How do you justify shutting down an economy during a major recession with barely 24 hours notice.
“Time for a rethink: Are we a secular or religion-based country?”
We are currently reminded in the media and by our government that Nigeria is in a recession with all its attendant challenges and suffering. We hear about families unable to afford to feed their children. We hear about bread winners committing suicide because of a loss of a job or business. We hear about young people who have lost any hope of employment or indeed any future in Nigeria. The list goes on and on. We also hear from the government of their efforts to ameliorate the suffering of ordinary Nigerians, but lately I have begun to question the sincerity of our leaders that they truly understand the plight of ordinary Nigerian during these trying times.
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I am an entrepreneur who decided about six years ago to do my little bit in bringing expertise and employment opportunities to Nigeria from my base in the UK. I came here full of enthusiasm and drive to set up not just one but two successful businesses employing over thirty young Nigerians in the process. My experience has been one of disappointment and sheer frustration not just with the lack of infrastructure, which I have come to embrace as one of the challenges of running a business in any developing country, but with the nonsensical attitude and policies of the government.
Take for instance the upcoming holiday on Monday 12th December which no one knew about until about 5.00pm on 8th December. I can actually recall a similar situation during the last Muslim holiday of Eid when businesses were on tenterhooks for about three days not knowing whether they would be open for business or not the next day. Maybe our leaders don’t understand how the private sector works and I would bet my mortgage (as we say in England) on them not having a clue as to how private business works as the majority of them have not done an honest day’s work in their lives. Private sector businesses work best in a climate of certainty. where they are able to make plans and pursue their business objectives.
Declaring a public holiday a day before the event is a retrograde step and not in keeping with running a modern economy. Pursuing the sighting of a moon before announcing a festival or religious occasion might have been the norm in 1620 but not in 2016.
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I am a Christian raised in a mixed family of Christians and Muslims, as some Nigerians might be accustomed to, and I have a huge reverence for the Islamic faith and tenets, but, I think as a nation we need to embrace a secular future if we are to move forward in our mentality. Let us jettison this sharia and ecclesiastical courts our religious leaders are clamouring for and embrace a modern economy which is increasingly based on knowledge and technology.
For a country so renowned as being a religious one, with churches and mosques on every street corner, we should have indeed set up a New Jerusalem or Mecca, on this soil but we have sadly ended up with an impoverished and wretched generation of Nigerians. For me, I wonder somehow what Christianity or Islam has brought to these shores and whether it has made our people any more enlightened. Should we perhaps not go back to worshipping the gods of our ancestors? At least back then we were a proud and culturally forward looking people.
Ayo Otubanjo
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