Goke Omisore

Exactly four years ago, to typify present day Nigeria

The marvels in the miracles of developments in the western world’s democracies lie in an incontrovertible logic .One fact stands clear above others more often: A nation ruled by laws excels best than that ruled by men. Democracy thrives best when government derives power from the consent of the governed as enshrined in the constitution and no one is above the law. Yet, here are we at the dawn of new governments with the hazy cloud of men of power gathering storm as usual and their infertile mind at work. Ours is a nation ruled by the heart of men and their desires and best wishes damned-up behind greed and blurred visions, if any.

These men, usually recycled from our distant past are evidence of a system that keeps evolving occasional strings of perceived successes in men and ideas not anchorable or accountable for any meaningful development of the nation. The most unfortunate realities are the fact that these men sooner or later pale into insignificance in the corridor of power, community, even society. Their personal lives and the nation are usually left with woes of unfulfilled expectations. Yet, these rocking- chair modus of development persists, government in, government out with trails of failure marking is track.

If you are not connected with this assertion, please try a mental exercise of positioning five, ten or more selected or elected governors, ministers who served this nation in any capacity in the past twenty years or at the beginning of this tottering democracy. That is, If you can still remember any of them. Juxtapose these men within the context of their persons and performance in government and you will see things pale into much ado about yesterday’s noise. It’s like they were never there in the first place.

Usually, they are spent, broke and often pathetic – no matter how much they stole when they were in the system. Things always turn out a calamitous loss to the nation by several measures. Here are we again at the horizon of new governments – same old modus operandi in discernible flavours. Yesterday’s men have fallen. Here we go again with freshly packaged men – yesterday’s men with strings of ex-this, ex-that, titles and honors, chieftaincies, national or academic unearned accolades, trailing in their failed past. We ought to be a better nation than this system constantly offers.

The culture of the rule of men is hemorrhaging the nation, benefitting a negligible few only. Nothing but handouts by a privileged few from our collective till – ill-appropriated to what should realistically be a fiscal state, yet, still being spoon-fed and trading patronages in trickles from the excesses of their greed, unconscionably, unabashedly. That is the practice of the almighty unitary-centered federal system of government in the business of patronage dispensations. Wealth easier mismanaged or misappropriated by the ever eager fraudulent and corrupt individuals, well-oiled in a studied exploitation of our commonwealth, in the corridor of power – dawn of a new bazaar! When will the party be over – profound, pertinent question begging for answers.

Why allow individuals to amass so much in excess of their wants and needs of their third generations of unborn children – reeling in unearned wealth, basking in inglorious fame and fortune with impunity – sooner than later only to be eclipsed atnoon drowning themselves in emptiness and regrets years later. In most cases, methinks the nation is guilty, raising false hopes in these men of straws.

Breeding German-shepherds, who can barely bark with little or no substance in their bite to aid our growth, we all pay sorely. This system is flawed. This culture in government will serve no good course to our collective interest, hopes and dreams of true nationhood, no matter the crops of leaders selected or manufactured every four years in a ritual of national deception, veneered as elections. In almost every election, there is always enough to jail all the losers and winners if the truth be told. The poor nation is usually left battered with image laundering. Fifty years after independence, where are we? It’s high time we strove for something new – the rule of law to the letter, under true fiscal federalism. That’s the true, visible, affordable panacea to this festering malaise in epileptic governing. Now, we are at it again – same music, same steps and our usual dance in euphoria of hope and jamboree of seeming efforts in reality. Boy, do will like to revel in grandiose nothingness? But when the dust settles in four years, we will be closer to where the journey started in the first place – the spot of gravitational abyss to which we always return in regrets like a recurring spell.

Pessimism? No, but the reality on the ground! We need to jettison this system of governing that celebrates individuals hardly on merits, at the expense of our collective interest and evaporating commonwealth. If all this administration could achieve in its four years is power and a true fiscal federal structure, a less trekked road to development in this eleventh time around should be in the offing from our notorious past. We cannot afford to fail this time; we must not fail, may be our last chance to make-up rather than break-up as the sonority of the echo of failed state is threateningly and disturbingly audible in the nooks and crannies of the land.

I am weary and suspect of what could be a plot that has rendered us a pawn in the grip of two civilizations or may be my great, great, great grandfather and yours must have been snoring through civilizations while others were tilting and sweating through the traffic and tunnel of civilization.

Here are we again dosing off at noon in the dawn of a new century. The crux of this article: Is our fate in perpetual collision with our faith in the burrowed religions of our colonized minds? Is this a spell or could it be a curse? Are the gods to blame or men with little minds in the running affairs of this atrophied state?

In spite of the multiplication of prayer warriors in the land, over subscriptions of faiths in the land littered with more places of worships than industries, we are beset; we are adrift further from transforming this land of immense blessings. The questions are still relevant. What influences and rules our minds? What blinds us to the stark realities on the ground in sharp contracts to our dreams and hopes time after time?

Our colonizers not only robbed us then; even now they are rubbing salt to our injuries as shining examples in all spheres of growth and developments, why we are soaked in the tears of what could have been, while we are still groping in the darkness of basic amenities, we stand dwarfed!

From London to New York, Hamburg to Dubai, Tokyo to Hong-Kong; we are Lilliputians at their giant steps in developments. Quite a shame! Is God domiciled in their climes? I think it is high time some of our spiritual leaders did soul-searching as their spiritual noise in the land is blocking our prayers, withering our capabilities.

The good Lord knows he has abundantly blessed this land enough to the envy of our less endowed neighbours, who are better organized and better focused. Let us bow down and work hard; let us take commonsense to higher ground of reasoning and stop calling the Almighty’s name in vain glorious demands.

I believe all religions preach peace, tolerance and love of thy neighbour. So, from where do we acquire our excessive greed – in all things western as evident in our wrong prerogatives and values, frivolous ties and our excesses in violence which the Holy Bible or Quran do not sanction? Are we victims of our beliefs, assumptions, proclamations, acceptances as evidence in contrasting values to our aspirations in acquisitions of the wholesale of religions with ties in foreign cultures and languages?

I am beginning to think these two dominant religions – Christianity and Islam - as entrenched in practice in this clime run against the grains of reality in the growth of a nation and in a sense, religion emasculates the liberty of thoughts and adventure in progressive minds. The mind is a terrible thing to waste. Would we be less Godly or less blessed, hypothetically that is, if these religions are practiced strictly in mother tongues so that it could be easier ingrained in our culture, so that it could mine our conscience deeper and be more meaningful to our lives?

Also, let our education be re-orientated in consonance with our values than borrowed complexities, compounded by the attached cultural values and dictates of imported, doctrines and indoctrinations of these great religions with all due respect to believers, who most often in their legions hardly understand or read between the coded lines enshrined in these languages and culture of enslavement of the mind.

We as a nation need more than the separation of state and religion is the entrenchment of the laws that values our commonwealth, collective growth but not the growth of favored, watered individual oaks in the desert of abject poverty that abounds in the nation, without compromising the pursuit of individual liberty and freedom.

Level playing fields, individual, community, local and state governments’ pursuit of their own dreams and aspirations at their own paces and desires only will foster great competition, healthy for our national growth and pursuit of true fiscal nation need not be delayed a day longer.

Let us jettison the rule of men for the rule of law. The law is the greatest arbiter of justice amongst men and not men in the affairs of a nation. Then, peace and progress will reign in our land unfettered. God bless Nigeria, God save Nigeria.