For Us To Fix Nigeria’

by any clarity of knowledge. So, I think we need to outgrow this zoning and non- zoning arrangement.

Now, looking at the political behaviour of the people and politicians, what do you think makes the Nigerian voter incapable of holding the elected representative or leader to account?

It is a combination of so many things. In Nigeria, we have a subservient culture and I’ll explain that. Our culture tends to give too much respect to people that are in perceived higher positions, whether materially or anywhere at all. If you look at it in some parts of the country, whether you are a young man or young old man, once you make money and you control money, you become a factor. In fact, if you are just 35, they will wait for you to arrive before they take decisions, even if they are 60, 70 years old men, because for them, it’s money that dictates, right?

Now, if that factor remains as it is and the culture of the people remain as it is, wherever that rich boy, man, whatever directs them to go, it is where they’re going to go, because the money controls their brain, and they cannot think. So, when people get into political offices in Nigeria, there’s a lot of hero- worshipping by very hypocritical people; we’re patronising people, we have so many wrong mind- sets.

A member of your family becomes a political appointee, and you place a congratulatory advertisement for him in the papers, what’s the rationale behind that? The mindset that somebody in our family has become a public officer, the mind- set is that it is our time to chop. So, if you look at that, there is a cultural dimension that is not productive. There are many parts of our culture that are not productive that if we must move on as a people, we have to jettison them.

For example, I feel pained sometimes, the average elites in this environment that has a structured business, that is very savvy in what he or she does, that is a recognised authority, in a lot of situations, have just on the average three very productive working days; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. What happens on Thursday? There are some functions somewhere, maybe some engagement somewhere, where he is made chairman or something. On Friday, there’s another burial somewhere. On Saturday, the engagement that he attended on Thursday is becoming a wedding. And when you look at these social gatherings, you see people of immense capacity just wasting away in the guise of socials.

In most developed environments, people like that are busy thinking of how they can increase their capacity or how they can come up with new inventions, or how they can come up with new thinking for that area of expertise they have. Here, we waste it away under the guise of enjoyment and whatever. Now, take that away, the hours that are not wasted in those frivolous activities, are wasted in man- hours on the roads, in traffic. So, you find that for a highly productive

Nigerian, he is not able to fully actualise the capacity that he has as a result of these things, culture. We have a culture of waste.

Thank God for COVID- 19 and other things, but we are just a wasteful people; we waste resources in the names of whatever. There are many components of our culture that does not make us progress, that is also affecting our politics.

I was at a political rally a couple of years back when the people were singing that the PVC they have is a source of material prosperity for them, because with the PVC, they will send their children to school, with the PVC they will buy houses, with the PVC they will enjoy. What they’re actually saying is that with the political affiliation they have, those are the things that they will get and you hear all these songs in political gatherings.

The songs that people sing in political gathering, is a function of the ways their minds work. So, politics in this part of the world is seen as a transaction, is seen as an enterprise, where if I put in money, I will get money, something like that.

Thirdly, you will discover, every year before elections in Nigeria is usually characterised by extreme hardship. I think the political class deliberately orchestrates it that way, so that there will be more poverty, there will be more hardship. By the time they do that, the little inducements that they give, appears to be very, very big and lures the people to do the things that they want them to do. So, the weaponisation of poverty in itself does not make the electorate to think straight and if the political class must continue to hold on to people like that, they have to keep them at the level that they are so that they’re not able to think otherwise.

We are talking about holding people accountable. The average Nigerian, even those that went to school, that are educated know little or nothing about the Nigerian constitution. They don’t understand what executive does, that it is different from judiciary, judiciary is even clear, legislative and executive they don’t understand. So, if somebody turns his tap in his house and the tap is dry, he will say this Buhari’s government they have not given us water. What has the federal government got to do with providing water in your tap, when you have a local council that is there? Now, because the citizens don’t have an understanding of the limits of the power of government, they don’t have an understanding of the expectation that they should have on government. They don’t have an understanding of their own rights as citizens, how can they hold anybody accountable?

So, the ignorance of the citizens, the lack of enlightenment of the citizens, some of the very backward cultural limits that we have, and the weaponisation of poverty, for me, are major reasons why what you’ve talked about is difficult to happen.

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I work with a couple of political candidates; they are largely a visionless people. When you talk about nation- building or when you talk about running a country, I hear contestants or candidates of political parties talking about infrastructure, talking about doing stuff about education, talking about a lot of activities, but we all know that activities are not visions. Activities evolve from visions.