This is the time to re-awaken Nigeria

By 

Nduka Irabor

 

CERTAIN circumstances in the life of a nation pose challenges to its citizens. These challenges, in time and space vary from nation to nation. It could be war, pestilence, natural disaster, want, poverty or inertia in leadership.

The magnitudes of these afflictions also vary, but there is a commonality that is established regardless of the trouble with each nation: The capacity of each nation to grapple with these challenges, more often than not, determines its destiny. The matrix is arrayed in such a way that, in every adversity, there is an opportunity for a break from the past. A country can weave on its ruins, solid foundation for a future greatness. But the conscious awareness of the problem in the first instance depends on the virile and active generation of that nation at any point in time.

Our country is at that crossroad right now. Some say, it has been so for a long time. There is also right now an anxiety about what is to be done. For three decades, some would say, that concern has dominated political discourse. But more than at any point in time, we are at the threshold of panic.

The indices of decay - totems of the omission, commission or inertia of the older generation - dwarf us like shrubs in the tropical forest. People of my generation have elected to do something.

That was why we met in Benin City, Edo State last Saturday, to set in motion the articulation of new perspectives and fresh ideas on how we can save ourselves, save future generations and save this country from going over the precipice. We gathered to reverse our legendary of adversity and wasted time, to seek the platform on which we can erect the foundations for a great future.

The Initiative

Since that weekend, I have read a lot of interpretations as to the reasons for the Benin City meeting. Happily, none has told what transpired. But all were based on panic from predictable quarters, scared of an inevitable generational, structural and ideological shift in the balance of power. It is logical to state these misperceptions, in order to establish the origin and mission of the Benin initiative. Some of these misperceptions are that:

• The group is a front for President Olusegun Obasanjo’s second term bid.
• The gathering was hastily convened to show solidarity with the Speaker, Hon. Ghali Umar Na’Abba who was being made a scapegoat for the frosty relationship between the legislature and the executive.
• It is the satellite, a cover for some powerful persons in the country who have presidential ambitions but are relying on the vigour and vision of the younger generation, etc.

To reduce the reason for the initiative to such mundane matters is to distort recent history. In terms of vision, our concern predates the Obasanjo administration. Flowing from that therefore, a truth is established:

The death of General Sani Abacha in June 1998, exposed the rot in the power structure. Years of military dictatorship which meant absence of partisan politics, created an army of predatory elite-people who stumbled on and held public office for their own ends. While the country bled, their pockets bulged with their loot.

Abacha’s death caught us unprepared. There appeared to have been a great vacuum. But the General Abdulsalami Abubakar transition programme seemed to have won the trust and confidence of local and international observers. Cashing in on this rare breather, a group of young Nigerians decided to meet weekly at the Lagos Motor Boat Club to analyse and seek solutions to the political and economic problems of our country. From their professional and business backgrounds, they brought the ideas to the transition programme.

These young men gambled with the choice of Candidate Olusegun Obasanjo for President. They brought money, ideas, structures and manpower. The thinking was that the Obasanjo presidency would offer stability, on which the energy of the young would be placed at the disposal of the country. They campaigned for and delivered the Obasanjo presidency. But what we have at the end of the day, is a proverbial return to Babylon. The exclusion of young people and the recycling of old men, has led to an absence of a deserved infusion of fresh perceptions in our attitudes, robust policies and belief in governance.

About six weeks ago, the nucleus of this group and many more like-minds met in Lagos. They appraised the gains of 18 months of democracy, projected into the future and concluded that the status quo will not yield the radical break from the past, nor has the status quo tapped into the creativity, boundless energy and vision of my generation.

The Benin meeting is a just an expanded scope of an idea that crystallised two years ago. Therefore, it is very wrong and somewhat misplaced to assume that our quest is to grab power now or to unseat the old guard who, in any case has the people’s mandate - including the mandate of the conveners of this meet as earlier alluded to.

Why we meet

In some way, I have outlined the reason for this initiative. Our objective is change, but the short-term goal is not power grab. We aspire to cause a drastic change in the exercise of power for its own sake in governance. There ought to be much more to public life than the scramble for unbridled power. The emphasis here is on how best to manage power in a humane way to enable and energise the polity than on who holds the reins of power. That is because, we realise that governance has minimized and stunted rather than raised the potentials of this country.

What I say here may sound abstract. But I want to put in graphic outline the consuming power of the rot in our system.

In the last two months, our seemingly numbed nerves have been jolted by the death of at least six young and promising Nigerians. Death is inevitable but some deaths are preventable. The manner of their death reminds us of the failure of governance: armed robbers in Lagos and Abuja cut them down at their prime.

The killing of Andy Iyamah rudely aroused my own consciousness. Andy was my brother; two days before his death, we were at the funeral of two older ones in Delta State. Andy, in his early forties, was an enterprising self-starter, father of four young kids who fell to abject insecurity of lives and property, underscored by the failure of governance.

