Cont’d
Leadership is a problem of today but followership is a problem of today and tomorrow put together in one basket. Reason is not far fetched, tomorrow’s leaders will evolve from today’s followers. The task on our hands leaves no one out of the rescue mission.
• Nigerians yearn for mega cities but unwilling to do things that make a city mega. They disobey traffic lights and complain of accidents. They keep their litters in their bags on the streets of Houston but throw plastic bottles on the streets of Lagos. Still we complain that the streets are dirty and the government is lazy. We are a special breed of Homo sapiens on this side of heaven.
• Nigerians pay their taxes in a foreign land without any option. He says he can see the amenities his tax is used to service. He comes to Nigeria and says the roads are poor. I’m left to ask which one came first, is it the hen or the egg? The answer is neither here nor there.
The poor subsidises the rich in my home country. Their taxes are taken from source without concession, but the rich negotiate their ways by rubbing the palm of the officer in charge. Half for you and half for me, the deal is done. We jointly kill a country we claim to love and we wish we have a country we all desire.
• We trust foreign nationals more than we trust ourselves. A Chinese or Indian will access loans faster than a son of the soil. He creates employment that is shared pari passu between his kinsmen and other Nigerians. He becomes the master because he is an employer of labour, in a labour market that gasps for breath.
Our foreign partner turns the money around and repatriates his spoils to his home country. Here we still grope in the search for industrial development, even when the owners of the technology keep their secret to their chests.
• Sports unites us more than anything else, but our options have almost been narrowed only to football. The only time we remember Nigeria is when the national team has a football match. The gains we made in athletics have almost been eroded by lack of planning.
Our local football league has since gone into comatose. Such a thriving industry without a leg within. All attention is shifted to Europe for pleasure and excitement. Nigerians can die for European Premier League, but football enthusiasts know very little about Nigeria Professional Football League.
Nigerians do thanksgiving in church to celebrate a Chelsea’s win but hardly do we remember again that the likes of 3SC, Enugu Rangers, Kano Pillars, Leventis United and others used to be the football unifiers for those in that generation. Someone said if our Sports Minister is following an English football club, who is left to follow Enyimba Football Club of Aba?
• We make laws we do not intend to enforce. Leaders make empty pronouncements that are ignored because they are not well thought through. 60 years after independence, the talk is still about roads and bridges. Pipe borne water still remains a campaign promise. We still grapple with power supply as a precursor to industrial development.
Leadership failed Nigeria no one will deny, but it is difficult to exonerate any of us from this web of confusion we found ourselves. The job is tough, only a magician can change Nigeria the way we are wired. The person who will change Nigeria must first change Nigerians. How he will do it will set him apart as the real messiah Nigeria desires.
If we want a change it’s all in our hands. No foreigner will love Nigerians more than we love ourselves. I’ve heard arguments that a focused leader can get everyone of us to do the right thing and I think I agree. What is left to be seen is how we get the right leaders, when the right followers are in short supply. The day we find the answer is the day Nigerians will heave a sigh of relief, that truly the Nigeria we desire is not a mirage.
©️Akin Oluwadare Jnr
27 September 2021
