By Chiedu Uche Okoye
Today, Nigeria is where it ought not to be, in terms of national development, considering its human and material resources, vast arable landmass, and good weather. For all our human and material resources, our country has remained stuck in the mud of underdevelopment. Incredibly, countries that are less-endowed than Nigeria have out-paced her, economically and technologically.
Didn’t Malaysia borrow its first palm seedlings from Nigeria? And India got its political sovereignty thirteen years earlier than Nigeria? But now, these Asian countries are more technologically and economically advanced than Nigeria. Sadly, well-heeled Nigerians visit India for minor medical treatment as our health sector is comatose. And we import goods from them, too.
But, why is underdevelopment our lot as a nation? The reason is not far-fetched. Chinua Achebe, the inimitable novelist of world acclaim, diagnosed Nigeria as having leadership problem. No country can grow above the dreams and visions of its political leaders. It is a known fact that bad political leadership is the bane of Nigeria. As Nigeria has not got it right, politically, development has continued to elude us.
Our political leaders, who were beneficiaries of our culture of imposition of leaders on the populace, could not transform our country when they held sway. Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Chief Olusegun Obansanjo, and Dr Goodluck Jonathan frittered away the opportunities offered to them to better our lot and make Nigeria an economically prosperous and technologically advanced country.
More so, military interventions in our politics had stalled our progress. It was alleged that it was the military that entrenched corruption in Nigeria..
Thankfully, since the dawn of the Fourth Republic in 1999, Nigeria has been enjoying uninterrupted political leadership. In the past seventeen years, one civilian administration had handed political power to another without the country descending into a fratricidal civil war. It is a milestone in our national history considering our troubled past.
But excluding achieving smooth transition from one civilian government to another, Nigeria has not achieved much in diverse areas of national development. Our political history is a sad tale of civil war, ethnic strife and hatred, religious conflicts, promises, expectations, dashed hopes, and unrealized dreams.
So, during the electioneering campaign for the last general election, millions of Nigerians who were disenchanted with Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s clueless political leadership supported Muhammadu Buhari’s political ambition. He contested the presidential election on the platform of APC, a coalition of many political parties. APC’s mantra of change resonated with many Nigrtians.. And today, Muhammadu Buhari is our President. He rode to victory in that election on the coattails of his Spartan lifestyle and famed aversion and dislike for corruption.
More than one year since Buhari administration came into power, the change it promised to bring in our country has continued to elude us. Now, it has dawned on us that it takes more than a leader’s zero tolerance for corruption for a country to achieve national development. It took him eon period to assemble his team. Yet his cabinet is not peopled by the best technocrats which Nigeria can offer. Some of the ministers in his cabinet are tired and recycled politicians who are as corrupt as Goodluck Jonathan’s ministers.
They’re square pages in round holes. Others are political neophytes and jobbers whose deeds and utterances bring shame to us. And owing to the dip in the global oil prices, Nigeria’s economy has gone into recession. At no other period in our national history have Nigerians suffered as they’re suffering now. Millions of Nigerians are scavenging in the dumpsites for morsels of bread to eat. Can’t our economic team think out palliative measures and implement them in order to reduce the current economic hardship in Nigeria? Or the president should re-jig the economic team and inject new blood into it in order that it will perform better? If the economic hardship continues unabated in our country, anger may well up in our bosoms. And this may lead to revolt or revolution in Nigeria. The Arab Spring is still fresh on our minds.
Is the president not aware that economic hardship existing in Nigeria and the alienation or exclusion of a section of the country from his cabinet are some of the factors that fuel the Boko Haram terrorism, IPOB agitation for statehood, and the militancy in the Niger-Delta region? So it is imperative for him to fix our economy.
And more so, he should see the whole country as his constituency and put a stop to the northernization of his cabinet. This will restore hope in our minds. And it will make people from the South-South and South-East stop perceiving themselves as marginalized and second-rate citizens. Entrenching national unity in our country will set us on the path of national growth. And we are not unaware that anarchic situation stymies national development.
More so, some federal roads in the South-East look like roads that are found in war-ravaged countries. The Enugu-Onitsha express-way is rutted and impassable now. And some other roads in the South are in a state of disrepair, too. President Buhari should speedily tackle the infrastructural rot that has bedeviled Nigeria. And he should step up his game.
n Okoye writes from Obosi,
Anambra State