Time to wake up and save Nigeria -By Fola Ojo

Fola Ojo

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for GOOD MEN to do nothing” – Edmund Burke

Tina co-owned a jewelry store in Wisconsin, USA. Each time I swung by her small-business office, she had something to say about how government had failed the people in every sense of the word. She was articulate in driving home her conservative opinions and ideologies on many issues. Her thoroughness drew me closer to her talking American politics.

Tina was never a politician and she never ran for public office. About a year after I first met her, she decided that instead of getting angry with the government; she would become part of the solution. She launched her campaign, and ran for public office. When Americans get angry with their government, they run for political office. But when Nigerians get angry, they avoid running for office. In America, an angry man is permitted by the people to hold power. In Nigeria, the hungry is coaxed by godfathers to grab power as he sits at home expecting daily returns.

When an angry man in Nigeria runs away from running for public office, he leaves the terrain for the hungry and then later, condemns and castigates the hyenas who occupy positions of power. Angry Nigerians have forgotten that an orange ball of the citrus species cannot give out more than the juice in it when squeezed. What a fool knows, whatever it is, is all that he knows. He does not have more knowledge than what is in his heart and head.

There are unconscionable actions and dreadful inactions taking place in governments. Each time the polity is filled with misery it is because of the mutual feelings of disappointment in the men and women elected to represent the interests of the voters in government. Nigerians want change. They deserve it. But the angry-for-nothing good people have created lacunas for the hungry to seize power because they refuse to run.

I define insanity as consistently huddling up in the same pattern of lifestyles with the expectation of different living outcomes. If you possess the innate ability to change what is wrong with a system, why fold your arms, turn to a social media tiger and become a master in opprobrium? Why must you profusely point out the ills in a society without stepping in to correct them?

For many years, Nigerians have always pilloried every government in power. From the inception of this Republic in 1999, all Presidents have come under all forms of pounding for alleged ineptitude. Many said that Olusegun Obasanjo was the worst that ever happened to Nigeria. Umoru Musa Yar’ Adua was called different kinds of names when he was President. Goodluck Jonathan was not so lucky; he was dubbed clueless and fruitless. Now, according to critics, Muhammadu Buhari is an unlettered president with no shred of idea how to make government work.

Blame not the people who always have something bad to say about those who lead them. Nigerians live in untold hardship. Pain and suffering should be an abnormality in an economy with a GDP of $481bn and an annual budget of over N7tn. Five years of Goodluck Jonathan gave Nigeria N591tn in profits from oil and gas and the first year of Buhari drew in a total about $3.46bn (about N692bn). Nigeria is stupendously rich and it shows in the 12,000 number of people who own private jets registered in the United States of America.

Instead of putting our wealth to work pro bono publico, treasuries are looted loosely as hunger and poverty spike. Nigeria’s problems are not just rooted in the infractions of hungry characters who occupy public office; they are woven in angry good people who refuse to run for office. Nothing will change if those who believe they are true change-agents are on the sideline hooping and howling.

While good people in Nigeria are speaking grammar; delinquents in leadership are coasting home with undeserved manna. While many are busy criticising government, the goons in positions of authority are busy aggrandising. Nigeria is a land where the tout is preferred above the talented and the wussy is in power because wimps let him. Now who do you blame; wussies who always hunger to win or wimps who always waffle and waste his chance to be in charge?

Nigerians have been taken for fools for long and the criminals in the corridors of power know that all you can do is to rant, not run for public office.A country that brags and boasts about exporting religion and importing toothpicks is one historically led by wussies. Nigerians are daily sold a dummy. That is what dummy-hawkers do. But must the people continue to buy it? Until angry Nigerians step in and run for office, not much will run right. There is a power that is greater than the people in power. It is the power of the people who know and exercise the power they have by running for office.

Nigeria is trapped in the noose of a few powerful big men with small minds occupying big seats. For many of them, the love-of-country is a farce, a fiction and a parody. The future of a nation cannot be left in the hands of these grievous wolves. I believe that constituting the institution of government comes from God. Government is set in place to impact lives. But when institutions of government become a game, what happens to the future of the country?

Edmond Burke once said, “Those who will say nothing in the face of tyranny must endure the rule of idiots”. But who is truly the idiot; the idiot who rules or the man who allows the idiot to reign?

How long can a nation endure when good people have become bystanders and spectators in a game that no one is cheering the players? Good people are the hope and deliverance of Nigeria from the jaws of the killer-whales in power. Do not be muzzled with fear. Make Fear be afraid of you. Let us wake up and save Nigeria.