If this is closer home and to my heart, take a count: Deepak Mehta, we were next door neighbours for two years. A Canadian of Indian extraction, was until he was killed, the managing director of Equitorial Trust Bank (ETB). He also fell to the bullets of armed bandits. So did Adetunji Oyekanmi, with whom I had had and broken bread until his death, the Managing Director of Cornerstone Insurance and Al-Hassan Alasa, an Executive Director of Standard Trust Bank (STB).

There is also the case of Mr. Mohammed Shuaibu, the former Managing Director of Virgin Technologies, an information technology company. He too, was murdered. I do not refer to them because they are affluent or influential. There are thousands of others who die daily in similar circumstances. But whether they are princes or paupers, the deaths underline the unprecedented deterioration of security. We now live in a jungle, made so because of the failure of leadership.

Beyond these, the evidences of a deeper malaise are scrawled on the nation, like graffiti on the walls of a school dormitory; a montage of poverty and squalor, wickedness and sadism, and greed and avarice. The picture you look at hits you with numbing severity.

Is it education? Is it water? Is it telephone? Is it housing? Is it transportation? Is it electricity? Is it food? Is it health? Given the depth of our potentials and resources, the rights of every citizen to all of these amenities should be taken for granted. But that is not what we see. There is a persisting want in the midst of wealth.

We have an abundance of petroleum resources. Yet petrol is scarce, kerosene is not available and diesel cannot be found anywhere. Telephone services ought to be easily within reach. The market is waiting to absorb a huge volume, but we cannot provide it. Instead, owning one is a symbol of affluence. Our economy is in free-fall because there is an absence of vision.

The more trying and perhaps frightening is the corporate well-being and existence of the country. Forty years after independence, people are more inclined to talk about the tribe instead of the country. Ethnic irredentism has become a badge, which some of the most prominent in this country are now proud to wear like a prized medal.

From the Niger-Delta, to the South-East, South-West, the Middle-Belt and the North, there is a strange retreat to the tribe. Ethnic militias have sprung up accordingly. Several clashes in the North, South, East and West have reduced the entire country to a massive killing field. Strangely, government shows no capacity to restrain or to nip this strange phenomenon.

There is despondency in the land. There is a total loss of faith in government. The euphoria of return to democracy has been squandered by inertia, lack of creativity and the reduction of politics to blood sport as is evident from the disagreements between the executive and the legislature.

It has become evident that something must give way. Among the young generation, there is a consensus that it is not the country’s future that will give. It is also not the happiness of our people. What needs to give is the statuesque. It has to move with caring and grace and a clear vision as to how to unleash the latent energies of our people. We have operated in the same fashion since independence and have nothing worthy of to show for it. The country has been frozen in time! Where there is movement, it appears we are always headed backwards.

The people who met in Benin do not say they have a hold on all baggage of solutions. But their generation do not wish to travel the routes of the past, which has left us rooted on the same spot and overtaken by the rest of the world. They wish to try new concepts, new perspectives, and adopt new attitudes.

Our mission statement is evolving. Regardless, we envision a great Nigeria, not in the same way our leaders have dreamt or simply paid lip-service to since independence. We want to work for it. Our major concern is to offer fresh perspectives to the nation’s many socio-economic problems. We want to revive faith in the unity of the country. Our vision is to entrench the principles of fairness, justice and equity. We want to offer hope. We want to awaken the latent potentials of our nation.

Can it be done?

I have an abiding faith in what I call Generation-N. I call it this name because the people of this generation are the authentic Nigerians. They have borne the brunt of the misrule of the past. They suffered the deprivations of the civil war. They were victims of the questionable debts incurred by the old generation of leaders. Their businesses take the beatings and setbacks from policy inconsistencies. They went to schools largely without scholarships, unlike the old generation.

In spite of that, the faint glimmer of hope for the country’s possible regeneration has come from their creative energies. From banking to manufacturing, they hold a thin line to the rest of the country to come over to the discovery of what can change when people take themselves seriously. All the performing sectors of the country are led by this generation.

We are emphatic that if they are allowed to contribute to policy, we can begin to remove Nigeria from the snare of bad governance.

Even then, the rest of the world is run by people of this generation. In Europe, it is the creative energies of the people of this generation that are reinventing post-cold war Europe. In South Africa, this generation is in charge. Armed with new ideas promoted by the cosmopolitan complexion of the new world made possible by the Internet, they are creating a new world.

If Nigeria hopes to mend, it must let Generation-N determine how it is governed. That is not to say that the old guard must hand over to this generation now. But nothing will change, unless we let the creative energy and fighting spirit of this generation tackle the challenges it understands so well.

Nduka Irabor,  is a member of the House of Representatives.