So, while the pandemic was going away the case of secession in Nigeria was reverberating stronger. Or, in fact the demands, tripled stylishly. For these past months, there have been three secession discourses injected into the population, all, but one has key arrowheads who were somehow becoming well recognized leaders of the people they proclaimed to represent, however, now we know these discourses are politically motivated and some of our perceptions about them are wrong.
Personally, I never expected the whole secession drama to be more than transitory, or the political class to be irresponsible about their obligation to the oneness of Nigeria. However, if you were worried about both possibilities, these past two weeks should reassure you. First, President Muhammadu Buhari is much more committed to keeping the country one, safe and well and he explained this during his now famous Arise Television interview two weeks ago. Also, the conceived notion of silence of the political leadership of the affected regions as tacitly supporting the agitations are now proven not so, as the most of these leaders have cleared the air on it and they were unequivocally too.
Perhaps, the National Orientation Agency (NOA) needs to embark on a sensitization effort so our people know that development and greatness of nation don’t happen overnight, but by series of purposeful events; these including the rational and unbiased views, notions and loyalty to the nation as well as the rightful choices of leaders over years. We must also know that things don’t change themselves, but by our intentions and actions. One can imagine that these days most Nigerians oppose anything that isn’t in their personal or regional interest regardless of its upsides or downsides to the country.
In Nigeria, we suffer from bad governance without reprimanding ourselves for ignoring visionaries for the visionless. Our leaders are now usually selected for the wrong reasons, not because of capability and credentials; we select our leaders based on their geographies and faiths. This has weakened accountability and impoverished the public! It amounts to lack of ingenuity and foolishness to support anything that would be harmful to our offspring and us. But in our country today, we do for the obvious reasons – region, religion and ethnicity.
Incompetent and dishonest leadership, which are almost usual the cause of a mismanaged society, affects everyone; no tribe, region or religion can be insulated from its consequences even when they are supporting it. It is therefore a wrong disposition to ignore what is right for what is wrong and including decision-making about who and how we should be ruled, regardless of where we belong. We cannot be expecting a good country from continued bad decisions from wrong dispositions.
It does not make any sense for us to like our ethnicity and regions more than our country, because we cannot thrive in a failed, unsecured or underdeveloped country. Yet all the important decisions in our country are now shaped by bigotry rather than merit. We forgot that a key to a prosperous country is merit; if our country is going to amount to anything, then it will be on merit, not on how much the population likes their various regions, tribes or religions. We are all Nigerians. God wanted us here, so he created us here and gave us different tribes, locations and religions, so those who discriminate based on ethnicity and religion must understand that if God wanted us to belong to different nations, he would have created us apart. But he wanted us together and that is why he created us as a nation.
Agreed, bad politicians are using religion and ethnicity as a tool for setting the rules against themselves in order for them to insulate themselves from the populist anger that they have caused by mismanaging our country. But, it is very surprising that people – from all ethnicity and religion who seem wise, thoughtful and intelligent can act so dumb over and over again by continuing to fall for them and because of unnecessary sentiments ignore the needful insistence for the judicious management of our common wealth for the well being of all, instead we are engrossed with the struggle for who rule us not how we are ruled. If the leadership of a country is good, it will do well regardless of the origin and religion of those that constitute the leadership.
It is worth noting that it is not a region, religion or ethnicity that is the problem of Nigeria and none of them can be a solution either. The problem of Nigeria is bad men and women – from all ethnicities, regions and religions who have no interest in the commonwealth and well being of its people. So when it comes to selecting the leadership for our country, we should resist the temptation of sentiments.
