Did You Celebrate Nigeria @ 55?

ASK any man who did not eat throughout yesterday and has no hope that there will be food for him today what he thinks about Nigeria. Then from there, proceed to a politician who has been stealing governments’ money for over ten years unchallenged and ask him the same question.
While one is living in poverty and penury, the other is living in affluence and luxury from stolen resources of the state. Unarguably, their responses to your questions will be different. The hopeless poor man will not see any reason why he should celebrate Nigeria at 55 because he has been reduced to nothing. Not because he is lazy but because deficit in political leadership and recklessness on the part of our leaders have made the country a hell of a place for him.
Nigeria turned 55 on Thursday, was it worth celebrating? The answer is YES and No. Yes, if you are in the circle of power and therefore getting anything you want, yes, if you are a government contractor and being rewarded with fat contracts, yes, if you are a member of the National Assembly and earning fat salaries and allowances. Yes, if you are highly connected politically and therefore enjoying government patronage. Yes, if one way or the other you are one of those that make things happen in the country. Yes, if with a telephone call you can get your children fixed in any job in the country because of your connections. Yes, if you are a political Godfather and your boys steal and bring to your feet.
But to the wretched man the answer is NO. No because he doesn’t know the offence he has committed that reduced him to nothing. No because he has been subjected to the worst form of social and economic ordeal in human history. No, because over the years he has been deceived by politicians who promise to bring heaven to earth but end up bringing hell. No, because political promises no longer serve as a social pact between him and the government.
For the unemployed graduates who have been in the jobless market for over a decade, asking him to celebrate Nigeria is worse than pouring pepper into his eyes. The rising wave of armed banditry, kidnapping, general insecurity, do not actually add up to put joy on the faces of hopeless Nigerians.
However, this is not to say that Nigeria has been stagnant since 1960 when the colonial masters granted us political freedom. Of a truth, there have been some level of development but this level of development cannot balance the enormous natural resources God has endowed Nigeria with.
Let us go a little bit into history; six years after independence, the country was plunged into a fratricidal civil war which lasted for about 3 years. This war would have been averted if politicians were patriotic enough to allow their political attitudes and actions to be moderated by the conventional yardsticks of numerical democracy
Successive military administration that evolved after the Civil war rather than chart a path for genuine national development compounded our national woes.
The repressive dictates of military irrationality that lasted for decades failed to address the fundamental issues of national question. While Obasanjo flirted with the indigenization theology to economic development, IBB pandered to IMF’s prescriptive fiscal alternatives as panacea to our economic woes. His deceptively contrived transition process which was designed to return Nigeria to democracy threw the country into chaos when he annulled June 12 election generally believed to have been won by M.K.O Abiola.
The return of Nigeria to democracy in 1999 was seen as an attempt to start afresh and begin a process of rebuilding a nation. There was so much hope in the air because Nigerians felt politicians have learnt a lot of lessons from many years of military dictatorship. The leopard they say “can never change its skin”. If politicians were corrupt in the first republic as alleged by Nzeugwu and his co-coup plotters in 1966, they should have been around today to appreciate the true definition of corruption. Corruption has become a culture in Nigeria and it is pervasive. In tertiary institutions, students have to block to be able to pass their courses and this has consequently led to lowering of standard of education in the education.
Today our universities are producing graduates that are unemployable because they lack the technical skills, intellectual grit and knowledge needed to meet the challenges in the market place. Perhaps only about 20 percent if not less graduates who go about with degrees can actually defend their certificates.
As an editor, many youth corpers have served under me and these corpers are graduates of Mass Communication and social sciences but sadly and unfortunately, a good number of them write rubbish- infact unpublishable articles.
In any case, it is not yet late to begin afresh. Let us first appreciate and admit that we have erred and blundered; that over the years we have been doing things the wrong way and now we are prepared for a change. If we commit sin let us ask God to forgive us but there must be a commitment not to go back to that sin like dog going back to his vomit. In the same way, we must collectively agree to do away with those things that have kept us stagnant and be prepared and willing to place Nigeria far above personal considerations.
Fortunately, we have a new President Muhammadu Buhari globally respected for his integrity and high sense of personal discipline. So far, his body language has been emitting signals and some people have been falling in line. But we must acknowledge the fact that Buhari is not a spirit but a human being like us and as a human being, he cannot be everywhere, he needs people to make his governance imperatives effective. The war against corruption is not going to be an easy war especially in a country where motives are imputed into any decisions; however well intentioned. And that is why the war must be comprehensively fought and should cut across ethnic, tribal and political boundaries. The day a big man or a prominent Nigerian is sent to jail on account of corrupt practices will be the beginning of a new era. Yes, Nigerians want to see their tormentors jailed, I mean those who have used their positions recklessly and denied them of their opportunities and privileges.
In all, let us celebrate and thank God for keeping us alive till this day, some are in the hospital and not sure of making it to tomorrow, others are in one predicament or the other, but there you are moving about freely in good health, you need to thank God for that.