On Friday January 20th, 1961, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president of the United
States. In his inaugural address, he delivered a memorable line that remains
deafening, resonant and stentorian in the hearts and minds of all Americans; “Ask not what your country can do for you;
ask what you can do for your country”. This statement was a shot in the
arm, a reiterating re-awakening clarion cry bolstering and boosting the
people’s mindset about nation-building. What JFK was alluding to was that
nation-building is a divine assignment for all citizens, not just a few. In
Nigeria, we share the same sentiments. We know it is a good idea, but for reasons
not in alignment with good reasoning, many good people are slumbering off.
Electricity was a good idea in the hands of men like
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison, television was a good idea when invented
by Scotsman John Logie
Baird in the 1920s. The internet was a good idea When the
US government envisioned a World Wide Web as early
as the 1940s, and later got into the good hands of men like Vannevar Bush, J.C.R.
Licklider, and Vint Cerf who made it better. When a good idea is in the care
and nurture of good people, it maintains its integrity and helps build a nation.
Good ideas in the hands of good people always
get better with time. But anytime good ideas get in the traps and snares of bad
people, they become bad ideas. Nigeria is a good idea, but today across the
board, the lachrymal truth is that the country is strapped in the noose of few
powerful, clueless, rudderless characters whose self-acclaimed love of country
is a farce, a fiction, a burlesque and a parody. That is why
Nigerians are asking today; “where cometh our help”?
Let us be truthfully reminded, however,
that there are some in all arms of government today who mean well for this
nation, and who daily sacrifice for the greater good of their communities and
the country. They are at the federal, state, and local government levels and we
know them. The good they do will never
be forgotten. But a handful of those in
government business in Nigeria today are not solutions but reinforcing pillars
of the problem. They are square- pegs in round- holes that have
become a blotch on the viewing mirror of this nation. They are an
indelibly-ingrained inficio infeci
infectum, a virulent viral attack from where Nigeria is struggling to break
loose. They are big men with small minds occupying big seats, and their focus
is to get gain and build an arsenal and weaponry of self-centeredness in the
veranda of authority. These folks perceive government as an all-you-can-eat
hotspot, a buffet eatery where their bottomless pit of insatiable cravings for
filthy lucre are recklessly showcased, and where moral skunkiness and
unfathomable filth have replaced moral tidiness and immaculateness. The
conducts, actions, and inactions of these big men and women ante up Nigeria’s
many ills and malfeasance as they pursue their narrow self-interest that has
spewed turpitude and depravity on the society. And the people
still keep asking; “where cometh our help”?
When the future of a nation is left swathed up in warts in the
hands of platoons of tomfoolery and retrogrades, a double-edged sword of
endemic and pandemic automatically become the results, and the entire citizenry
feel the effect of the quotidian lancination that did not emerge in paroxysm. In such
environment, the climb to survive as a nation becomes steeper.
In my last
article titled, “Nigeria is our mess and we must clean it Up” (Friday November
22nd, 2013) published via this medium, I posited that an aggressive
solution to the many ills that the nation faces is that
good people must get massively involved in politics and government. In my
submission that will stretch over the next two or three articles, I will
attempt to make as limpid as possible not just why, but how it must be done.
It is the duty and obligation of all citizens of a
nation to participate in the process of nation-building and harness their gifting
and grace with others’ to build. Whether you agree with me or not, this is
where our help start coming from. If Nigeria is a good idea, governance must
then be reposed in the hands of good people. Any good idea in the hands of bad
people is an architectural design for dystopia and insalubrities.
It elicits a distraught when people who are endowed and
capable of building now sit in the fence and have become onlookers and
spectators of the spiraling, swirling spectacles of shambolic art of governance
in their own land. These are men and women of immense gravitas who speak
loftily on Radio and TV, who articulate thoughts flawlessly in cyberspace, who have
facts, figures and clear foresights and vision, but chose to stay recumbent and
recluse from the main event of controlling the gavel of government. I know
their excuses; we all hear it every day. We will discuss in my next treatise
why their excuses are inexcusable. These men know what to do, but are refusing
to do it. ”Therefore to
him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (Holy Bible, James
4:17). “And he who does an atom’s
weight of good will see it. And he who does an atom’s weight of evil will see
it.” [Holy Qur’an, 99:7-8].
Men and women of integrity, status, stature, ability
and capability, men and women trained, tried, tested and interested have left
themselves in the snuffing clutches and grips of half-baked hawkers of
emptiness and ambassadors of buffoonery. The desecrating die-hards continue to bully us into
submission and systematic extinction telling us what to do, how to live, how to
die, how to run our businesses, what curriculum we run in schools, when we
enjoy the supply of electricity, what must work and what mustn’t. We grew up
with running water supplied by the government, but today boring boreholes are
our best shot at water supply. You and I have allowed the balcony of government
to become a hotbed of the hotheaded, and a sanctuary for the madcap. Withered
and crippled hands are at the command and control center, and their mendacity
has put the country on a death row waiting for amnesty or a marching order into
the gas chamber. No matter how beautiful and expensive a house is, when
abandoned, others who have need of it take over. Clueless people are taking over the terrain,
and the country is now at the mercy of the merciless. God must help us!
One good man or woman in the midst of wolves will come
out more like a wolf and a failure. The
truth I speak wholly and always is that if we have any hope for Nigeria evolving as a great nation, good people must massively
with overwhelming numerical force get
involved and run for offices, from the Presidency to the local government
counsellorship. The results will surprise you. This is
where our help will start coming from. The
solution to the problems brought about by the hydra-headed demon of dehydration
attacking Nigeria is not going to be embedded in one or one-million articles,
opinion papers, write-ups, and blogs that are more of bugs. The solution is in large numbers of good
people getting embedded in the womb of government. From here, our help will
start coming.
…to be continued…
