The Dream of a New Nigeria in a fragmented mirror – the disalliances and June 12th hold the sunset -By Jimi Bickersteth

As a nature of surprise events to create ‘implausible’ outcomes. By eliminating and basing plans on scenarios rather than forecasts was one way to deal with the uncertainty of political, economic and social systems. Starting from the premise that politically and socially the nation faces an uncertain future. The government’s role was to promote conceptual understanding.

The scenario says “here are some of the key factors you have to take into account, and this is the way these factors could affect the nation’s future, unlike forecasts which attempts to quantify the future. Technical, social, political and economic factors that must be woven into an internally consistent pattern.

As could be seen in the current ‘force meet with counterforce ‘war” against incessant protests, insurgencies and ‘terrorism’ north and south of the Niger reliance upon scenarios, one is the difficulty on encapsulating a number of unknowns. Another is ensuring that the variables are internally consistent. Consistency based on past relationships may not apply to a future in which new developments break traditional patterns.

How does the nation account for changes in expectations resulting from events that failed to influence previous relationships. There are obvious problems of a phenomenon moving in one direction sets in motion forces that will modify its course. The nation needs pragmatic set of plans and policies to reach one or more national objectives of state policy, yet, it was not the choice of an optimal strategy but faithful adherence to a sound set of beliefs, such as equality, equity and respect for the individual, that was the most important factor, that bond produced by shared values is the secret weapon of great nations.

The power of purpose, values, and symbolism in securing national commitment is as old as the nations themselves. Confucius, a wellspring of inspiration of modern philosophy and politics, once pointed out that it was on ”observance of ritual” that administration depends. The principal responsibility of the executive and the legislative was the creation of moral codes for others, followed by the process of inculcating points of view, fundamental attitudes, loyalties to the state.

The most important cause of the failed state mode and copious leadership absence was inability to articulate the basic concepts, values, policies and beliefs that give directions to the state, its leadership and followership. That being the case, the nation drifted far away, and thus created a wide gap between the way real world leaders actually develop strategies and planning paradigms.

You’ll observed that strategies in the advanced nations, do not emerge as fully integrated realities but incrementally, as a series of partial, tentative, somewhat fragmented decisions and personal commitments. The nation’s current debacles and debates and agitations for self-independence, resources control and other battery and assaults on its collective corporate existence can be partially rationalised by recognising that there are in general not one but two fundamentally different processes simultaneously going on in the country.

One is classic: it induces the ruling elites to make decisions within the framework of the current planless drift, goals and politics. The second, a messier one, mediates autonomous pathfinding proposals that may significantly modify the current strategic direction.

All based on the facts that the nation was plagued by unsubstantiated generalisations, factual errors, incomplete footnoting, and a wide range in the quality of evidence used to support the principal arguments for its statehood. I don’t know of any other nation so tenor positive, so endowed, and yet so vulnerable to criticisms by nitpickers.

The people were beginning to question its colourless prose, pose and ability to compete in an economically restructured world, completely immobilised and could not be motivated by simple – even beautiful- values. The hearty call for restructuring therefore, was in a way, trying to encourage the political leaders and ruling elites to defy strategic concepts altogether and to shed the grand strategy addiction that pervades the government circle. The strategy fetish, a cultural peculiarity. The nation get off on strategy like the French get off on good food, good wine or romance.

The over-intellectualisation of strategy and reliance on “big brain” strategic coups have not worked for the nation. A careful scrutiny reveals that despite the exalted status of intellectualisation in the nation’s political, social, development and growth lexicons, few great successes stem from one bold-stroke strategic thrust. More often, they result from one half-good Idea that is improved upon incrementally ( though, not like the federal ministry of agriculture building a ₦30million mosques).

These improvements are invariably the result of a lot of ‘little people’ paying attention to the real need of real people. The nation saw growth and really evolves as iterative, incremental, experimental structural adjustments to the dynamic of opportunity. Its concepts and ideas and skills to effectively coordinate and integrate the talents of a myriad of its immensely endowed human resources was a pedagogical deceit.

