(This piece was written in 2009 when late Umar Yar’adua was President. The issues discussed are as relevant now as they then were.)
(This piece was written in 2009 when late Umar Yar’adua was President. The issues discussed are as relevant now as they then were.)
A building is as strong as its foundation; and you don’t have to be a practitioner in the industry to know that. Some years back, a friend sought my professional counsel concerning a problem-ridden family house in Otukpo, Benue State. On a day appointed, we went to the house so I could do an on-the-site assessment as we architects are wont to do when confronted with such situations. What I found was a series of deep and threatening cracks running most of the height of the walls. It had become a yearly ritual to plaster and paint over those cracks but they had always reappeared. There was no doubt about the source of this menace: a faulty foundation.
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I can recall making two propositions: it was either a slow but costly process of re-establishing the foundation or outright abandonment in view of the perpetual possibility of collapse. Either way, the solution was going to be costly. I never did get to know which option was implemented. I neither owned nor lived in the house so it was convenient not to care. The house I presently live in is under even more serious threat and I have neither the intention nor the means to relocate. Yes you guessed right. The house is Nigeria; alias good people, great nation!
Since the onset of the current rebranding campaign but especially the recent celebration of ten years of uninterrupted democratic rule, I have been ruminating over this house called Nigeria. I do so against the backdrop of the government’s so-called 7-point agenda and the laudable though whimsical ambition of catapulting Nigeria to the league of the world’s 20 largest economies by 2020.
Having lived all my life in this country, and having sojourned in every part of this expansive enclave, and knowing how things are still being presently run, these goals will not be attained. This opinion is anchored on the precarious assumption that this contraption has not given way by 2020! Except we choose to delude ourselves, this house has been full of gaping, blood-chilling cracks for a better part of our nearly five decades of pretending to be a nation. Over the years, we have resorted to a legion of measures to remedy the situation.
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At best, these efforts have proved to be merely palliative. We have juggled with the structure of the so-called federation to little avail. From a three region structure, we went to four. When one pivotal region threatened to secede, we hurriedly created twelve states thus jettisoning the regional arrangement. Twelve soon became nineteen and nineteen, twenty-one. Still responding to those fundamental and foundational issues that refuse to go away, we made it to thirty. Still not done, we are now thirty-six with as many demands. And we are none the better.
President Yar’adua may be slow but one thing most people are agreed on is that he is sincere. But it will take much more than sincerity and a 7-point agenda to take Nigeria to that place of glory. Whether by design or default, our founding fathers bequeathed us a house with a dubious foundation. This action I can neither condemn nor commend. Knowing the deviousness of the British, they may have been left with little choice. Nobody blames a man if he moves into a house in dire need of restructuring and maintenance. It may be all he can afford.
But he will most certainly come under harsh criticism if he does nothing afterwards. This generation must accept the blame for allowing the precarious state of our commonwealth to persist. Our leaders sometimes say we have no other country but this one. That may be true for most of ‘us’ but certainly not for ‘them.’ Their treasures and loot are safely stashed offshore and at the slightest hint of trouble, they’ll zap before you can even spell OTA. We are the ones who will be left in the lurch.
Will this house survive, or more appropriately, can this house survive? It most certainly can; if we are prepared to take a critical and studied look at the foundation and muster the requisite will and courage to take remedial action. That will and courage is the stuff of a fierce brand of patriotism that we must imbibe if we hope to save the situation. It was what drove an upper class Hungarian named Theodor Herzl to work out an enduring solution to the Jewish question. In 1897, in Basle Switzerland, he superintended the birthing of Zionism with its sole aim of creating a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.
Herzl died of a heart attack in 1904 at the mere age of forty four but Zionism thrived in the hearts and hands of men like Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion to witness the inauguration of the independent Jewish state of Israel on May 14, 1948. And who could forget the heroics of amazons like the irrepressible Golda Meier who fought alongside the men to realize one of the greatest miracles of the 20th century.
Sadly, this shade of patriotism and this quality of leadership is rare in these parts. And this is in addition to our tottering foundation. If a new crop of leadership can emerge, who, fired by genuine patriotic zeal, will undertake the costly process of restructuring the polity thereby unleashing the latent potentials in all of Nigeria’s constituent parts, then even a place in the first 20 will merely be our starting point. Without sounding patronizing, I know we have all it takes to pull it off. But if we persist in denial and vacillating as we have done so far, we might just prove some Americans right in the matter of 2015. Apologies to Gen Gowon, but it will be ‘no victor, all vanquished.’ God help us!
Olugu Olugu Orji mnia
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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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