Is All Hope Really Lost for Nigeria? -By Justin Ehiogu

Justin Ehiogu

It is apparent to note that the giant of Africa, located in the western part of the African continent, has suffered incessant turbulence within the two decades. Though the government has not been very scrupulous in its decisions and other executions in the Politburo, but that does not make other civilians holy, they merely dress in saintly robes.
Since the return of government from the military to civilian rule, there has been a staccato of fashion in the political sector and the economy has hanged in the spiral wheel of diminishing returns. This has snowballed into an incontrovertible penury, that has flooded the entirety of the nation. The fact is, not that some people cannot make a living with their meager income but, it is because the economy is hostile to people. So, it skyrockets the price of a simple household item, to an exorbitant price. The masses would prefer a second handed materials called “Belgium” to new items.
One of the positive factors that appears elusive in the Nigerian terrain is enlightenment, this is a psychological and philosophical concept that equips an individual to achieve the clarity of perception, reason and knowledge.

The obscurity of this phenomenon has originated several insurgent groups. The Boko Haram movement which is predominant in the North Eastern part of Nigeria, in states like Borno, Yobe, Adamawa etc has become the highest menace Nigeria has faced in the last half a decade or So, and it is the most perilous insurgent group that Nigerians have witnessed,with a fundamental ideology which says, “western education is forbidden”. This group of gigantic psychopaths has obliterated several private and public owned facilities, decimated some police stations and blown several churches, mosques and schools into smithereens with a kind of guerrilla warfare tactics. In such an inhumane perpetration, how can a nation function appropriately?. This predicament has become intensified during the regime of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, probably to devastate and smear his government.

Furthermore, there is a continuum of another group called the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta(MEND), albeit with lower degree of agitation. This group originated around 2004, and it is one of the largest militant groups in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Though their germane goals are to localize the control of Nigeria’s oil and to secure reparations from the federal government for pollution caused by the oil industry, but they have ostensibly turned it to something else by sabotaging and annihilating the public properties, kidnapping and other innumerable indictments. These scourging groups have demoralized the few plans of the government, deteriorated the sense of prerogatives of humanity and clung on to that cascade of speculative mush.

It is obvious however, that this lack of enlightenment, smartness and intuition, have outrightly affected the nation presently in the issue of fuel scarcity. A festive period, precisely this peculiar one, should not be a period where by some essential things like fuel, which is needed for a short migration, will be lacking and in most cases increase in price by 50%. Nigerians may not be able to tackle this issue once and for all if they won’t look western and copy a mundane reaction like the one done by the Germans when such a dire issue arose in Germany.

More so, it is time to jettison all wrongs, halt some certain recriminations, and forge ahead to that promise land. What brings evolvement is not censure, or some acts of reprehension, rather it comes by absolute focus on the optimistic solution to every challenge at the nation’s threshold. Nigeria’s heterogeneity should be advantageous to her people.

There are however so many ways out of the present imbroglio. The preponderant one is to relinquish godfatherism, favouritism and nepotism. Nigeria will improve with the emergence of meritocracy, that is government rule by merit. After which a second step of surveillance on the economy would commence. The security agents must make sure that there is no lapse in accountability, no concealment of economic facts. Proper dispensation of the nation’s largess and so on.

In conclusion, these points highlighted above, will address the fundamental question of hope in Nigeria, with the appropriate application of anaesthetic on that wound which has festered, and its suppuration mangled the faith of the people. It can aid the evolution of the nation a bit, and that lofty vision which the nation has, will be emancipated from that carapace of immurement. So, I vehemently believe that there is still hope for Nigeria this period.