A country that has so much on offer in terms of material and human resources. It appeared that the people’s ‘enemies’ and those who believed in the machievellian tactic of ‘keeping the people pauperized’, and whose wrong desires coincide and connived with opportunity saw through the veil of optimism and hope.

The power freely given to succeeding administration by ‘their INEC’ continues to increase the tempo with the trampling of the people’s wishes and aspirations and it went on endlessly, followed for the nation, increase in senseless, violent acts, mindless killings, protests, arson, premeditated suffering, that today, whatever remained of the nation’s hopes have finally vapourised.

The vanished hopes meant that something was seriously wrong with society, and its leadership, chronically tensed like a motor that stays revved up. It kept the followership in perpetual bondage. Now came a cameo by insurgencies north and south of the federation under different names, circumstances and disguise – personal liberty, safety and neighborhood morals had been compromised.

In fact, in truth and in deed, Nigerians that have left the cleft of the political class creation should be given certificates of survival, particularly, the drones and noise of war, as if war is a sport, it is not  and it does not give you the choices to kill the right persons. A push toward disaster, then, followed for the nation, increase in senseless, violent acts and the ruling elites mindless fleeces. With the increasing personal wealth the political class saw themselves as above the people they were supposed to serve and serviced.

The 1999 constitution assigned primary role and responsibility to the legislative arm of government to make new laws and amend existing laws for the good of the people they represent. They’re to function in that office and capacity by proposing bills, holding interactive meetings.

administration had to stop ‘laing‘ and creating facts with their guts and feelings, and expecting the poor people to follow suit on faith.

The government have to hasten slowly (no pun intended), and deliberately turn things around, as all the ‘lying’, propaganda and creating facts with guts and feelings, aided by a media team, itself frustrated, apt at massaging and manipulating primma Donna’s ego must as of necessity stop, as their endless lies, limitless streams of rumours, gossips, conspiratorial sacred silence extended the saga and have today come with the downside. The APC that have however existed with a hollow at its centre, was entering its trimester and the signals were yet poor of any enduring legacies in its equations with its poor moral mathematics, extremely weak in organisation and cohesion and transfering same to the nation’s body politick.

How fragmentend everything had become in the nation. When all it required to wash the fear from the system and a culture of being alone in the wilderness, was to be combative with hearts and minds of unflinching granite that brooked no contradiction. PMB’s administration couldn’t muster the energy and political will. It faltered badly and is still faltering even as it embarked on military campaign against civil disobedience. It was clear that that PMB and company have not been able to pull in the reins when they have to, this has been largely unimpressive.

The ruling elites had caused frost and brought forth plagues of snails and caterpillars to destroy the nation’s seeds and fruits, and, to navigate out of the morass, stagnancies and general decline, it needed good value judgement of those who knew more about life; so that these seeming wild, frustrating bouts of confusion and darkness, be followed by leaping brightness and warmth. The ordeals of leaving the mass of our people to their struggles must be handled with impersonal and unassuming efficiency.

The government is to acknowledge that the deplorable conditions under which Nigerians live and die were enough impetus for an awareness of danger, that should make PMB and company interested in weapons and strategies and the nature of the enemy – poverty, second only to religion and power tussle, which between them had perpetrated some of the worst and terrible atrocities that have scandalised history.

As recent events eclipsing the nation’s political and general administration eclipsed and crippled the nation almost comatose, all manners of things have been let loose. To a PMB that had hitherto ‘felt’ less constrained, his visit to Maiduguri, the arrest and retrial of tribal warlords, the coming months would be such a very busy and interesting one for the nation’s number one white hope. With PMB’s laid-back approach to national issues, it’s one’s hope that he and his coterie of advisers know what they want. Who says life gets dull when you get what you want. Put your feet up and enjoy the soaps – soaps after all are supposedly a reflection of real life.

