Nigerian Leaders Out of Touch With Reality? THERE is a passage in the Bible which seems to be written specifically for the leaders and rulers of Nigeria. The passage in its latest translation says in part: Their eyes are awake but they don’t see a thing. They stick their fingers in their ears so they won’t hear! They screw their eyes shut so they won’t look! The men and women who lead and rule Nigeria are all out of touch with reality. As a result, they bring little or no blessing to the country they lead. For instance, can you believe that, in the past day or two, while Nigerians in some parts of Nigeria are being slaughtered or roasted alive, President Goodluck Jonathan has stated in an international conference that the reason Boko Haram is being over-active these days is that his Federal Government’s economic policies are succeeding? What economic policies, and what success, is he talking about? Does Mr. President see or hear Nigerians at all? Does he care to look or listen? President Jonathan needs to be told what Nigerians, and what millions of Nigeria’s sympathizers worldwide, are saying – namely, that the government of Nigeria has failed in the most basic duty of governments to the governed. The government of Nigeria cannot protect the citizens of Nigeria – period. A terrorist army that has declared war on all Nigerians is operating freely wherever it chooses in Nigeria – killing, maiming, destroying, burning,apparently acquiring greater and greater capability daily, demonstrating better and better training and more and more sophisticated weaponry than the military forces and security agencies of the Nigerian state, able to strike in one place today and return to the same place tomorrow, apparently unrestrained by any fear of the Nigeria state or any part thereof. If Nigeria were led and ruled by human beings who are able to see, hear and respond like human beings, what should Nigeria’s president be doing in this awful and embarrassing crisis? Certainly, he should not be going before the world (a partly laughing and partly condemning world) to beat his chest about economic exploits that don’t exist. And he should eschew politics as usual for a season; he should know that many people are shocked to see him,in this terrible situation, goingto campaign for his party men who are seeking electoral votes. He might even give up his own pet resolve to seek re-election, so as to devote his whole attention to the current crisis – out of love for his country and its people. I was a young university lecturer in March 1968 when President Lynden B. Jonson made the surprising announcement that he would not seek re-election – that he would not seek his party’s nomination or accept it if it was offered to him. Because of his impressive records with his Civil Rights and Great Society deeds, he appeared to be sure of very popular reelection. But the crisis of the Vietnam War was tearing his country apart, and he chose to stand up to the crisis and wrestle with it, and therefore not seek the re-election. I still remember these sentences from his speech of that day: “With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office–the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President”. That is how men achieve greatness – and that is how leaders make their countries succeed and great. But, apparently, the Nigeria of our times can never produce leaders of that caliber. The petty self, the fake political party, the squalid material gains – these are the things that rule over the psyches and choices of the moral and spiritual dwarfs whom Nigeria calls leaders. That is why, with all the horror thatour country has been experiencing, especially in recent months, we do not, and we will never, see a groundswell of leaders rallying around the president to strengthen his hands to tackle the situation. It will not happen, even from within his own so-called party. For each Nigerian leader, political leadership is not for service to society; it is simply for self-aggrandizement; it is to carve out a position from which one can steal and share bigger portions of the oil revenues. The deep and unavoidable pain that hundreds of girls who went to school were taken away by some enemies of society over a month ago and are still missing today; eye-gouging pictures of mutilated and roasted bodies of our countrymen in the marketplaces of Gamborou or Jos or the transportation centre in Abuja; threats by the same enemies of society that they will bring their campaign of destruction and mass murders to the rest of our country – all these are just news of the day and touch no serious strings in the hearts of the men who regard themselves as leaders of our country. Predictably, the so-called National Assembly whimpered for a while in Abuja – and then quickly went back to its peace. By the way, there is an extraordinary body now holding an important meeting in Abuja – I mean the National Conference. If the leaders and rulers of Nigeria were serious, does a good case not arise now for the president to take Nigeria’s terrible security crisis before the National Conference? Since the National Conference was convoked to help Nigeria chart a new structure and path to stability, harmony and progress, is there not much in this crisis to inform and influence the deliberations of the National Conference? There are leaders who have come to the National Conference to insist that the Federal Government should continue to control everything in Nigeria, that the state authorities should remain impotent, and that the states should not have police or other security outfits of their own. Isn’t there in the security crisis of these days enough to show such leaders that they are grossly wrong – and that every state does indeed need its own security apparatus? In the United States, whose federal constitution we copied in 1978, the Federal Government, the state governments, and the local governments (indeed every township), all have their own strong police systems. In fact, apart from the federal military forces, there is a National Guard in every state, which the state government can deploy if a security crisis (or a natural disaster) arises in the state. Would an arrangement like that not have limited, or perhaps even made impossible, what we now have in our Northeast, where a terrorist organization has arisen and virtually subdued some states? Nigeria is a strange entity. Very strange – and very unfortunate! We who call ourselves Nigerians don’t love Nigeria enough to choose to struggle sincerely together to make it work. But we don’t have the courage to agree to break it up. Most of us are apparently waiting for it to fall apart on its own? This may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By Diran Apata
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 09:29:37 +0000
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