Highlights
ON WHY NIGERIA NEEDS FIXING
Nigeria needs fixing because it is not working for an overwhelming majority of its citizens who have been left out of the thievery and profligacy that have plagued the country since its independence fifty years ago.
ON HOW TO REFORM NIGERIA
The problems that dog Nigeria cannot be confronted and corrected with a patient, slow, ineffective, one-step-forward, three-steps-backward, leave-it-to-politicians, piecemeal approach which is very popular with the country’s political elite.
ON THE REAL PROBLEM WITH NIGERIA
The real problem with Nigeria is not copious corruption or odious crime or decayed infrastructure or religious bigotry or mediocre mindset. Those are just the unfortunate byproducts of the real problem. The real problem with Nigeria is that Nigerians have no sense of country, period.
ON CORRUPTION
Corruption is now not only the exclusive preserve of the policeman and the political office holder; it is the little boy who wants something in return for helping an old folk cross the street. It is the market vendor who would sell you a shirt with only a front side but packaged to look like it is a complete shirt. It is the seller of goods who would swear that the goods he is selling to you is the real stuff when he knows that it is a fake. It is still the school boy who would lie to his uneducated parents that he needs to buy a packet of photosynthesis for science class.
ON ETHNICITY
The concept of emphasizing ethnic identity worked for Nigeria for a good while especially in the thick of colonialism when there began a vibrant ethnic nationalism and consciousness which gave rise to the first hints of Nigerian nationalism. This would pave the way for Nigeria’s independence.
For Nigeria to be truly viable as a country, the only choice open to us is to summon the will and the courage to redefine our country as a nation of individuals rather than as a nation of ethnicities.
Nigeria’s present political system operates on a false assumption that the differences among its diverse ethnic parts are mere paper classifications that can we worked over by simplistic notions of quota distribution, rotational political office agreements and federal character-reflecting public sector appointments.
The notion that there is or should be an Igbo common-agenda or a Yoruba common-agenda or an Hausa-Fulani common-agenda or the common-agendas of other smaller ethnic or tribal classifications is a misnomer and is perhaps one of the biggest stumbling blocks to Nigeria’s unity and sustainability.
ON THE NIGERIAN CONSTITUTION
Our constitution should neither sound foreign nor feel exotic to us and it should not just be a legal document with high sounding legalistic isms, disjointed whereases, perambulating wherefores, convoluting notwithstandings and annoying foregoings. It should be a straightforward document which every Nigerian irrespective of educational attainment should be able to comprehend and appreciate.
