Saturday, 4 May 2013

Ondor Edwin: A Nation in limbo


As a child growing up in the early exhilarating days of post-independent Nigeria  when the grass was greener on the other side, I remember with nostalgia the serene atmosphere and tranquil cadence that permeated the nation. This is a bitter-sweet  random musing of a nation that once floated  on the wings of tranquility, sometimes a humdrum and routine tranquility that was intermittently punctuated by the military’s unconstitutional incursion into Dodan Barracks politics. They did it with a certain defiant bravado and shameless masculinity that was out of sync with the refined  nobility of the  profession . In spite of their dance of shame on the national scene, we could still hold our flag high and stand with pride in The United Nations with a sense of intoxicating patriotism and  increasing popularity on the global stage as the giant of Africa, an identity we wore with continental respectability and responsibility. It was an awesome socio-political and diplomatic identity that reflected our emerging international clout which hitherto was beyond the far reaches of Africa. 

Our rising profile was a distinctive testimony of our pioneering role as the  touch light for other  African states still caught in the convoluting web of divide and rule colonial limitations instituted by the colonial masters.  Be that as it may, we were blessed with  a country endowed and imbued with a  system that worked, a country where process was enshrined and glorified. Our patriots then were men who understood John F Kennedy’s political slogan: ‘Don’t think of what your country can do for you, think of what you can do for your country’.
 Patriots who were at the forefront of  the fight for self sovereignty mounted the platform of national service and worked to the bone with zealous patriotism to move the country forward in every facet of  national development. The civil service functioned almost with clock wise precision in terms of observance of due process, work ethics, integrity and discipline which were showcased in and outside of the work environment. Civil servants understood the meaning of the word contentment, not as a nomenclature, but as a code of moral conduct. Corruption was an unpopular means to wealth acquisition, a dreaded cobra that civil servants and other patriots  who had the fear of God and a sense of integrity were reluctant to fraternize with or embrace, even when it was within touching distance and proximity. We had a transparent public process that functioned, sometimes with moribund intensity. Accountability was a cloak that Nigerians wore with pride in public and in the privacy of their homes. Walking down memory lane, the Nigeria of my youthful days was a near- ideal, utopian  situation. Today, it is a different ball game, a medley of woes, a  frustrating anguish tinged with bleak expectations.
Back in those days, infrastructures were put in place by the government with  feverish passion, in a hurried pace to transform the country into the Mecca of Africa and trail along with the developed western nations of the world. Today, many years afterward, these decayed public utilities are in complete state of negligence because of the dearth of proper maintenance culture.
 Education, free at the basic levels, was a common place occurrence in many states, especially in  the southern states. Scores of  Nigerians of the 70’s and 80’s generation were sent to Russia, Great Britain and America  as beneficiaries of government scholarship programmes. They left in drove  to pursue productive education that would help to strengthen and fortify key sectors of our national development in oil and gas, education and technology, and the revitalization of the agro-allied industry. Today, incessant industrial actions between the government and stake holders in the sector over working conditions and emolument concerns have become the order of the day. Annual  and  massive failure recorded in the score sheets of WAEC and NECO exams are painful reminders of the declining standard of education in our country today. Only the private universities have semblance of academic excellence. Isn’t it a colossal national shame that no Nigerian university made it to the list of the top one hundred universities in the world according to a global educational statistics released this year? Education is an empowering resource because a man who knows how to read but does not read is also an illiterate like the man who cannot read.
 Operation feed the nation was a popular catchphrase when agriculture was the power house of our economy. I remember the  groundnut pyramids that featured conspicuously in the city of Kano and  in my integrated science textbooks. The coal industry in the east and the cocoa farms in the western states were also given prominence in the school curriculum as part of our natural heritage. Way back then, the Naira was as strong as the  US dollar. For instance, a wealthy man in  the Nigerian currency and scheme of things was equally wealthy  on the same financial pedestal as his American or British counterpart. Food items and other essential necessities that greased the wheel of life were not in short supply, probably because of the ubiquitous and strict price and quality control mechanism enforced by the military government. This  policy ensured that the law of demand and supply were properly regulated to impede market wolves and shylock providers of goods and services from taking undue advantage of the consuming populace.  It was a time when the made in china terminology  was unheard of, a marked departure from  contemporary times when our streets are saturated  with inferior foreign goods and services from the oriental world. The patriotic gospel of integrity and contentment was also been preached in the market place with remarkable success.
