The MANY CHALLENGES OF THE NIGERIAN NATION
By Ogiri John Ogiri
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rom the North to the South as well as from the East to the West of Nigeria, general insecurities, corruption and deprivations possess the land. It is no longer news that a larger proportion of the over 167 million Nigerians go to bed hungry every day and night. It is also glaring that bombings targeted at government security formations as well as Christian churches have become the order of the day in the country. Only recently, suicide bomb attacks targeted at two separate churches in Kaduna metropolis and Zaria by the Boko Haram Islamic insurgents sparked a devastating wave of reprisal attacks in the metropolis and its environs. In the ensuing pogrom, hundreds of lives were lost, properties worth millions of naira were destroyed and thousands of people were rendered homeless. This is not to mention the colossal loss in terms of lives and properties in similar incidences in Kano, Maiduguri, Yobe, Bauchi and Plateau states in recent times.
In the Niger-Delta region, militancy in agitation for oil resource control have led to kidnappings of many people- young and old, male and female (with some rescued dead, and others alive)-as well as oil theft and illegal oil trade at high seas all in a bid to press home their demands. (Thanks to the amnesty programme currently being implemented in the area and which has helped to curtailed militancy to a tolerable extent). Armed robbery has continued to be the stock-in-trade in the southeast with many lives and properties lost to this menace.
Today, corruption, in all its ramifications adorns the Nigerian political, economic and social systems. So many ignoble acts of corruption are being perpetrated with impunity. Government money is being stolen and siphoned to foreign accounts with no proper monitoring and legally strengthened mechanisms of effective control. Cases of James Ibori, Cecilia Ibru, Chief Bode George, Alex Akingbola, Dimeji Bankole, Etteh et cetera are still fresh in our memories. A more recent case of corruption is the one involving Honourable Farouk Lawan of the House of Representatives who defied all voices of wisdom and conscience, threw all ethical cautions to the wind and decided to dine with the devil of bribery and corruption by purportedly collecting the sum of $620,000 from those who are bent on truncating the down-to-earth implementation of the report of fuel subsidy probe. What still baffles the imagination of many ordinary Nigerians, who, before now, had been basking in the euphoria of the fact that, after all, with people like Honourable Farouk Lawan, all hope of a corruption-free society was not lost, is how and why Honourable Lawan could trade his integrity and reputations for which he has toiled so hard over the years for “thirty pieces of silver”. Honourable Lawan’s case generated much ado and media hype not because he was the first person to be associated with corrupt practices in Nigeria but because he had been able to establish himself in the minds of so many Nigerians as an anti-corruption figure, only to allow himself to be swept by the same wind of bribery and corruption which he had been fighting. If people like honourable Lawan can not be trusted to do an honest job, then who else can we trust? His case only seems to reaffirm the Ghanaian writer, Ayi Kwei Armah’s adage that “The beautiful ones are not yet born” .No, not in Nigeria.
The case of the Power sector is even more baffling. At fifty two, Nigeria, still, can not generate enough power for its large scale industrial development. Over the years, successive administrations have made effort to revive the sector but all seems to be getting worse. The power supply has continued to remain epileptic despite efforts to revive the sector. The question is this, is it that the “disease” plaguing the sector is incurable? Is it not obvious that the same anonymous and faceless cabals are direct beneficiaries of the fact that the power sector is not working? After all, many of them hold the largest stakes in the business of Power Generator Importation and, fixing the power sector is definitely going to put them out of business and so they are prepared to invest billions of naira in lobbying the majority of our executive members and the law-makers who are their willing collaborators, in order to stop them from comprehensively turning this sector around. This has had dangerous effects on the socio-economic development of the country. It has led to discouragement of investments, increased cost of doing business in Nigeria, and a high level of unemployment, among other consequences.
