[7:10AM, 8/8/2014] Usman: Nigeria has spent 53 years as an independent nation. Do you think the aspirations of the founding fathers have been attained? As a Nigerian of post-independence, judging by the stories of our elders, Nigerians have every cause to thank God and celebrate. Not many nations go through the challenges that Nigeria has faced in the past and weathered the storm. But Nigeria always comes stronger from every challenge. Given our diversity, religious, social, economic, political, and other variables, we still have the common ground to work together as a nation. We strive to appreciate the common goal of a united and indivisible country. These are no doubt very great achievements. We must have fumbled along the way, faced difficult challenges and all worth not, but in the final analysis, a child that must walk and run, must also tremble and fall. Any child that is afraid of all of this will never walk. By this our circumstances as a nation that is so endowed with human and material resources, Nigeria can never be wished away in the comity of nations and the globalised world. We should be reckoned with in spite our challenges. But most of our challenges are not natural, they are mostly man made. Anywhere you assemble people of different shapes, height, of different thinking, of different ideology, there is bound to be ideological differences of misperception, and of misconception. But the key element is, how do we manage all these? And how do we come out of all these? Those are all what we should work and feel very proud of. [7:13AM, 8/8/2014] Usman: So, for me, as a Nigerian that is a post-independence child; I know that I have had my own share of the opportunity that the Nigerian nation has offered. Because, the kind of experiences that Nigeria gives across the North, the South, the East, the West, are unique. And for every Nigerian to experience it, you will find that we are one. The only difference is that we are not of the same parental background. Otherwise, in terms of commonalities and similarities, we share common aspirations and expectations. Irrespective of your location, every Nigerian aspires to have food on his table. Every Nigerian aspires to have water to drink. Every Nigerian aspires to have electricity to run and be able to make life worthwhile. So, there are basic needs of life that are common to all Nigerians, irrespective of their location. So, the most important thing to us is, have we been able to actualise all these? These are the challenges that are part of human development process. Otherwise, look at our educational evolution, when education started, particularly in the North, the founding fathers, were not only conscripting people to go to school, but also paying people to stay in school. And in some other parts, communities were contributing money for people to even go to school. So that when you finish, you come back to re-pay in terms of service, or by way of doing something that would reflect that you have benefitted from the community service assistance. So, today, the kind of aspiration is that we have not only multiplied our enrollment, nobody is even waiting for government again to go to school. From nowhere, private schools started emerging. Initially, it was a southern phenomenon. Today, it is also a Northern phenomenon. This is so because people can no longer wait for government to get quality education. People are on their own contributing to the educational development of the country. [7:25AM, 8/8/2014] Usman: There is high rate of enrollment; there is increase in enrollment in the school system. These are some of the variables that we must acknowledge and appreciate. These are uncommon development. So, for you now to go to the University, before, the University of Ibadan was the first University in 1948, before the emergence of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; University of Lagos, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and the rest of them, with how many students? All of them put together could not be more than ten thousand students. But today, the number of applicants seeking admission into the University is not less than one million, five hundred students. And the capacity of all the universities put together, both private and public, cannot accommodate more than 300, 000 to 500, 000 students. So, every year, you have carry-over of many candidates who could not meet up with admission criteria. Tell me is that revolutionary? And then, you look at our economy. Nigeria is gradually becoming part of global economic village. The country is gradually being recognised in the international arena. Nigeria is gradually evolving as one of the nations to be reckoned with in the world. Why is this so? Because we have embraced the tenets of democracy. Democracy eluded us for about two decades, but somewhere along the line, we got it back. And in spite of our internal challenges, Nigeria is still forging ahead. In Nigeria, people come and go, but Nigeria still remains intact. You will see at a point, people will galvanise, mobilise, for individual strength, but gradually, we are beginning to build institutions, we are now beginning to build capacity, we are now beginning to build economic base that has global appeal. In terms of investments, if Nigeria is the second largest leading investment destination in Africa today, it is a welcome development. Nigeria today, is the fastest country where people invest and recoup their investment. So, we have already created a global map. We have produced capable individual in all facet of our societal endeavours that are meeting the challenges of the global world. In terms of literature, we have produced a Nobel Laureate, we have produced world economic giants, in fact, at the moment, Nigeria has produced the richest man in Africa. And in terms of global players in the telecom industry, Nigerians are leading the pack in Africa. Investment, people are already trooping to Nigeria. But that is not to say, we don’t have our challenges. The expectations are high. There is massive challenge of unemployment. [7:29AM, 8/8/2014] Usman: Our youths are not gainfully employed. That is the gap that needs to be filled. And that would be if we have a vibrant private sector. And I pray with the privatisation of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, with the private sector taking over by October this year, we hope they bring revolution, just the way the Telecom sector brought communication revolution to the country. I pray they will be able to bring revolution to electricity generation and distribution in Nigeria. You know energy drives industrialisation, and when the sector is vibrant, most of the textile industries in Kaduna, Ikeja, and other places and many other industries will kick off. And that will bring about the multitude of employees that will reduce the burden on government. For now, everybody gravitates towards government; because that is the only place you get succor and livelihood, since people do not get succor at the private sector presently. The private sector is presently under pressure, because they have to maximise profit in the mist of oppressive operational costs, the cost in terms of running operations with diesel for the generators instead of using electricity. So, the moment we are able to get out of the quagmire, I am sure we are going to make development landmark that the whole Africa will be proud of. We have a number of social issues that have come up that are part of the inter-connections between variables that make life worthwhile and the aspirations of the people that have been dashed. You see the issue of militancy that is dominant in the Niger Delta. We also have a point in our life when armed robbery and kidnapping became a trend. Also the insurgency that has become pervasive in the North. It has become a cancerous issue. These are things that were alien to Nigeria. These are some of the challenges that the country has to grapple with in our economic development that with concerted efforts and sincerity of purpose on the part of everybody, we can mitigate the anomalies. [7:34AM, 8/8/2014] Usman: Looking at our political evolution as a country, all previous republics fell to the unbridled political intrigues of the time. Don’t you feel concerned that the present democracy may go the way of others judging by the mudslinging currently pervading the political space? No. It is very good to be optimistic. It is not too good to be pessimistic, especially, with the current realities. May be, you are just experiencing this now. You know, so many years of military rule have also deprived the nation of its best times, in terms of the culture of democracy. Such has the serious elements of negotiation, and transactions that have to do with dialogue, continuous dialogue and give and take as parts of ingredients of a democratic culture. But, somewhere along the line, it was lost to unitary and military action kind of agenda, in terms of governance in Nigeria. Even civilians that took part in the military era, all of them were injected with the virus of being undemocratic. So, if the trend you observe is new to you, it happened in the Second Republic, but because, the military at that time were very adventurous, they thought they had solutions to all the problems in Nigeria, only for them to try and discovered that the complexity of the nation was greater than what they thought they could handle with the barrel of the gun and by fiat. Now, immediately this democracy came back, we also had the challenges of people coming out of that hangover of military idea of way of doing things and imbibing the new democratic culture. But, after sometimes, the issues were managed and we had successful transition. So, the hangover effects of transition between a civilian government and another civilian government have become some of the challenges that the nation has to face. That is even not a threat only that actors must begin to appreciate that Nigeria is greater than any individual. Because, if you look at what happened in the First Republic, we read all the transactions that took place and if those people were still present, I believe they would have retraced their steps in order not to fall into a similar mistake. So, as student of history, I am sure the actors are well educated about the political development of Nigeria that they will not want anything to tamper with the hard earned democratic process that we are enjoying now.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 19:45:46 +0000
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