The Tasks Before Us as a Country.

The lowest a country can go is to no longer be used as a measure of success for other countries or a reference point for economic development for her neighbours that once held her in high esteem. With about 133 million people living in abject penury, one would think Nigeria was not once a giant of Africa in every ramification. That is how far bad, insincere leadership can affect a country. Do not underestimate the danger of bad leadership. 

If the government was able to fulfil its own side of the Social Contract it signs with the people every four years; if those in positions of entrusted authority were able to solve the problems of power, health, education, insecurity and unemployment, most of the things we go to churches, mosques and shrines to ask for would naturally fizzle out. Unfortunately, however, bad leadership has become the bane and burden of our country. 

We cannot have a Nigeria that belongs to a few and expects everyone to have peace. Peace has an interesting connotation that extends beyond a mere absence of physical war. As a matter of latent fact, the prevailing inadequacy of basic necessities of food, water, housing and clothing including opportunities for quality education and employment provides a potential incendiary for real insecurities. Unfortunately, Nigeria in the hands of a few greedy elite will continue to perpetuate this kind of dangerous existential insecurities unless we take some uncomfortable affirmative actions as a people who are always at the receiving end of the most brutal form of elite conspiracies. 

Most unemployed graduates and other poor people, including social urchins, dotting the social, economic and political landscapes of our country today all are consequences of beautiful economic emancipation policies devised by well meaning leaders in the past but truncated and short-changed, over the years, by greedy elite, sometimes with accomplices drawn from among the poor. This planned, systemic sabotage usually takes place at the point of implementation. Consequently, our identity and history as a country have now become synonyms for lack and deliberate deprivations. 

This we must unite to correct by choosing the right leaders come 2023 unless we want to remain career victims of our helpless circumstances. 

We should not intend to underestimate the power of mean men of power. But we should have sufficient consciousness of their destructive capabilities, study their motives and anticipate their attacks in order that we might face them with the courage of a lion.

To have a Nigeria that belongs to all and works for all, we have to elect people who care about all regardless of our numerous differences in creed, ethnicity and political affiliations. 

By God's grace, let us be prepared to change this ugly narrative come 2023.

-Ogiri John Ogiri.