Nigeria: New Golden Age?
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu wants to return Nigeria to its Golden Age of former times. We would all love that, except it reminds us of Buhari’s promise to revalue the Naira till it becomes at par with the US Dollar. It happened.
However, In Nigeria times have changed, the needs, the expectations, the conditions of the people far more so. You retrofit the present onto the past, not the past onto the future. Best of luck.
Samuel P Huntingdon was right when he stated socioeconomic change far outpaces political change. The Nigerian Constitution, more correct versions, precise reforms cannot catch up with what the people of Nigeria need to live, to survive, today.
Societies nearing total collapse always crave their Golden Ages of former times, if there was such an age at all. It is always so easy to mark one’s own examination paper in hindsight octuple A.
Prospering nations with strong institutions of equity, governance, identity, do not pine for the past, they look to create brighter, better, bigger futures for themselves.
Nationalism, be it false, twisted, genuine in such a state of collapse is always very thin but ultra intense. It only fuels Panglossian passions, slogans, denials. Not anything substantial, constructive, worthwhile besides the rhetoric.
Nigeria’s time to restructure, reform, reset its institutions of governance has passed long ago. It is not coming back. Face your Forward!
It all began with fights over cocoa, oil, religion. What stands out in my mind is the pre-Independence argument when the British were told to keep its nose out of Nigeria’s institutional considerations of Independence. J S Coleman said it was the saddest day in Nigeria’s Independence struggle. He was prescient. Cocoa is no longer booming, neither is oil, other agri-exports, solid minerals. We have a growing class of very rich people, less than 1 percent of the population. What else?
Religion has done what it has to Nigeria not for Nigeria in contemporary times. Ironically, Nigerians ever pray for noble governance but vote and support kakistocrats into office. Pray very well.
Foundations are sorted in the beginning, Independence, not retrospectively after seven decades. If the foundations are weak how strong the structures? Not to talk of the abuses of office by those in power beginning before Independence till at least later this year.
Every ethnic group in Nigeria has its Independence and later Hero(es) who could have made Nigeria great. Where is that Nigeria today? Those greedy thin and intense leaders were heroes to a largely illiterate, naive, deprived population of colonised people.
People who thought Israel was in heaven, who had never seen electricity, who were farmers living off the land, who used the cob of corn, dried leaves, grass to wipe their anuses. Modernism, education, oil money, a larger diaspora, media, social media changed the peoples needs and wants irreversibly.
To be a political hero today you must meet the people’s needs, better them, wow them. Allow people to live their bliss. Well, if I am not quoting the author Joseph Campbell who wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces out of context.
Heroes sacrifice for humanity in big, medium, small ways. They bear the cost, others enjoy the benefits. Nigerian heroes, in the political sense, are big thieves who sacrifice the people they represent for personal obscene enjoyment. Well, Robin Hood was a hero, a thief, did he enrich himself?
Heroes create Golden Ages, not the thieves, the divisive, the clueless. Heroes do things, not speak, boast, lie about what they will do. Golden Ages are their own ulterior motive not the personal ulterior motives and that is they impossible, near impossible to achieve unless great, enlightened, energetic leaders. Series of them. Nigeria has everything it needs to achieve a long stable Golden Age but for its ever-worsening decadence in leadership.
Finally, when a part of a body is rotten the only logical thing to do is to cut it off. The whole body of Nigeria is rotten. Bianimikaley! The parts of Nigeria that can save themselves should start doing so now. Things are going to get worse not better.
One Nigeria is a wet dream brought on by runs incubus. Nigeria’s new Golden Age is a premature ejaculate.
Grimot Nane