Nigeria at 57: Where Is the Big Picture?, By Eze Onyekpere

Every first day of October, Nigerians and their leaders engage in the ritual of the Independence Day celebration. Nigeria has just turned 57 and it was another day of rolling out the drums. It was a great day to sing the national anthem, take the pledge, salute the flag, and engage in all outward signs of patriotism. Again, we can recount the fact that we have survived a number of crisis and tipping points and come back from the brink. But where is our big picture? Where is the framework for national development and greatness?

It ought to be a day of sober reflection for the leadership and the led, a day to recount how far we have gone on the journey of development and nationhood. A day to draw lessons from the past and say, never again to the continuation of the rot in our nation. It is pertinent in this soul searching exercise to look at our education, health, housing, infrastructure including electricity, housing, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, etc. Questions need to be asked whether we have made good use of the abundant human and material resources available to us in the last 57 years. Have we performed well in the journey of development when compared to our peers?

No nation develops faster than the leadership that drives it. And the challenge of underdevelopment, poverty, political crises in Nigeria is simply the challenge of leadership. Thus, on this auspicious occasion, Nigerians should rethink the process of leadership selection and emergence, whilst the leaders should commit to turning a new leaf. We can learn good lessons and copy good practices from other countries that have virtually gone through our kind of experience. The excuse of differences in religion, ethnic origin, etc. cannot be a justification for our underdevelopment because we are not the most diverse nation on earth. Neither do we have the biggest population. We are lucky that we have not experienced volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, wild fires, prolonged drought, etc. across the nation. Rather, we have had a series of leaders that have turned themselves into the equivalents of these natural disasters. Pray, if any of these disasters befall Nigeria, how shall we cope with our state of preparedness?

When leaders engage in forced evictions and de-housing programmes, they produce the same results as these natural disasters. When state governments mismanage resources meant for the Universal Basic Education Scheme and therefore cannot access funds meant for their state which now lie idle in the central pool – a disaster has been created. Children will be certificated and passed onto society without their learning and knowing the basics. The disaster is that they may never get the opportunity to learn those basics after that stage of their life. This, in turn, produces a set of dysfunctional citizens without requisite skills and competencies. The same repeats at the full secondary and tertiary levels with institutions turning out one quarter baked graduates who can hardly contribute to modern societal development. In the health sector, governments run down health institutions, pay health workers poorly and when government officials have a headache, they enter the next available flight to Europe, America or Asia. The power sector has held back development over the years, with a country of 180 million persons sharing less than 3500 megawatts of electricity every day. The stories never cease to amaze any right thinking person; for 17 years, we have invested massively in the sector and the more the investment, the less the returns in terms of access to electricity. But other countries have fixed their power challenge; how did they do it? Did they get men and women from Mars to fix it?

The starting point for our development will come when leaders and public officials understand the big picture of development. The big picture is that every little effort counts. No one can be mismanaging his little corner and expect things to works across the value chain. The big picture is for leaders to see the entire nation as their constituency. The “we and them” approach to leadership will not resolve the challenges of underdevelopment. The whole country needs to be moved along the path of development, otherwise the backward parts will weigh heavily on those in front. The deadweight may be too heavy to allow any meaningful progress across the board. The big picture is that education is the bedrock of social and economic development. We need to invest massively in building capacities and competencies that will allow us to compete in the comity of nations. Part of the big picture is that the stealing of state resources and transferring it to other climes belittles us all and makes us a laughing stock in the comity of nations. Such stealing deprives us of resources for development and indeed may not necessarily benefit the persons stealing the money. The country becomes less secure with crimes which may even affect the looter.

The big picture is one of empirical development planning, policy consistency and staying the course of implementation. Policies should not be necessarily tied to administrations and cease when they leave. Good policies, which obviously are in the national interest, need to be continued across administrations. Governance should be about assembling good teams, preferably the first eleven, to manage state affairs. No one competes well or wins a match with its third eleven in a competition where others come with their extremely talented first eleven. The world is not waiting for Nigeria. It is moving on whether Nigeria gets its act together or not. We can already see our slight loss of relevance and revenue with the declining importance and price of oil. It is time for setting in motion the thought process and development strategy for a post oil Nigeria because this is already starring us in the face. It is also a time for using our diversity positively to great effect. What A cannot achieve or produce will be provided by B. The different endowments and competencies will complement each other to a get whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. But to get these done, we need a political structure that liberates the energies and talents of our people, to allow them to blossom for the common good.

We need a compassionate and humane government across board that responds with firmness and compassion in tackling national challenges. The big picture should be encapsulated in a national plan for greatness and development, marketed and implemented by charismatic, dedicated and honest leaders. It is time for real change with our eyes on the ball. Greatness and prosperity beckons if we put our acts together.

Eze Onyekpere is lead director at Centre for Social Justice. Twitter: @censoj

Source: premiumtimesng.com