Good Governance: Our Collective Responsibility

"Just as the children of a slave are slaves, so the children of a serf are serfs." Looking inwardly to the above quote, one will know that building a nation is a collective responsibility of the citizens therein. What you are today will define what your children would be in the future. You may, however, not be there to witness the developments. It takes collective interest to build a nation, a robust economy and a sustainable environment, free of terrorism of any form.

Nigeria as an entity has been battling with a series of known calamities ranging from insurgency, unemployment to corruption. The nation since independence has been struggling with unstable power supply and bad roads while Nigerians are trying to select the best among the sheaf of our politicians in an electoral process that has long been archaic.

Nothing can work here as a nation until we think and rethink; trace and retrace our steps. We cannot continue to be wicked to ourselves and clamouring for a better change. We praise singing our politicians, drumming support for them for personal interests and we turn ourselves to a group of fan boys.

Good governance is the only way to go for a nation that would want to compete among best nations of the world. Nigerians are the ones to charge for good governance as poverty doesn't have a political party. If you are poor, you will remain poor, unless you demand good governance and for investment in schools, hospitals and other infrastructure. It won't be good to remain poor while the politicians you support become richer and their kids study abroad. Political affiliations should not prevail over the call for good governance as politics is different from governance. In Nigeria, we are experiencing 'brain drain'. Our best brains are leaving to European countries – this is to say, professionals, technicians, high-level administrators and skilled workers are exiting their homes in search for greener pasture, leaving Nigeria as an undeveloped nation.

Nigeria's problems are not beyond Nigerians, as I was told in a forum days ago that nothing can solve this nation's hiccups. I was objective-minded and stood my ground that if we charge ourselves individually, I don't see reason while good governance is hard to achieve.

Let's start by knowing our civil rights and responsibilities – payment of taxes at when due, obeying traffic rules, not giving and accept bribes, fair judgement, voting out corrupt politicians, to mention but few.

If actually, we are ready to walk the path of greatness in this nation, we should forget the ideology of private citizens; all hands must be on the deck.