Nigeria’s Greatness: It Begins With You -By Rabiu Oladele

Philosophers believed that one of the qualities of a selfless leader is to listen and hear the cry of his followers.

This brings me to the issues I will like to discuss below:

Let recall vividly the standard of living of Nigerians before and happenings during 2015 general elections which prompted Nigerians to vote out the then ruling party, PDP led by Former President Goodluck Jonathan GCFR due to one reason, “incompetence” which led to suffering of the masses that became so unbearable anymore.

Years after, “has the situation changed?” To me, the answer is YES it has, but it changes in the negative direction, and you will agree with me when we start comparing the prices of commodities then and now.

The reason why we are having this kind of changes is because the incumbent public officers are trying to tackle the symptoms of a problem rather than the problem itself facing the nation.

Now let me explain what I mean by this; then we have no alternative than to buy the ideology of current ruling party, APC led by President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR to rule us, atleast to tackle the issues of the inability of the masses to feed well, inability of the children to attend good government schools, unavailability of good and modern facilities in our health centres and government general hospitals, unavailability of good and lasting infrastructures like good roads, clean water and so many, all these are known to be symptoms of a bad government and not the problems.

Now looking into what I called the real problem of the nation is the kind of people we elected to be our leaders, forgetting that these are the people that will make policies that will have effects on our daily living as a citizen of Nigeria. Imagine a country that allows over 25% interest or more on loans from commercial banks, how do you do business with such? Where we have the people that will make policies that is not favouring the youth to contest for a particular position in the country. These are the same people that will always make policies that will increase our recurrent expenditure rather than reducing it and increasing the capital expenditure, these policies and so many more are what is killing our nation gradually.

The reason I relate this issues to the general elections in 2015 is that the youths were either not given the level playing ground with the old politicians or the youths rather never wanted to participate in the politics of the nation.

Now, you will want to ask me how were the youths not given the level playing ground and my response are thus:

The age limit allowing the youth to contest is not favourable.

Also the policies of political party setting a very high price of obtaining forms for anyone to be the party candidate.

Another reason is the issue of godfatherism that exist in our political parties, you have to know somebody who knows somebody to contest for an ordinary councillor of your ward, all these are discouraging the youths.

Haven analysing the symptoms and  problems, another question you might wanna ask is ” what can the youth do that can’t be done by the older politicians”  and the answer is that the older politicians can also perform excellently, but it has to be elders that has being able to re-invent his or her self in his/her profession and has been able to convince us, not the kind of leaders we have now that still deliberate on empowering their graduates with wheel barrows and jerrycan or a politician that his B.Sc certificate cannot be ascertain or even the one that was sued for not having a SSCE certificate, oh! My God, what a country Nigeria!!!.
Can we compare the exposure of a Masters and PhD holders to these people, the answer is NO. Now let’s not look at the angle of education alone, there are so many professionals that does not have these certificates but know the latest technical know how of doing things in their various field who still have the energetic ability to make this country good again, talk about business men and women, they have the track record of performing excellently or even a builder who has no masters nor PhD but has attended seminars and acquired knowledge on the various modern techniques on building, these are the kind of people we want in our government so as to make good and reliable policies that can make our country great again

Unfortunately, these people are still thinking of bringing back tollgates on our roads again? So as to continue extorting the masses instead of providing good roads for us, they are also thinking of adding 5naira to the 145naira we buy fuel, these are the same people that have made the business environment so unbearable to the foreign investors and they had to leave the country for a nearby countries, all these their policies boils down to the amount we buy a cup of garri in the market, a cup of rice in the market, even the price of kulikuli had been increased, these commodities use to be the last option for the poor man but now my brother, if you see me eating kulikuli and garri, I am a rich man ooo!!!

Recently, Nigeria had just lost an opportunity of a massive project from Microsoft of constructing its data centres to South Africa, just because of energy (power supply), can you just imagine? This is a project that could have employed over 10,000 Nigerians directly and indirectly, yet, these people are not seeing it as anything.

Another question I will like to ask our youths is “are we still ready to continue with the mess created by our incorrigibly kleptomaniac bandits who continue to recycle themselves year by year? ”

It is something of pain for me seeing youths arguing with each other that its PDP or APC. We need to tell ourselves the truth that its neither of these two parties nor any other political party but ourselves (The Youth). We need to form coalition, stand firm and support ourselves towards youths being our policy makers.

Do you know that the youths have approx 60% of the total population of the people in Nigeria? Let’s assume we the youths can form coalition like APC in 2015, all gathered together with the same vision of saying “Nigeria must be great again”, we will definitely vote out these rogues.

Do you know it begins with you? Just talk to yourself to talk to someone to talk someone that can talk to another person about getting their permanent voter’s card (PVC) and get ready to vote massively for the better Nigeria come 2019. This is called WOM in my profession (marketing).

I challenge you today as a progressive Nigerian youth to challenge yourselves in making this nation great again by doing the needful.

Tell a friend, “for Nigeria to be great again, it begins with you”.
#GetInvolvedNow

Thank you.

God bless Nigeria!
God bless The Youth!

Rabiu Oladele
Professional Marketer | Social Reformist | Activist | A Patriotic Young Nigerian | A Member of Arise O’ Youth Forum
#JoinTheMovement @AriseOYouth