Tears jumped into my eyes. Tears for missed opportunities. Tears for a future which presently looks bleak. Tears for my inability, despite much efforts, to awaken my people to the challenges that they face, or galvanise them into action to make a change.
But perhaps what struck me most, is the fact that the Emiratis, as the citizens of the United Arab Emirates are known, do not practice democracy. Indeed, bowing to global pressure recently, they tried to conduct some form of election at the lower level, but where it matters, they still run a monarchy, and are the better for it. If they were practicing democracy like us, the tallest building in the world would still be a proposal being kicked about in their national assembly, like every good project is tossed about here in Nigeria! I started to think about even countries like the United Kingdom, where the Queen – who has ruled for over 50 years – still has to approve before any government is formed. As a student of history, I know that the USA, which is the arbiter of democracy, never had any royalty in its system, and so it was easy to bring forth a system where everybody is supposedly equal. But the USA is not Nigeria, and what Nigeria has failed to do is to consider its history and sociology, in adopting a system of government.
That is why I never join the chorus of the worn-cliché, that Nigeria has a leadership problem. I disagree. For our leaders are chosen from amongst us. So perhaps we have a people problem. Statistically, if you keep selecting apples from a bunch, and you select say twenty straight bad apples, you could as well dismiss the bunch as a bag of bad apples! I posit instead that we have an intellectual problem. So on the one hand, the people of Nigeria seem not to be able to imagine the disasters that lurk ahead and are unwilling to self-examine. They are also unable to get angry enough to constructively change the status quo. On the other hand, our intellectuals are an intellectually timid lot, and they have been unable to articulate a vision for the country; a vision that considers our history and sociological make-up. The result of these two failures is that Nigeria – and indeed most of black Africa – has continued to toy with systems made for other peoples, by other peoples. And these systems will NEVER work for us.
Black Africa has got to this juncture right now, where it will have to peel its own oranges itself. We have been given other people’s socio-economic and political systems which have not worked for us. Indeed, those systems are hardly working even for those who introduced them to us. The more one looks at this problem, the more Nigeria’s centrality in solving this great big jigsaw puzzle becomes obvious. Nigeria, due to its population and mix of cultures, stands with pride at the very threshold of positive change for Africa. It should be Nigerian intellectuals who are articulating a vision that can see Africa out of its eternal romance with confusion. So it is Nigerian intellectuals and its people who have failed. That is why I keep chipping-in in the best way that I can, albeit with little or no effect.
I am concerned that democracy as we have been practicing it here, will NEVER work for Nigeria, and indeed for most of Africa. The early leaders, the nationalists, saw this and most of them started to tend immediately towards some sort of socialism, much to the consternation and horror of their colonial masters and their big brother, the USA. What happened after that trend was noticed, was what I call ‘The Crashlanding of Africa’. Africa could have flown high, but the killing of Lumumba and the ouster of Nkrumah by you-know-who, saw to it that Africa remained in the gutter. The nationalist leaders knew that it would be criminal to operate capitalist governments where 99% of people are illiterate and poor! They saw the incompatibility of the systems foisted on them by their departing colonial masters, with the reality of their social environments. We so-called modern Africans of today have not bothered to pick up the thread of their thoughts. We just do copy-and-paste in an unthinking manner!
Therefore more than 50 years after, our systems have all but collapsed. And governments are alienated from those they purportedly lead. In the case of Nigeria, the democracy we practice has become the very problem that it purports to solve. As the world enters another anxious phase of recession – itself caused simply by crass capitalism and the pocketing of the commonwealth by a few even in the western countries – roughly 80% of Nigeria’s wealth is being milked dry by the type of government it runs. Nigeria is again at that point where it is ill-prepared for the coming cataclysm. And this time, it will be much much worse!
That is why I am putting it on record, that what we need is a government – any type or brand – that emphasizes the responsibility of individuals within and outside government, to their fatherland. Democracy emphasizes human rights, but we need more human beings in this clime who deemphaise their rights and think of their responsibilities. Democracy may be good – at least in name – but its twin brother, Capitalism, is a monster. The two go together, and you cannot have one without the other. Since people have been asked to vote, they take themselves very serious and demand for rights, and after demanding for rights, they reckon they can make as much money as possible no matter what happens to society. That is exactly what has gone wrong with African societies. We used to care for our environment and for our neighbours. Now we have all become philistines
A tentative way of envisioning responsibility-based government, is to think of not paying government officials for serving the country, or paying them just a token. There should be a way of recalibrating government such that people are recognized based on the sacrifice the make to society. We are currently at the threshold of disaster, and it is a good point where those who have must really make serious sacrifices for the sake of human continuity. Certainly, this wasteful cut-and-paste democracy, is bound to ruin this country, and we cannot fold our hands and look on anymore!
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