In the education sector, which is the most critical of all the sectors, the situation is appalling. The story is the same whether it is about dilapidating infrastructures and lack of qualitative teaching materials, personnel and environment or the dwindling standard of education. The result is that our Universities, Polytechnics, Monotechnics and Colleges of Education are churning out graduates who can not compete equally with their counterparts from other parts of the world. Globally, technology is the in-thing now. One of the tools for advancing the growth and development of technology today is the knowledge of information and communication technology, through computers. Today, in Nigeria, how many computer laboratories are available in our educational institutions? Even, where they are available, how many of them have functional computers with modern configurations? If these too are available, is there adequate electricity to power them? It is only in Nigeria that computer lecturers/ teachers teach computer education to students without computers. Check some of our science laboratories and you can hardly distinguish between a traditional farm house and the so-called science laboratories. What a shame that the same crop of leaders who studied under government sponsored scholarship abroad, who received the best quality of education can not make the same available for the younger generation. In fact, some of our Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education are glorified secondary schools. Today, increasing emphasis on certificates or paper qualifications by the Nigerian system at the expense of merits and academic excellence have made many students to forfeit the rigorous but interesting pursuit of knowledge, for a quicker or easy, usually manipulative ways, of obtaining these certificates .No wonder, many of our graduates are unemployable.
The standard of teaching too has nose-dived tragically to a disturbing level. This is a testimony to the fact that the teachers or Lecturers themselves need to be taught or lectured. Research, which is a veritable tool for national development in many advanced societies, is being abandoned by many teachers/Lecturers in most of these institutions. The seemingly unquenchable penchant of the current generation towards materialism has continued to be a threat to any serious dedication to excellence in this sector. Lecture notes are being recycled from one year to another without any effort to add anything new so as to be able to meet the needs of the current age. Students are no longer free to think for themselves. They are expected to return verbatim, during examinations or tests, (word for word) of what is taught to them in the class room. “Garbage in, garbage out” is the order of the day. No wonder, the Nigerian society is today replete with more followers and passive leaders than responsible followers and pragmatic leaders. Employment of teaching personnel in our educational institutions, is done, not based on merit and competent ability of the applicant to deliver in the classroom but on tribalism, religious affinity and favouritism. All these are dangerous combination of factors responsible for the present rot in the Nigerian education system. The earlier they are addressed, the better for the future of education in the contemporary Nigerian society.
In the religious arena, there is a high level of corruption of the minds of younger ones by some of the so-called pastors in the church and Imams or Sheiks in the mosque. Today, religion, which is supposed to be an instrument of unity and national cohesion, is being used as a tool of division or segregation, propagation of distorted and confused religious dogmas particularly in the country. One of the most obvious effects of this is what is currently at play in Maiduguri, Kano, Bauchi, Kaduna and some other northwestern and northeastern states in terms of wanton destruction of properties and the senseless killings and maiming of innocent Nigerians, being orchestrated by some confused elements in the region all in the name of religion. Looking at this state of affairs, one is forced to ask-where are the Nigerians who fought in unity to stop the then Eastern and southern Nigeria from seceding between 1967 and 1970? Why are the same Nigerians re-enacting the same drama that led to that war? Before the advent of Islam in Nigeria through the desert in the North, did we not live together in peace and harmony? Or in the periods preceding the coming of Christianity through the Atlantic Ocean in the south, did Nigerians not cohabit in absolute peace and unity? Why, then, should the coming of Islam and Christianity divide us? How often do we hear of religious crises occurring in Saudi Arabia or Italy and Israel as often as it occurs in Nigeria today? Do you not think that the “receivers” of these religions are trying to practice it more than the “givers” of these religions? Do Nigerian adherents of these religions really, and I mean “really” understand its dogmatic focus and orientation? It is my honest believe that there is nothing wrong with Islam, but something is fundamentally wrong with the Muslim; there is nothing wrong with Christianity, but something is definitely wrong with the Christian. To address this confusion, we must not attempt to change Islam and Christianity; they are good in themselves. They all preach and emphasize peace. To tackle this challenge, we must tackle and change the Muslim and the Christian.
It is concluded, thus, that there is the need for these challenges to be addressed holistically, sincerely and with the needed political will duly deployed in tackling them by those who have been mandated with the responsibility leadership in this country. The government alone can not do this; there is therefore the need for public-private collaboration in this regards so as to achieve the dream of a virile, united Nigeria.
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