we are to manipulate our commonsense. We have seen a Senate President who for three years has worked against effort to KILL CORRUPTION BEFORE CORRUPTION KILLS NIGERIA and who has consistently taken the entire nation through the mud simply because he has been asked to explain his role in crimes of corruption, forgery of legislative rules and murder.
He then politicises national security saying his own party on whose platform he climbed to the exalted office of number three in the country is persecuting him by that questioning coming from the Police authorities constitutionally empowered to do so. He commits indecency of the highest order and he challenges anybody that dares to question him and threatens such questioning with shutdown of the face of democracy that he leads, the National Assembly. How many senators has he not suspended for daring to challenge him on these? Recall how Senator Alli Ndume was suspended for 180 legislative days. Recall also how suspension of Senator Ovie Omo-Agege led to the crisis that many lawyers and media practitioners failed to stand for the truth over as they backed the same Senate President even much as they clearly knew he was the very first to call the bluff of the court of law. If he had been head of the Executive, he would have emerged as the Idi Amin of Nigeria!
We have politicians that we all voted out of power because they, in their 16 and particularly the last six years of their administration, made impunity (bloody politics) and corruption established institutions. They are today openly seen as framing all manner of evils to discredit the government that is the first-of-its-kind to be owned by the masses of the Nigerian people. But instead for us to stand with our own government of integrity, we allow those self-based politicians to want to get away with their sins and crimes against the humanity and nationalism of Nigeria.
What then is the need for us to complain when we do not have access to good life? The Nigeria that they destroyed for 16 years – because it was still fairly better under the military except their militarised style – we now want the current administration to be able to perfectly put it back in place under three months and that was how we started causing confusion for this present Administration until now that it is three years in office. The saving grace is that, the man at the helms of affairs does not care whose ox is gored so far he, his team and majority of Nigerians believe that what they are doing is the right thing. After all, everybody will not say well about anybody.
So, the warning to those who are claiming they do not see what the government has done in three years simply because they believe their personal pockets and stomachs are not as filled as they used to be to the detriment of millions others is that, they should fear the consequences of their actions and utterances because, the consequences can be so destructive.
God bless Nigeria!
*Bashir Adefaka is a Lagos-based media practitioner.
