How we came to earn the title of ‘Giant of Africa’, despite these obvious failings remains inexplicable to me. It must in my view be that the leadership as a collective suffers from a psychotic disorder: what psychologists call ‘the delusion of grandeur’. Dr. John M. Groyol, a psychologist describes the state “ as the fixed, false belief that one possesses superior qualities such as genius, fame, omnipotence, or wealth”. Delusion of grandeur is also symptomatic of schizophrenia. It is this delusion about what we are not that has informed most of the anomic policies we find at play at all levels of government. Let’s start with the system of government that Obasanjo forced on Nigeria in 1979. From a cheaper, more accountable parliamentary system, with which we kicked off at independence, the Obasanjo government bequeathed America-style presidentialism, which we have found to be extremely expensive to run and to also encourage corruption. As a ‘giant’ of Africa, we accommodate our president in a sprawling palace in Abuja, bigger than Buckingham Palace; White House or 10 Downing Street; our president goes around with the biggest convoy in Africa and the biggest jet fleet; our parliamentarians earn the biggest salaries and allowances in the world and our governors are treated like royalty, with a number of them now competing with one another to buy the biggest private jets and armored cars. The government spends a disproportionate amount of national resources on itself forgetting that it is merely a caretaker and that it’s primary responsibility is to implement policies to mitigate poverty, create jobs, protect the citizens, educate them and generally take care of their welfare. The recent report by the World Bank classifying Nigeria among the ‘extremely poor nations’ ought to bring us back to earth from the pursuit of delusional grandeur. We fall into the bracket of extreme poverty because in the words of Kim Jon Yong, the World bank President, we harbor millions of “people living on less than $1.25 a day”. This is nothing really new about our country as all recent human development indexes published have always grouped us among the most retarded nations of the world. - Bayo Onanuga
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 23:04:57 +0000
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