If you have any grain of decency or integrity in your DNA, growing from childhood to adulthood in Nigeria must be a nightmare. Especially if you have done a little travelling outside our dear country. The name of the experience is ‘Horror movie”. Like a dumb weakling, you kept observing the actions and evil machinations of evil men and women unhindered. Aberrant and obnoxious behaviours become the norm. You are dumbfounded, speechless and powerless. For real, they are too much for you.
They oppressed the poor and powerless, looted the public treasury mercilessly and imposed the incompetent and visionless on us. Meanwhile our supposed protectors are terrified shivering with tails between legs. The result? ‘Garbage in, Garbage out’ as Americans would joke.
The problem with Nigeria is, management failure not necessarily corruption as many would profess. This management scarcity is artificial. Corruption always bows to superior management. Acute, chronic or endemic corruption can be decisively dealt with. Expectedly it recoils and back tracts into its odious shell in cowardice.
How can a country be fielding its fourth 11 while benching its brightest and best . How can the blind be leading the clear visioned? How can first class graduates be walking the streets and riding ‘okada’ while ‘let my people go’ graduates are on top of Police, Navy, Customs, Immigration, civil service to mention a few. The hallowed academia is also mercilessly raped. Doctorates and professorships are to dashed to cronies, politicians and highest bidders. Who suffers? Our youth forced to be taught by people who have no knowledge themselves.
The scenario has become so confusing that our children have embraced reckless hustling as a culture. To many, money answereth all problems. Whether you read or not you can come out in top grades if you can ‘sort’ hungry or greedy lecturers out. Twenty year old boys whose mothers roast yam and plantain at the bus stop now drive RANGE ROVER jeeps . Nollywood is a big employer of Nigerians and a money spinner. In its present form, it is causing havoc to the moral fabric of the society. Ritual and ‘juju’ money has been promoted out of proportion to reality. Our innocent, fragile, minds called children swallow everything hook, line and sinker and even try to experiment with these thrash. The youth are vulnerable and overexposed. Even seven year olds, according to social media, want to make it at all costs.
Our problems are self-inflicted. Our dear Naira is almost N500 to one dollar. Dr (Mrs) Okonjo Iweala for six odd years controlled the Naira to below N150 to a dollar. Then we were not exporting aircraft, cars, computers or machine guns. Just our God-given crude oil. Given to us for nothing. No strings attached. At the international market dollar is dollar. Whether you are selling Boeing 777, Lexus Jeep, Gold, diamond or crude oil, dollar is dollar. Like our late sanitary friend joked ‘shit money no de smell’.
It is inferiority complex, lack of clout and confidence before the international community and IMF coupled with reckless borrowing that is rubbishing the Naira. Share lack of political economics by those who should know and understand. Grandstanding by half baked officials who don’t even understand the issues at stake cannot help. Imagine 200 million people sinking for fielding wrong people. We are not selling less crude oil than under Okonjo Iweala. Rebel skirmishes here and they granted, but there is no war, earthquake, tornado or drought.
Just stabilize the Naira to Okonjo level and fresh air will flood the nation. No big talk or rhetoric. America, Europe, China, Japan still rely heavily on railway transportation. I wonder what would have happened to China without trains. On a trip to China I noticed irrigation following rail lines for tens of thousands of kilometers. Clinging to each other like Siamese twins. Killing two birds with one stone. Agriculture and mass transportation.
Agitation from the youths of the Southeast, as unpalatable as it is, is worsened by obvious and evident exclusion from the scheme of things. If equity and fairness have any meaning, it is the turn of Southeast to produce Nigeria’s president.
No other person has the pedigree, character, tract record better than Peter Obi. Ebenezer Babatope said so recently and I agree with him. But Obi is too good a man, too gentle a citizen to do the needful.
Obi would rather leave the country than challenge Atiku. So, he needs help. Ohanaeze Ndigbo and all well-meaning Igbo should shelve pride and go and beg Atiku to shelve his life-ambition and give his boy 100 per cent support. The ‘boy’ go need both moral and financial support.
Welcome President Obi.
The time has come and it is now.
• Dr Emeka Iwuagwu writes from Mbaise, Imo State
