Niran Adedokun Penultimate week, I was privileged to have had a live Instagram conversation with a very impressive young lady, Ifune...
Niran Adedokun
As expected, she had loads of questions for me. She owned up
to the confusion this country has become, in spite of its evidently enormous
natural and human resources. She particularly expressed the frustrations of the
burgeoning young population, which has mostly neither seen nor partaken of the
good of the land and how that inspires the generational urge for migration.
Palpably worried about all of it and armed with the fact that I have definitely
experienced more of Nigeria than her, (given the slight difference in age), the
lady shot what seemed like a conundrum at me: “Do you think there is a future
for Nigeria?”
Now, that is a question, whose answer was clear if I was to
be honest. But as a person of faith, I have grown to believe and indeed
benefited from the theology of faith and positive speaking. A practising
Christian should live by faith and not by sight. In other words, regardless of
what you see, faith in God that things will be better is what you should
confess and continue to hold on to. However, I am also a pragmatist and I
understand that there is only a thin boundary between dogmatic optimism and delusion!
Gratefully, Christianity itself presents a significant
latitude for practicality. While it invites the faithful to have solid,
unshakable faith in God, it admonishes that productive faith is attended by a
measure of work. The import of this is that those who have faith in God have
roles to play in the actualisation of their desires, faith become effectual
thereafter!
The popular Arab saying: “Trust in Allah, but tie your
camel,” is also believed to be hinged on this doctrine in Islam. It is believed
to have derived from Hadith Tirmidhy, where a man was said to have come to
Prophet Mohammed (SAW) asking if he could leave his hires and put his trust in
Allah that the hires would be protected from drifting away. The prophet was
said to have advised him to tie his camel and thereafter, put his trust in
Allah. The instruction here is that the faithful must, rather than being laid
back, do their part before relying on Allah for perfection. This, to my mind,
is where Nigeria fails in the journey to significant nationhood and I told my
younger friend so.
While Nigerians, leader and the led, seem so optimistic
about the survival of their country, the question we do not ask however is how
much work are we putting into preparing for this future we romanticise about?
How much is Nigeria preparing for the challenge of the daily transformations
that the increasingly competitive environment of the world possesses? My answer
during this interview was that Nigeria could indeed have a great future if it
does reconsider its current unhelpful course.There are so many ways Nigeria is
an enemy to its own future, and I intend to share my thoughts on two of them
presently.
The first is that Nigeria has remained nothing than a mere
geographic expression 60 years after independence. It has refused to
metamorphose into a nation of peoples who share common dreams. As a matter of
fact, the question of nationhood has never been trampled upon as currently in
Nigeria. I will give an example.
On August 28, a group of lawyers wrote to inform the
Attorney General Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami, about
the formation of a breakaway faction of the 67-year-old Nigerian Bar
Association! True, the Nigerian constitution guarantees the rights of citizens
to association but the motivation of this group of lawyers should break the
heart of everyone loyal to the Nigerian cause. Although it sidestepped the real
issues in the letter addressed to Malami, an earlier statement by two lawyers,
Nuhu Ibrahim and Abdulbasit Suleiman, had given away the main and immediate
grouse of the group.
It reads: “…No wonder, NBA NEC, which is the highest
decision-making organ of the association failed to uphold the fundamental
principle of fair hearing which in itself, is the fundamental aspect of the
rule of law, on the allegations against the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam
Nasir El-Rufai, as were contained in a petition by Chidi Odinkalu Esq., a long
time foe of His Excellency AND A LAWYER OF EASTERN EXTRACTION, BUT THE NBA
FAILED TO EXTEND THE SAME TREATMENT TO SOUTHERN INVITEES WHO WERE ALSO
PETITIONED AND ARE ALSO ALLEGED TO HAVE COMMITTED SIMILAR OR MORE HUMAN RIGHTS
ABUSES THAN THOSE ALLEGED AGAINST MALLAM EL-RUFAI.” (emphasis mine).
While it is not out of place for members of a professional
body like the NBA to disagree, perhaps even have splinters, that issues of
ethnicity and religion, rather than ideologies related to the development of
the profession or country at large, would precipitate such breakups shows the
extent to which people have lost the sense of propriety in Nigeria.
Professional bodies, like political parties are like yarns used to weave
society together and water down the viciousness of primordial considerations.
When a group of lawyers become the champions of divisions, which if impossible
to resolve internally, could have been subjected to the courts, such country is
trudging on the edge of a precipice.
The second really frightening issue is the way the country
treats its children and youth. Nigeria only plays lip service to the education
of its children as well as the training and empowerment of its youths. So,
currently between 10.5 and 14 million children are out of school without any
aggressive and concerted effort to address the situation.
Recent data from the National Bureau of Statistics indicate
that of the 40 million youths eligible to work in Nigeria, only 14.7 are fully
employed, 11.2 million under employed while a total of 13.1(more than the
population of some countries) are unemployed. Yet, the country has no
population control programmes even though its population is growing at a faster
rate than its productive capacity and no one is paying attention!
So, in 2020, you find 19-year-old Nigerians who have neither
been to school nor received any form of vocational training, in a hurry to get
rich. They then very easily become tools in the hands of more experienced
criminals, as you find in the case of Sunday Shodipe, the suspected serial
killer in Ibadan, Oyo State and the young men alleged to have been responsible
for the murder of MissVera Omozuwa in Benin City earlier this year. That is not
to speak about other evils like Internet fraud, cultism, armed robbery,
kidnapping and vandalism to which Nigeria’s hapless youths become convert by
the day. What is worse is that many parents do not only know of the criminal
engagement of their children these days, they in fact endorse and even
facilitate them.
This is why one needs cautious optimism about Nigeria’s
prospects. A country cannot rise above the quality of its people, a fact this
country does not seem to understand regardless of how much warning of the
dangers ahead the rest of the world offers. Not that hope is lost though but
time is running out fast. A country where religious and ethnic emotions override
reasoning; where youth employment rises uncontrollably; where population growth
supersedes gross domestic product will see increased insecurity, and poverty is
sitting on a ticking time bomb and going nowhere.
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