The Greater Nigeria Project, the Change Option – lemon spelt backwards and Making a Complete Mess of Eating a Boiled egg -By Jimi Bickersteth

In the chilly end of January harmattan evening, staring out the windows of a cosy Gulfstream series VIi, on a midmorning flight from the Federal Capital, the bird, trapped in the sea of nature in the last fifty five minutes, commences its landing procedures amidst trepidation on what the likely outcome of the 2023 polls and the postponed, proposed flip-flop increase on pump price would have on the nation, I did the second best thing one can do with one’s lips – smile.
The carpet of clouds finally gave way to an aerial view of the city’s skyline, I heaved a deep sigh, wondering what the town service fare would look like when eventually the red herring, increase in pump price took effect. Looking at the array of fellow passengers in the 20some seater droning bird, my thoughts strayed back to the series of unmoderated conversation we had quietly been enjoying, (above the cool interior din and aesthetic ambience of the aircraft and its laborious effort to touch down in the harmattan haze with the airport lights off) about the state of the nation, about the numerous scandals and all that has come out of the Pandora box, the fuel subsidy politics, the new craze in the West African subregion – prevalence of military coups-dé tat, the latest being Burkina Faso, (never mind that the nation was doing well and maybe coasting to the final of AFCON 2021/2022 but one match), and about, the family as the bedrock of society – indeed of civilisation itself, Cisero said, “The empire is at the fireside.”

Talking about coups across the subregion, I saw the coupists, a gang of armed desperadoes engaged in a desperate vital counterbalance to civil political power – a coup de gráce, of sort; and, who have become shadowy, unreal figures themselves and no more important to the people than characters I had seen in some surreal movie as they churned up movies to better the people’s lot in a disorderly, but flamboyantly and frivolous artistic pattern. What an epitaph!

Back to the moment, the nation’s fuel subsidy thing is become a fantastically confusing magic, an abracadabra of the more you look the less you see. A nation that consumes approximately 40million bpd and could only provide 18mln bpd, and the resulting scarcity and hoarding, and with the removal of fuel subsidy, the usual rigmarole of Labour to negotiate a downward review on one hand and an opportunity to press for wage increase from the excess fund anticipated, for a crude price that is not permanent in the volatile global oil market, and more often than not, any twist must shift the cup from the lips and we are back to square one, but with a resultant hyper inflation.

This perennial increase in petroleum pump price raises two fundamental and valid questions,

i. Which is the way forward to a final resolution of the perennial hike in pump price and the promises of using the excess fund that would accrue to provide turnkey jobs,

ii. getting the refineries to work at full installed capacity, and with the PIB what were the NASS doing in the past 17years or so, without helping the economy by legislation to amongst other things open up market.

Well, one is of the opinion that, the government must be willing and ready to confront and meet all challenges confronting the nation on the nose; this is when we can change from a wobbling drifter and dreamer; emerge from the prison we have been living in. But the question is, for how long can we go forth with sharpened sticks to hunt this woolly sabre rattling mammoths, that have consigned our nation to the back-heel of history.

While still dawdling on the state of the nation, the Fashola epistle on infrastructure and his past allusion and comments on the PHCN came to the fore. In retrospect, and in spite of the divergent views expressed, the consensus of opinion in the subdued atmosphere, is that for once, in the nation’s chequered history, a Minister Fashola (I’m not a big fan of his), who had fell for the nation’s public servants antics, and acquiescing to the ill advice and the subsequent arbitrary increase in tariff to a privatised entity, which ultimately translated to an increased burden on the poor, and, which amounted to changing the rules of the game in the middle of the tournament and under the full glare of our lawmakers. An agreement is an agreement is a time-worn cliché.

The eminent legal luminary and politician has recanted, and appears to have gained the prow, as he is set to provide the nation, steady, stable and sustainable power supply. While it is still an epistle on wishful intents, and mere rhetoric and politics, may our expectations birth fruition and manifestation.

What one could glean here is that our politicians are beginning to know that there are two powers of personality they can develop that will increase their charisma and ability to influence the course of the nation, even as they try to work and provide the dividend of democracy to the people.

The first of these powers is power of purpose. Men and women with charisma and personal magnetism almost invariably, have a clear vision of who they are, of where they are going and of what they are trying to achieve.
The second is the sincerity of purpose and congruent to this is the humility to accept when they are wrong.

With the lives of the Nigerian people daily becoming a ‘Frozen Hell’, here’s a government that calls itself a government, and lets on to be a government, and thinks it is a government, and yet’s got to set stock-still for seven years before it can take hold of prowling, thieving, infernal, greedy politicians and stabilising a rollercoasting nation in distress.

At home, a PHCN-less home, the moon was shining, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day, everything still as rocks and sound asleep. A little ripply, cool breeze began to blow, and that was as good as saying the night was about done. I see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket the courtyard. In a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops, and knew that the new day was coming.