It’s important to focus on understanding the people in their moods. The political leaders must learn to be open and authentic so that the people can understand them, because it would make you vulnerable, many are unwilling to be transparent, but leaders feel that by keeping people in the dark they maintain a measure of control. But that is a leader’s folly and a nation’s failure. Secrecy and or sacred silence spawns isolation not success. Knowledge is power. Yes, but what leaders need is collective power, and that require collective knowledge. Anytime people’s sense information is being withheld from them, it creates distance. They feel like outsiders and insecurity reigns. So speak up, whatever the condition!

But in the ongoing, ensuing serial drama, including power devolution and power sharing, I doubt, if the APC could label anyone, those we invited to dine and take exceptions to our complaints about their table manners. One thing is clearer though, the marriage of convenience was beginning to look unnatural and all the ramifications for honour and decency and sacred trust that this entailed.

This new challenges to the nation has been brought into clear focus by observing and contrasting our philosophy (if any) and practices with those of leaders in Europe and other advanced economies and simply copying them at what they excel in – “the art of adapting, adjusting, fitting, sifting and excluding” as Kurt Singer has pointed out in Mirror, Sword and Jewel – is not enough, or perhaps not even appropriate.

The Nigerian society needs to intensively continue its process of self-renewal and search for a sustainable new frameworks of analysis. In the large, complex bureaucracy, the leaders time assumes an enormous opportunity cost and he faces the real danger of becoming a major obstruction in the flow of decisions.

This is a daunting task that must not only be seen to have been done but accomplished:

Try to,

a. rid every sector of the nation’s economy of wastages,

b. declare an emergency on the power/energy sector with a view to grow Nigeria’s energy capacity which would lead to a boom that, ipsofacto would generate employment and curb inflation.

c. a winner makes commitment a loser makes promises, convoke a committee of the joint National Assembly members to consider some of the reasons for the insurgencies and the cries of self-independence, resources control, state creation etc. thereafter forward the outcome of their deliberations and resolution thereof to the state’s house of assembly for relevant inputs and  back to the NASS for final moderation and despatch to the executive council for final action.

d. the nation must leave no stone unturned in ensuring that it bacame a 21st century economy which actively support the growth of the local economy through ease of doing business, innovations, incentives and interventions as well as quality service delivery by a well-motivated public service guided by well-articulated ideology.

e. the economic landscape should be transformed and repositioned to meet the expectations of the business community and also achieve the goals of becoming a destination of choice for foreign direct investment.

In summary, what is needed now is a revitalised synthesis of 1) the potency of transforming leadership; 2) core concepts of of corporate governance and strategie; 3) bridging the wide gap and extending a warm handshake across the Niger, 4) the inspiring shared values, passion and patrotism; 5) down-to-earth concern for hand-on attention to Technology as a central link underpinning the economic, social, political and government business framework; and, 6) leaders are to concentrate on issues that are current and specific. It is on this premise that the burden lies for designing systems that are to solve society’s problems.

Good governance in politics is contingent upon you operating according to its rules. It must go much deeper than what obtains across the length and breadth of the nation presently, the killings, poverty, unemployment, insecurity etc. Politics is a veritable means to pursue the nation’s well-being and make it a priority. It is the responsibility of all to catch the fallen star and restore our fading national glory with sheen and aplomb.

MKO, the nation continue to mourn you as one of its heroes after 28years of the momentous and historic occasion. All, regardless of where they belonged across the divide salute your resilience and courage, it earned you a national holiday.

You’re sorely missed.

Simply irreplaceable.

Sleep on. Aljanna Firdausi.

P.S.

Everything looked fuzzy, for now, the people should not be worried, because that was how dreams were sometimes, especially, when we are close to wakefulness. In dreams you run desperately like a mouse running on a treadmill and never getting anywhere, but dreams disappears in the morning leaving your thinking and reasoning intact.

#JimiBickersteth.

Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger and writer.

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