NIGERIA @ 61: A CONSPECTUS
Nigeria is a country whose birth was affirmed on 1st October, 1960 through the concerted efforts of our past heroes and warlords.
It is not an undecipherable fact that these post-colonial leaders meant well for Nigeria but our contemporary leaders embrace the inverse of the main intent of these past heroes who fought tooth and nail for Nigeria’s Independence.
It is honest-to-goodness reality that virtually every individual, both fremds and aborigenes are obsessed with corruptible acts, moral turpitude and countless social vices in Nigeria today.
This is because a number of immoral and ominous acts have for ages infiltrated into each family, which is a subset of a society.
In fact, moral suasions, cultural values, norms, axioms, mores traditions, forklore, religious facticity and much else are now sparsely in vogue in family training mechanism. Even most parents do celebrate the wealth accumulation of their children, not minding the real source of this opulence and its possible adverse effects. Although, some of these parents are bereft of the necessary sine qua non for good upbringing of their children.
It is no less veridical that the groundlaying of these sinister acts is GREED AND AVARICE.
The ripple effects of these causal factors culminated in the types of leadership we have in Nigeria today.
It is very disheartening that our current leaders in Nigeria wilfully outcast the good dreams of our past heroes and pave the way for outrageous wealth to take preponderance over good governance, just because of their naked greed.
Some people may wish to ask a pertinent question that if given the opportunity to lead, would there not be a surge of these inimicitous acts in my time? the simple riposte to this is that TIME WILL TELL, AS IT IS A VOYAGE OF ANY HUMAN EXISTENCE.
It is not equivocal to say that corruption is dangerous and inimical to the systemic existence of any polity. It is a socio-political, economic and moral malaise that permeate and cripple, as a result of its contagiousness and malignancy, the nerves of any polity.
It is “an intolerable characteristic” (Fullerton, 2000) that should be discouraged in governance because once it sets into any part, it automatically contaminates all the strata of that system’s multidimensional hierarchy in ways symmetrical to the
spread of bush fire (Akindele, 1995).
Corruption is a problem which diverts scarce resources away from development and eradication of poverty.
This has been largely so in Nigeria because it has far too many “political dinosaurs”, “tyrants” and “tropical gangsters” and far too few state-men” as leaders (Goldsmith, 2000) whose learnings for shabby political goings-on like the breeding of the national economies for personal benefits is unequalled within the global political community. Its effects on Nigeria are, to say the least, incalculable.
It needs to be accentuated without an iota of prevarication that human beings are usually bedeviled with two major evils. These are: natural evils and moral evils, other evils, such as metaphysical, social and political evils are subsets of moral evils.
The former is replete with natural disasters and impediments, such as earthquakes, tidal waves, flooding, virulent diseases, imbecility etc. Its occurrences are derived from the operations of impersonal and natural forces.
They are indisputably inevitable. The latter, on the other hand, are human-inflicted evils, which ranges from banditry, terrorism, armed robbery, kidnapping, abduction, Boko Haram insurgency, Gunmen attack, political assassination, corruption, to infinite regress. They are all avoidable if man wills.
Corruption , which is a moral evil has its characteristics to be, among others; political Hilterism (that is, rule by force) as a safety-valve for retention of power, replacement of “We-feeling” by “Me-feeling,” uncurtailed lust for wealth, giving and receiving of kick-backs for government contracts (done or undone), police insistence on taking bribes as a precondition for performing their duties, false declaration of assets, politics of expediency, son of the soil philosophy, judicial fractionalization of human beings, violation of oaths of office, excessive hike in the prices of consumables e.g Rice, Beans, crude oil products etc, degradation of education, epileptic employment process, irregular payment of salary of workers as and when due but receiving imprest and other fringe benefits on regular basis, unemployment of youths, upsurge of debt burden without commeasurable development, Undue delay in rehabilitation of roads, dehumanization, unjust wielding of power, concealment of truth because of social and economic ascents, diminuendo of workers’ welfare, financial impropriety, oppression. In fact, the list is inexhaustible. But, all these are avoidable, as they are not homonomous to natural evils. They are mere human-making problems, which of course hamstring the development of any given nation.
On the whole, I actually want to berate the belief that Nigeria could no longer extricate from seemingly intractable logjams, as the mishmash of solutions are inherent in every individual, especially our Political leaders, Clergymen, Captains of industries, Authorities of Institutions, Business Moguls, Family heads, to mention but a few.
We must all remove an abatross on our necks towards revamping Nigeria.
More importantly, our education must be given its deserved priority, as it is a building blocks of any nation.This is convoyed with the fact that leaders engage in corrupt practices and selfish acts because they lack complete education, which Awolowo interweave with the development of mind, body and brain, an embodiment of mental magnitude.
Let us adhere strictly to Awolowo’s theory of mental magnitude, which harps on a person’s ability to subvert the human desires that crave selfish interest and crass materialism.
Fundamentally, this theory revolves around good governance, which is defined as in terms of transparency, accountability, social justice, fairness, equity and selflessness.
It is imperative to say that leaders need to tame their appetite and emotion and embrace discipline as a value in order to achieve effective governance and development in our society.
The upshot of this is that we must not stagger into the next millennium with the same Sisyphean burden, hence all hands must be on deck towards attaining a pristine society.
It was Written by: Comrade OJO AKINYEMI, Ondo State Based Labour Leader.