In a long year of existing and surviving PHCN-less ness has been the nation’s reference point of all other ills. Now, who are the saboteurs, you’ll ask. While the nation searches and roots them out, and provide stable power supply. In the meantime, the bee keep sucking but not pollinate the flower. As Chinese partner, let PMB request that China should produce exclusively for the Nigerian market batteries and solar-powered welding and pepper grinding machines, sewing machines, vulcanising units, generators, and other household items to jumpstart the nation’s economy, even as it stops asking the people to pay for tactlessness, cluelessness, and poor culture – all hidden cast of the nation’s underperformance.

The palavering Fashola epistles was like drawing a bead on a bird with the rim of his spectacle, but has also brought out some elements of magnetism which apparently has been lacking in our politicians, whose only motive for been in government is to milk the treasury, and this has been the bane of the growth and progress of the nation.

The most subtle of all temptations is the seeming success of this looters call politicians, with scads of money, the Yorubas would say, ‘ęní şu sónà lófi orí ìyá ẹ̀ gbọpọ̀’. It requires moral courage from the people to see without flinching, material prosperity coming to men and women who are dishonest; to see politicians rise into prominence, power and wealth by trickery and corruption; siting a maritime university in an arid desert and neglect the areas that have access to the ocean and the continental shelf because the president happen to come from the area; the problems of rights and justice, to see virtue in rags and vice in velvet, to see ignorance at a premium and knowledge at a discount. This puzzles of life do not appeal. There we all were – each of us hoping that someone else would speak first. You get the picture?

At this moment of turmoil and uncertainty, its pretty difficult to believe and trust PMB, because when ocassion demanded in the past, political leaders have reneged on their promises . The nation with its harrowing economic situation has trumped up and yielded leaders, who when waylaid by dirth of ideas and paucity of fund had demanded courage and patience and belt- tightening from the languishing and suffering masses, only for them to export the people’s money.

The nation’s politicians have proved tremendously, time without number that they are no great shakes, and they seem to forget that whether man has had wealth or prosperity, failure or success, counts for little when it is past. There is but one question for them though, as with other mortals, to answer, to face boldly and honestly as an individual; ‘how will I let poverty or wealth affect me’. If wealth which in 97% of the case is ill gotten has come and has made one vain, arrogant, contemptuous, uncharitable, cynical, to the people they are meant to serve; closing all the tenderness of life, all the channels of higher development of possible good to our fellow men, making one the mere custodian of a money bag, then wealth has lied to one, it has been failure, not success: it has not been riches, it has been dark, treacherous poverty that stole from one even oneself.

The people under the presidency of PMB have been able to trace back through the genealogy of circumstances and have seen how logical has been the course of their sorrows and statistics of failures, gloomy post-mortems, a near-sighted and half-blind world of politicians, who have used the nation’s resources to travel abroad but could not use the abundance of our resources to replicate or duplicate what they saw in those climes, lay at the doorsteps of a people, traumatised, depressed and suffering amidst plenty. The thing is there’s been a lot of wrongdoings and several lame and insipid efforts to prime and right them, and the fear is, would this foray into 2023 not be another fruitless expedition.

The nation’s political class have proved true the notion that the black man in history has considered himself unworthy of God, has tended to leave Creation as it stood, easily satisfied; in contrast, the white man, considering himself the favourite of God, has through the ages continually questioned Creation, and never hesitated to bend it to his will, whims and caprices and to its eternal advantage. Where each of these divergent attitudes have led to is now very clear: the technological gap, the domination of the world by the white, and the moral enslavement of the black man’s mind. To overcome this artificial bar to growth and development, the nation and its political leadership must up its ante, make fundamental changes in attitudes, and, look at the world as it really is.

The nation’s leadership, nay African leadership must stop its inate tendencies and posturings to demonstrate its independence, a natural phenomenon in a people so long subjected, but rather, its intelligence. What do we make of our freedom which is what should determines its relative place in the world order of things.

The natural enemies of the nation today remain the primordial enemies of all mankind: poverty, hunger, avarice, greed, disease, ignorance. Without first the conquest of these, and attempts to reduced these scourges to admirably managable proportions, how can the nation hope to enjoy the luxury of an industrially and technological advanced society?

Nigeria is without any iota of doubt the one true giant of Africa South of the Sahara with its immense population. Her people constitute nearly one half of the black people of the continent and two in five of all black people, with an embarrassment of riches that is the envy of most countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Her landmass is huge, her climate largely benign. All of which should have made her not only the most powerful country in the Black world, but among the dozen most powerful nations on the globe. But has not yet fulfilled destiny inherent in its huge potential. Why?

Before a nation can become powerful, the nation must:

1. Achieve peace within her own borders, and this can only come from the kind of true unity that is observed in a marriage of convenience.
2. Evolve a leadership which is itself truly free and enlightened by a keen perception of the true aspiration of all her people. Only a leadership thus free can ever lead a free people.
3. Organise her own society. A state where the services do not function, where the citizenry is not disciplined, where crimes at every level runs unchecked, where leaders are not accountable to the led, and where justice is available to the highest bidder – such a state cannot inspire in others outside that confidence needed for leadership.#Jimi Bickersteth

Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger and writer. He can be reached on Twitter

@BickerstethJimi

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jimi.bickersteth@gmail.com