‘’I am eating the fruits from trees that weren’t planted by me and now in my early 80s I may not eat fruits from the trees I am planting.’’ – Newton Jibunoh
In the last 50 years, I have adventured and explored the length and breadth of my country Nigeria and beyond; I have traversed by road from London through Europe across the Mediterranean Sea and across the Sahara to Nigeria all by myself. I have also driven with a group of 7 and later with a group of 48 to London and to Agadez – in the middle of the Sahara in Niger Republic; I have also traversed the whole of West Africa.
In today’s Nigeria, I am told not to drive from Lagos to my home town Akwukwu-Igbo in Delta state anymore, something that was a novelty in the years gone by. Then, I recall stopping in Ore and Benin for refreshments with my whole family which was like an excursion. But now, you cannot even drive from Abuja to Kaduna or from Kano to Maiduguri or from Kastina to Sokoto without calling on whatever gods you save for protection, all because of bandits or unnecessary police harassment. When I started the group exploration over two decades ago, ‘Passing on the Touch: Knowing Your Country and Beyond’, thousands of Nigerians were very interested in participating. But we had to suspend the advocacy because of Boko haram in the North, kidnapping in the South, West, East; banditry and insurgency in the South South. Our youth corps from the South are not interested in serving in the North and our youth corps from the North are not interested in serving in the South, therefore, defeating the main purpose of which the youth service corps was founded.
I was troubled by all these and as such it became easy for me to accept an invitation to write a weekly column in the Sun newspapers even though I was not a trained writer, but somehow, I have written over 90 published articles. Some of the titles and quotes are here to portray my disappointments and frustrations:
Wasted billions and the economy: Don’t blame Corruption, Nigeria is cursed
For decades, Nigeria has remained among the top ten leading countries on corruption, according to transparency international. But as supporters of Nigeria being cursed have pointed out, Nigeria is not the only corrupt nation in the world. In fact, they are quick to opine that many developed nations have corrupt leaders too but have managed to still prosper.
If they are right, how do we then break this curse or is our imminent doom inevitable? I choose to disagree as over my 80 years on earth I have been lucky to see life from different spectrums and one thing holds true, a corrupt system can only produce after its own kind. Until we start holding people accountable for their failures and stop blaming unseen forces, our problems will be far from over.
in Nigeria: The search continues…
If we take time to reflect on the journey of leadership in Nigeria, from independence till date, it forces us to ask if our leaders were really prepared for the challenges and obstacles they faced on their journey. With that being said, I find it very odd that we still dip into the same pool of leaders to select our heads of government during elections.
Albert Einstein would call that insanity as he is credited with saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” In this case, we vote for the same leaders and expect change.
These are only but two excerpt samples of my writings, most of which have been shared with the leadership of our country with the hope of bringing about some changes over the way we have been governed. Sadly, this has not happened instead I see the situation getting worse by the day. For these reason, I am reminded of a quote from Jack Welch, ‘Before you are a leader success is about growing yourself when you become a leader success is about growing others’’ from my stand point as a non partisan political student we have not been able to grow the young instead we continue to recycle the old. Therefore, the young who have not been adequately educated in leadership have continued to be extremely frustrated and channelling their little education to the wrong areas. With the do or die politics of the old the two most important group in our Nation the Young and the women; that is more than half the population of Nigeria cannot participate in today’s politics, they do not have the money and they cannot fight dirty therefore the names of the likes of Nigerians I will bring out for discussion may offer a new political platform and a better level playing fields.
I have come to the conclusion that the military incursion into our political lives have remained with us. Politicians are leading in a military way and the ex-military men in politics are having difficulties with democracy, the combination of both sides has constructed a constitution that is not workable. I will suggest we change the political landscape with some compromise by recommending the likes of Peter Obi who was nominated by Peoples’ Democratic Party as their vice presidential candidate in the last election and also the likes of Yemi Osinbanjo of the All Progressives Congress, the present Governor of Sokoto State Governor Aminu Waziri Tambowa and the current deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations present, Amina Mohammed. These young politicians from the two major political parties will start the process of inspiring the whole Nation; this is so because the two main political parties cannot be dislodged in the next 20 years. With any of the four but not limited to the four mentioned becoming presidential and vice presidential aspirants in 2023, the process of reuniting the Nation may start the political culture and climate will change from the old. The followership will also change, but to continue the way we are presently, the desired change may not come; as a consequence of all this, the harmattan will appear and change all of us.
Correction from last week’s article
Last week, I made mention of an interesting intervention from one of my most regular readers and critics, Dr Dike Okwuelum regarding the equation I had suggested for the previous article to find the root causes of Nigeria’s issues. While quoting his comment, there was a mistake made to the equation he suggested whereby instead of dividing the numerators by ‘integrity’, I had written ‘lack of integrity’. Here is his correct comment: ‘‘Stealing + Bribery + Corruption over or divided by Integrity should give the results insurgency, insurgency, banditry, political rascality, dwindling economy, climate crisis, herdsmen crisis, abuse of power etc. So the fourth variable should be integrity as a denominator.’’