NIGERIA @ 54: MY THOUGHTS,
DEVELOPMENT AND THE CURENT ADMINISTARTION
Declaration of
independence does not in any way signifies true independence
Nigeria is a country with prospect at the declaration of her
intention to gain her independence in the year 1957 before final actualization
in 1960. During this period, majority of our leaders are under 30’s with just
few above the 30 age bracket, this signifies the hope that the future belongs
to the youth. Soon after independence series of coups and counter coups were
faced with as the military seized power until the year 1999 when succor soon
came back to all Nigerian as the regime of democratically elected government
return to power. The golden question is from 1960 to 1999 what has been the
gain of the Nigerian populace and from 1999 till now what have we gained as
faithful citizens of this once christened great nation Nigeria.
Nigeria began her struggles with great prospect to attaining
the best economy in the world within a short period of time. The likes of Singapore,
China, and India amongst others dreamt of having a country like Nigeria as a
frontier to liberate them but today Nigerians would rather gather money to
travel to this country for menial jobs, this is the country we live in today.
The question is, is the prospect still there? Are Nigerians still faithful and
believe Nigeria can still be great? In recent times Nigeria as spend more on recurrent
expenditure and even lost trillions of dollars to corruption due to the
ineffectiveness of our anti graft agencies. The question again is whose fault
it is?
The constitution of the land guarantees the survival of all
citizens via the government to provide her citizens with needed amenities such
as welfare, security of life’s and property, quality education, equality of
opportunities among others and same constitution retrieves same back by saying
it is not justiciable and cannot be enforced in any court of law. The question
here again is are the drafters not alive to the rights of the citizens being
enforceable? Now it’s clear that Nigeria in on a verge collapse if no drastic
step is taken. Rather than being
pessimistic I will be optimistic.
Developing a nation like Nigeria needs a strong legal frame
work that entrenches competency and abhors any kind of recklessness on the part
of any incumbent government. The constitution of the land provides a viable
means from which the country can be successfully runned if and only the
constitution can be enforced to its letter and followed accordingly. The
current administration as it stands has not shown any sign of serious
commitment to the plight of the Nigerian citizens. The Jonathan led
administration has been nonchalant in tacking the rot in the various sectors of
the country and would rather trade words with opposition and violate clear
provisions of our laws.
The current administration as refused to investigate and
prosecute its cronies found wanting and would rather use state apparatus to
intimidate the opposition and other Nigerians trying to contribute their quota
to the development of their nation. The Stella Odua saga is unattended to,
20billion dollars missing, subsidy scam, immigration scam, and the recent 9.3billion
dollars intercepted in South Africa, this has gone to show that this current
administration has failed in its entirety, unemployment is the order of the
day, epileptic power supply even despite privatization the current
administration still have to bail out the power sector with another billions of
naira as their cronies are in charge. Where do we go from here?
In correcting the ills in our country, then we must go back
to our roots, the yoruba’s will say “odo toba gbagbe orisun oma gbe ni” meaning
a river that forgets its root will dry up, so as Nigerians we go back to our
roots trace our misdeeds as individuals and correct same. Nigeria would only
get to its desired status if we all committed to the development of this country,
the market women should be faithful and not increase the price of goods all in
the name of festivals, the transporters should not also increase tee fare all
in the name of traffic, the civil servants should be alive to their responsibilities
and be diligent, students should be obedient and focus on their studies, youths
should engage their leaders constructively to better the lots of generations
yet unborn and not demand for 30% or nothing, youths should avoid being used as
political thugs and agents to violate our laws like the PDP is currently doing
with TAN and above all government should live up to expectation and use chapter
two of the constitution as a frame work to measure its performance and our
legislooterslators should probably one day review that chapter of the
constitution to make it enforceable to some extent, as the good of the
enforceability will far outweighs the non enforceability, our judiciary should
be corrupt free and dispense justice without fear or favour.
I believe in a NIGERIA that will grow and be the envy of all
nations one day and someday.
Mubarak Tijani writes
in from lagos
@illuminant_o
08084390248
tijani_mubaraklaw@yahoo.com
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