It is said that when the foundation of a thing is faulty, whatever structure placed on it would eventually fail. In the same vein, the lawyers would say while tendering evidence, that you cant place something on nothing and expect it to stand. Obviously, the most critical of Nigeria's problems stems from its colonization, independence, the manner it was given and the handlers for the first few years; hence the FOUNDATION.
When I refer to the challenges of Nigeria as foundational, I don't mean the tribal, ethnic or religious. Because these in themselves are strengths 'our strength in diversity'. I refer simply to the value system inculcated in the followership by the various men who ruled the regions as at the period of independence, the indoctrinations' and paradigms that were laid as the psychological and cerebral foundations of the followership by the leadership. In my opinion our founding fathers accentuated the TRIBE above the NATION.
Dwelling on the errors of our plain founding fathers and the greed of the military despots that have come after them would be tantamount to crying over spilt milk, and would definitely not lead us out of the quagmire that our beloved nation has found itself. Neither would it disentangle us from the cobweb of corruption, indiscipline unaccountability and lack of realistic vision. What our generation needs to do is to identify for itself a purpose, a mission and a vision, setting apart ourselves while forging a common ideology to guide our sovereignty as one nation under God.
To preach the message of change would be one time too many, however what I intend to do is not so far off. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you a message of difference. Einstein once said that to do a certain thing the same way and expect a different result is one of the definitions' of madness. We need to prepare and develop ourselves to be totally different from what obtains presently especially in governance. We would need to agree that to achieve our dream of a functional society there has to be a complete departure from what presently obtains a complete departure from the status quo in our education and thought patterns, in the way we address ourselves treat ourselves regard ourselves love ourselves and believe in ourselves.
We need to realize that while being religious is not a bad idea, God would not come down to fix our challenges; we only have to begin from changing the kind of thoughts we think about everything. We need to totally abandon the impossibility/negative mindset and develop a creative and positive can do resilient attitude, we need to stop addressing ourselves as a third world people and begin to behave just the way anybody from the so called developed nations would behave in our businesses lets give first class service to our clients, in our education, lets give our best in research and study. Let us give ourselves over to consistent self development. Lee kuan yew the first prime minister of independent Singapore said in his book from third world to first world. We have to inspire confidence and excellence in ourselves.
Let us take responsibility for fixing our country Nigeria, would we not have fallen into the scope of Einstein's definition of madness if we choose to echo the clichés of old about how Nigeria can never be good again, how corruption can never be eradicated, how we can never have stable electricity, stable water, functional healthcare, security of life and property and first class educational system. Should we not realize that Nigeria doesn't belong to the European, or American or Chinese that we hope to import as an expatriate or in whose country we prefer to go and slave away our more profitable youthful year and vigour? After all the expatriate doesn't exactly want things to work right in your country so he can continue taking advantage of you let us be different, let our generation take responsibility for the challenges of this nation. Let us as a generation commit ourselves to making things work differently in our country. We have had enough of the government of a few by a few for a few. Things must work. The more challenges we tackle earnestly and creatively, the more jobs we would create in our country, the more millionaires we would create, the more poverty we would eradicate.
Nigeria will be Great Again.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.
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