Where does the problem lie?
The Trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.
Chinua Achebe (The Trouble with Nigeria). Once upon a time, a significant number of people collectively congregated to struggle for “change” after been exposed to physical, financial and of course psychosocial difficulties under tyrannical power of government for over decades.
These people claimed to be dwelling in a democratic realm, yet have been suppressed and deprived of their basic rights by the ruling class. To their perception, the ruling power was unfairly destructive by taking malevolent delectation in incurring genocidal wrath and impoverishing the country’s economy.
Triumphantly, the people had unprecedentedly and democratically dislodged the ruling power, thereby accomplished their aims of vanquishing their chief problems. Lo Alack! Instead of changing for the better, they only might have made a retrograde change.
The litany of eerie incidences invading Nigeria every day is perturbing and can simply enable us to understand that Nigeria’s problems did not lie solely in the changed Jonathan’s government. Quite aeons the system had been broken and is continuously sinking not even hitherto Buhari’s administration either.
But is the old faulty Nigeria truly resistible to the constraints of positive change? Certainly NO! “Nigeria can change today if she discovers leaders who have the will, the ability and the vision. Such people are rare in time or place.
But it is the duty of enlightened citizens to lead the way in their discovery and to create an atmosphere conducive to their emergence. If this conscious effort is not made, good leaders like good money will be driven out by bad”–Chinua Achebe in his book The Trouble With Nigeria.
Contrary to our thinking, leadership is servitude and is far beyond the servitude of enriching oneself to reach the peak of affluence. Therefore, leaders’ potentials are characterized by nothing more than their capability to render services to their followers and to successfully deliver their sovereign states.
Conspicuously, the epitome of this form of governance that is broadly desired by every sound thinking Patriot of which we are currently witnessing in Borno state is not a melodrama.
The governor’s zeal to stand firmly to the challenge of self example, swimming against the tides of insecurity and to ensure the resuscitation of his falling state and of course the entire North should be emulated by our leaders everywhere.
Regardless of ethnicity, regionalism, racial sentiment, have we all been self-critical, pondering over our imperfections and striving to make positive impacts on our societies, states and nation at large by following the Zulum’s Footsteps, only then we can transmogrify the negative change to a better positive and make Nigeria a salubrious nation to live.
Abba Muhammad Tawfiq is a 4oo level Physiotherapy student at the University of Maiduguri.
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