Fellow Nigerians, why are we here ?

www.nigeriaonourminds.com

This question on the surface is quite innocuous in the sense that the answer is equally obvious: to live of course. Yes, to live; which brings us to the next question which is how do we intend to live our lives on earth or put in broader relief, how do we make our presence counted? Are we content just to make up the number or make a meaning of this life we are living?
These are the thought provoking questions that prod our everyday existence as we plod along to find our different ways in life. Yet, there are ample evidences and proven experiences that reinforce the rationalization of our collective desires to know ourselves and define our existence on earth.

The human population is statistically documented globally, but within this statistical exercise, men like Aristotle, Plato, Albert Einstein, Graham Bell and even nearer home, Philip Emeagwali, have long ago and still in our own generation broken away from the limitations of established traditions and put a huge lie to complacency that we can’t better our today for our tomorrow. They have taught us that IT IS POSSIBLE TO STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD AND BE COUNTED.

This is the sole reason behind this novel idea of nigeriaonourminds.com. We aspire to collaborate with all progressive forces to change our country from what it is today to what we wish it be in future. We are talking about a mass movement which will change our country into a place where all men and women can walk tall, erect in the spirit of the Spanish war credo which charged that “Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

We claim to be a practising democracy, but of what sort? Can we in all honesty trust that our democracy springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free and fair elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the nation?

The true spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible. The ideals of a true democracy are that it is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Conversely, the demise of democracy has been attributed largely to the passivity of the people: when they refuse or choose to sit back in the comfort of their homes, resign their fate to a few and believe simply that things would naturally be alright. But experiences here at home and demonstrably in the recent actions in the United States of America and Ghana have proven that PEOPLES ACTION AND NOT PAASIVITY is the only MEANS to an END.

The discourse here bothers on moral and material issues and how we as either individuals or groups can find a meaning to what we seek in life. Is it relevance in politics or government, pulpit, academics, business, show business, sports, social work etc? If it is, how do we better mankind in the short and long run?

Doubtless, there are a few in our society today who find themselves in these privileged positions. Just as a good number of these positions are earned, others equally are not. But the larger question is: how have we used these positions to benefit both our environment and people? We should pause a little and ask ourselves the question that in the conduct of our daily affairs are our motives to benefit us as individuals or the people? Are we selfless in providing for the common good or selfish in our own greed for comfort and security?

If you own a mobile phone, you must have received an SMS from the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) which reads thus: “NIGERIA: good people, great nation”. We understand this is an on-going re-branding effort put together by the Minister of Information, Prof Dora Akunyili. By that message, we are meant to believe that our country is working. We all have a faint idea of how countries work either from heresies, documentaries, visits abroad etc. A working country is where our brothers and sisters queue up and experience de-humanising treatments from visa officials daily in their struggle to get out to. They want to find meaning to their under utilised lives in a place where there is uninterrupted electricity, integrated transport system that gives you a choice to make between buying and using your own car or depending on an integrated transportation system that is reliable, affordable and generally people friendly. These Nigerians want a place where there is medicare even for the poor who can’t afford it, education for the indigent and social security for the unemployed. They want to have a gasp of what living a life really is before passing on from the face of the earth. In the description of a country that works, definitely our country is not only on that list, it is not making convincing efforts to get there. We are all living witnesses to this.

This is why we need to put this latest message from Akunyili into true perspective. Let us put aside the military era and concentrate more on the present democratic experiment which began with President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999. All of Akunyili’s predecessors including the very most recent, Fred Chikelu, Frank Nweke to John Odey have all engaged in this shadow chasing but lucrative delusion of re-branding Nigeria. Just two questions: since the re-branding started, have we bothered to step back a moment to reflect on the impact these efforts have made? The fact that each successive minister of information has engaged in the same image profiling only says one thing: the effort is a monumental disaster that benefits only those pursuing it at our expense.
This brings us to the next question: Why is Nigeria re-branding? Or put the other way round, what are we re-branding? Is it electoral fraud, corruption, ineffective leadership, non-existent infrastructure, criminality, ethnicity or its failure as a nation? Just what is it? Our brothers and sisters, is it possible to provide a solution when the problem is first neither diagnosed nor established?

