I often hear people ask, why can’t our leaders hear our agitations and simply do right by us? Why is it that, for many decades running, we have had leaders who have been incapable of doing the right things and leading by example? Well, sometimes, people say you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. You cannot tell a leper to change his spot. I think the foundation of government is for Nigerians to really wake up among themselves and decide what the characteristics of the persons that they choose to govern them should be. Unfortunately, the illiteracy is so high that some people do not know what good governance is from bad governance. They have no idea. About 70% to 80% of Nigeria’s population have no idea of the characteristics that should make a person a good governor, the only characteristics that they know is that this person gave me money. Their own thinking is that the gift of money is the pre-requirement for the response to decision taking as to who should govern you. But a thief can come and give you money, an armed robber can give you money, a drug addict can give you money, a fool can come also give you money, which is why our people think that anybody can be put into places of responsibility. But once you have a bad head, you have a terrible body.
So, most people in governance in Nigeria are not in governance to help the people. They didn’t come into politics to serve. They didn’t come into politics to benefit the people. They came into politics to do a transaction to benefit themselves, so why should they sacrifice? Some are smart enough to know that certain words and phrases are good for optics, for local and international community, but they don’t mean them, and sometimes they don’t even understand these words. So, they’ve gotten some rhetoric from World Bank, from IMF, from wherever, so they tell us you have to tighten your seatbelts, you have to do this. You tell the people they have to tighten their seatbelts, but the man doesn’t think that it is referring to him. He must have all the comfort that his office deserves, and for him to be able to do things. So, when the governor comes into the office, the first thing he wants to do is to fix his own office, the second thing he wants to do is to buy cars. The third thing he wants to do is to fix government houses, the first priority is his own comfort. Why are you going to ask him to tighten his seatbelt? So, we still do not yet have the right kind of leaders, that is the problem, and it is for us as Nigerians to first of all know who the right kind of leader is, and insist, and force. So, we need a whole lot of reorientation and orientation of about 150 million people before you can get it right in Nigeria.
You have to re-orientate them. The challenge is, who will do it? And that’s why we need people like the press, people like the Pastors, people like the Imams, people who know a bit better, and who are willing to be sacrificial, and are not looking for government benefits and largesse and who will keep orientating the people. Unless we are able to re-orientate the people and educate the people, you may not be able to get in the trajectory and in the natural, a well-functioning Nigeria. If you’re following natural trajectory, except there’s a divine intervention that brings forth such a person in one way or the other, without the established political machinery being aware, the end result can never be satisfactory. And that’s because the political machinery that has evolved in Nigeria over time is a machinery that dwells on ignorance, that dwells on insincerity, that is fuelled by corruption and selfishness and greed. That is the culture that our politics, with the help of the British and the military, has created. That’s what we have created. That’s the animal we have given birth to. So the other animal that will respect performance, hard work, honesty, and service, does not quite exist within our political culture. It’s almost an anathema that anybody who has that kind of background and upbringing is ostracized, vilified, pushed against, and thrown out of the system or punished for thinking like that. For daring to aspire to transform. For daring to think that way, you are attacked. What you are rewarded for is blind loyalty regardless of what your boss is doing.
So we need a total change of culture in Nigeria for Nigeria to move forward. And the challenge is there are fewer and fewer people who understand that culture. The irony is that it’s a disease that’s now spreading around the world because, right now, America too is whittling down bit by bit on both sides. Their values compromise that evil political machination, its beginning to take over in some of these places in America, in Britain. Their standards are being eroded on a regular basis. There are very few cultures now that are standing firm on those values that make for a decent society. Very soon, America is going to be almost decimated because it’s losing on a regular basis its values that make a nation great. It’s losing it. They’re between the devil and the deep blue sea. And they don’t quite realize it yet. People like Trump have broken it. But even the Democrats too have destroyed some aspects of American value and culture. The devil is on attack. The so called good Democrats, they have turned bad. The good Republicans are terrible. That’s really what’s happening in America. And America now made a choice of which one is slightly better of the bad. That’s what we have now, but they are both bad. Very bad. So, we’re in trouble. But, in the case of Nigeria, we are coated in bad and this is something that should worry any sincere, patriotic and well meaning Nigerian.