Except for the occasional “fellow Nigerians” military anthem on the dawn of every new Dodan Barracks  change of guard and occupants, the country enjoyed relative peace, if you discount the occasional Aninies and hard-boiled criminal elements who provided moonlight entertainment to Nigerians with the Bar beach show. The Nigeria of my youth was a time when a three- bedroom apartment could be obtained from a landlord for as low as seven thousand Naira on a yearly tenement rent fee. You could sleep in such apartments with your eyes wide opened or closed  without the fear of  a  Boko Haram onslaught.
Today, the bubble has burst. Our national economy is crumbling  and hemorrhaging to a halt because of  the incessant power outage that has spread  blankets of darkness and gloom on our economic climate. What are the stakeholders in the power sector doing to turn the tide while the country suffers huge losses in unquantifiable terms? I  have read many reassuring  messages of hope on the wall of the president’s face book  about improved power supply. These were was  statements full of facts, figures and  statics, yet the way I see it, they amount to nothing short of  rabble-rousing rhetorisc. Proactive action is what is desperately needed at this point in time to address the many-sided challenges confronting the country. What we need is an egalitarian society running on the wheels of proactive governance imbued with transparency, accountability, commitment and discipline.  The dismal energy situation is what led to the mass exodus of numerous manufacturing companies that provided the solid foundation for our petro-dollar driven economy to neighbouring countries . It is high time the government gave the idea of privatizing the power sector a serious thought. If this works out, the government can work within the parameter of providing the ancillary role of an umpire as the sole monitoring  and regulating agency of the pricing mechanism, while keeping an eye on the equitable generation, distribution and availability of the product to all end-users.
The sorry security situation in  many parts of the country has cast a shadow of blight on   GEJ’s performance ratio and service-delivery potentials. The Boko Haram menace is a case in point. In some quarters across the political spectrum, the idea is being floated that GEJ’s detractors are furiously at work to throw the spanner into the works in their bid to make Nigeria ungovernable for him. This baseless postulation is far from the truth. It is sad to observe that GEJ is yet to show the right political will that can engender the dividends of democracy. His government, from all intent and purposes, looks like the flip side of the late Yaradua administration, a government marked by a go-slow approach and  locomotive pace to crucial national issues that won’t go way from the front burner. Nigerians were bone-shocked when the Independence Day, a hallowed day by all account because of it’s cultural and political significance, was held like a picnic in Aso Rock because of the fear of Boko Haram! This is evidently  a red flag for our prospective foreign investors! The message, as subliminal as it was, is that even the president cannot guarantee the lives of Nigerians except it is within the confines of Aso Rock! This is the right time for professional on-the-job orientation and  retraining  for our national security forces in the art of public security maintenance in order to curb the flames of terrorism ignited by the Boko Haram and other dissident groups in the country.
This is also the time to make a clarion call and push for a sovereign national conference to discuss and explore the possibility of  the entrenchment of true federalism  which will lead to the devolution of power from the central government in Abuja. True federalism would strengthen the economic growth of each federating unit while creating an enabling climate for constructive self-expression, stable security, even social security and the principle of social welfarism.
 These are shallow expectations because of the political realities on the ground! The corridor of power is filled with the dearth of integrity, discipline and selfless service. The seat of power is driven by men and women infused with tendencies and proclivities for  sporadic kleptomania. Some of them are men and women governed by the creed of greed  and  eccentric egocentrism. This is still the prevailing scenario in contemporary Nigeria, a country struggling with a cornucopia of identity crisis and institutionalized corruption.
I observe with a sense of dismay that  our political elites seem to treat the country as their prized possession and personal colonies for the expression of their variegated penchant for avaricious covetousness, a huge stumbling block for a country stifled on the journey towards   nationhood. At 51, it is not yet uhuru!
 Edwin Ondor lives in Lagos and can be reached on 08088884727 or edwinwins2002@yahoo.com







No comments:

Post a Comment