It is clear that no single information minister has had an iota idea of what his or her main brief is in charting an information road map for our country. For every so-called efforts or progress they all claim the country has made all these years, Nigerians and even those in power know that these efforts are just not enough and a lot more still could have been achieved. Therefore, the first question or approach for any reasonable person to ask or take is that: since we are not lacking the resources, why are we where we are today or what do we do to reverse our present position as a country that doesn’t work? As has been proven severally, anything else is an illusion and a mere chasing of shadows.

At nigeriaonourminds.com, we patriotically believe indeed in the possibility that our country can still be strong, indivisible and great as any other, no doubt about that. However, let us not fall prey and be deceived by those who ride on their high horses and whose tales we already know and categorically label as tissues of lies and self serving. We must prove that our salvation lie not within these established failures, because they have proven times without number, that like a leopard, nothing would ever change.

Our lesson today is to charge all progressive minds that include students, unemployed, old and young, Hausa, Ibo, Yoruba and the minorities to make a clean break with the debacle that confront us today as a failed nation and begin a deliberate approach to rebuild a new nation of our dreams and those of our forefathers. It is not enough to sit back and wish with nostalgia where and how Nigeria should be and operate; we need to get involved in the praxis of collectively making our country great.

Our collective charge today is to begin a deliberate search for role models. By this, we mean individuals who have demonstrated in their little ways that we can trust them with our collective will; individuals who have shown in their contribution to service in the recent past that if we give them the earth they can land us on the moon.

We are talking of the Donald Dukes, Pat Utomis, Shehu Umars and several unsung heroes who exist and have distinguished themselves in their little ways in bringing meaning to why they were where they were at that point in history. These individuals are the true Nigerian brand, we don’t need millions of Naira to re-brand Nigeria, they are our brand and the new face every one of us hope for in our country.

Our clarion call has become more strident now because of the recent political developments in our polity. When the present regime inaugurated the Electoral Reform Committee headed by erstwhile Chief Justice of the Federation, Mohammed Uwais, the impression created was that the administration had resolved to put a new set of rules through which we can truly make an electoral choice as to who represents us at any levels of government.

But today, the crucial decision as to who nominates the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), the election umpire that has witnessed several of its contrived electoral results upturned by the electoral courts on grounds of fraudulent practices, is till resident with the President rather than the National Judicial Council (NJC) as recommended. The latter would have enshrined a more credible electoral process than the former whose status quo has been restored. So what has changed?

Another sore point is the decision to allow elected officials to be sworn in before all matters challenging electoral verdicts are concluded in the election tribunals. We all know that these are legal traps that had been successfully exploited by the few who are manipulating the levers of power through rigging their cronies into office and usurping the collective will of the people to choose. If we claim to be practising a presidential system of government borrowed from the Americans, why do those at the helms of our affairs selectively imbibe certain provisos amenable to them and ditch those that would benefit the general good and strengthen the so-called ‘democracy’ which is supposedly a government of the people?

Here in nigeriaonourminds.com we are fuelled by the belief that democracy is an ongoing pursuit of the common good by all the people. And as Alexis de Tocqueville in summary captured this essence succinctly in his thesis on Democracy in America, that unless individual citizens were regularly involved in the action of governing themselves, self government would pass from the scene.

Tocqueville’s treatise provides the sense that people’s participation is the animating spirit and force in a society predicated on voluntarism. What we seek is beyond the mere profession of democratic ideals where we would be reluctant to bear the burden of taking a decision. We complain daily about happenings around us and our circumstances in a failed system or lack of it. But we need to step back and recognise that the problem is not about the system that we croon about daily but about ourselves: we refuse to act or get involved in actions that would change the failed system forever.

As we undertake this historic journey, we need to recognise that there are enemies at the gates of our enterprise. But most importantly, these external enemies are not as powerful as the enemies within, the hidden and malignant inertia that foreshadows more certain destruction to our life and future than any nuclear warhead. Nothing can be more debilitating or a more devastating tragedy than the death of man’s faith in himself and his power to direct his future.
Now let us reminisce on these words from Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address where he summarised thus, “This country, with its institutions, belong to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.” Once we soberly reflect on Lincoln’s words, the onus is on us to firmly banish the gnawing power of doubt in our abilities to better our current existence so that we grasp a deeper understanding of WHY WE ARE HERE.