Nigeria since its inception as an independent country has not been able to find her feet due mainly to the plethora of personal interests and visionless leadership that has plagued such a gifted country. That Nigeria has a leadership problem is no longer in doubt. Only a sycophant will argue that most of our problems in this country are not directly or indirectly related to a leadership crisis. We have tried various systems of government (the Parliamentary and the Presidential.) The use of the hybrid French system was even suggested but we never got to try that out. We have also experimented with several kinds of electoral rules and systems and yet we never seem to be moving forward.
It is disheartening to see majority of Nigerians wallowing in poverty, painful to see the anger in the faces of our people as they struggle through life’s bus stops. I see the multitude of destitute on the streets of Nigeria and I wonder what is going on. Our nation is going to the dogs and our leaders are busy fighting over the bones. The main issues of our national policy are how to share the ingredients of a yet unbaked cake. How sad!
Fifty-two years into our sojourn as a nation, hope on one hand and despair on another hand describe the feelings of most Nigerians. In the 2009 Human Development Report of the United Nations, Nigeria is ranked 158 out of 182 countries and classified as a Medium Human Development Country. In 2003, we placed 152 out of 175 countries. So obviously there has been no improvement. Nigeria is ranked behind countries like Slovakia (42), Croatia (45), Libya (55), Seychelles (57), Bosnia and Herzegovina (76). Even Tunisia (98), Gabon (103) and Algeria (104) are all ranked ahead of Nigeria. Most of these countries do not have the human, financial and mineral resources that Nigeria has.
Nigeria is plagued by seasons of knee jerking, heart wrenching and conflicting policies without any periods of breaks in between. Today, we are doing pre-shipment inspection, the next day we are doing destination and the day after we are banning each and every import and then unbanning them the following week. Today, we are privatizing, tomorrow we are slowing the privatization process. Today, we are talking about liberalizing petrol and removing a subsidy that should not have been there had our refineries been working, the next day we are flaring gas that can be used for producing electricity. Today we are saying that NEPA is not working, tomorrow we are preventing everyone from building power stations. In one breath, we need petrol produced in Nigeria; in another breath we do not issue refinery licenses. All because of a confused and self- orientated leadership that cannot think out and properly articulate its policies and Nigeria is groaning.
We have had different manners of leaders, and when we see the statements they make now, we are not surprised why Nigeria is what it is. Yet things don’t happen in Nigeria because there is a lot of talk and very little work. I think that it is time in Nigeria that we actually stop paying lip service to issues and start doing things the way they should be done. If we go through a lot of streets, a lot of states in Nigeria, it is almost as if there is no government, there is no order, there is no organization. When you go through some streets in Nigeria, the houses are built on top of one another, the streets are not demarcated, and there is no drainage. The traffic is chaotic, the roads are totally impassable. And still in this same Nigeria, we have loads and masses of people who consider themselves above the law, who consider themselves untouchables. We have loads of people who are stealing our resources and making it difficult for ordinary Nigerians to survive and then these same people turn around and try to lord it over us. The situation must not be allowed to persist if Nigeria is going to get where it is supposed to get as a nation. In Nigeria, we need a total reform of our thinking process.
