Let’s Make Nigeria the Great Home We Ought To Have

In their research on democracy in Nigeria, Arowolo and Aluko lament: “The reality of the attempts to subvert the concept of democracy to serve the interests of a few, rather than a greater majority, still looms high. The emerging democracy was artificial and reflective of external imposition.  It is a weak democracy that repudiates inalienable ethos of its true identity.”

 Read more: International Journal of Development and Sustainability Online ISSN: 2168-8662 – www.isdsnet.com/ijds Volume 1 Number 3, December 2012 (In Press) ISDS Article ID: IJDS12092407

There are two major facts to know about what this essay is all about. Fact One: The history of democracy in Africa and Nigeria is a history of manipulation by people in power, featuring such leaders as Obasanjo, Buhari, and Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

Fact Two: Nigeria and the rest of Africa have no true democracy. What we have is a token, a make belief, or a counterfeit (fake, forged, phony, bogus, imitation).

The purpose of this essay is to argue that Nigeria is a home where true democracy can take roots in our time in our ancestral home and, therefore, we make bold to encourage political participation as the basis of democracy that our home critically needs.

Is there a better home than home? Is there a place better than Nigeria? If there were a better place,  this writer and many readers believe it doesn’t exist, hasn’t been found, and it doesn’t matter. There’s no home like home, and no other place can take the place of home.

 

A place is not a home in a vacuum. It is not a home in the absence of the essential activities members of the home engage in, and that is if we lay differences aside, roll up sleeves and get to work.

Why do countries spend tons of time and money to maintain national army, navy, air force, and foot soldiers?

They do so because they love home and wish to keep home safe, orderly, and free from internal and external threats. Where do the Nigerians call home and where do they stand?

Why is democracy working in Great Britain and America but refuses to work in Nigeria?  It is because democracy works best where people (1) are educated and law-abiding; (2) participate actively in government; (3) jealously guard their institutions with checks and balances.   

A country like Nigeria doesn’t just appear from thin air. A country is built painstakingly from a scratch as Rome and Greece were. A home isn’t a pile of cement, wood, and openings. A country is a work product.

Since it takes efforts to make a home a home, we must participate to build our home. Let’s make Nigeria what we ought to be. It’s about us. Let’s make Nigeria what it ought to be through hard work at stimulating political participation to build Great Nigeria.

How do we encourage political participation in Nigeria? Specific ways will include creating a welcoming milieu[D1]  that engenders belongingness.

That alone is not enough. There shall be a psychological environment that is conducive to development of self-efficacy, civic responsibility, and esprit de corps.

According to psychologist Albert Bandura, self-efficacy is defined as one's belief in one's ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task.

Our sense of self-efficacy can play a major role if we approach the goals, tasks, and challenges involved in democracy and if we believe we can do it. All things are possible for he who sincerely believes.

In addition to having self-efficacy and civic responsibility, participation in government requires esprit de corps.  The Miriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines esprit-de corps as a feeling of pride, fellowship, and common loyalty shared by the members of a group.

We shall develop some esprit de corps through working together to fashion a suitable democracy where “no man is oppressed.”.

Democracy requires a social environment that does not involve alienation; that has no authoritarian tendency; that has adequate opportunities for education, and has no place for discrimination on the bases of tribe, sex, age, sex, or income level.

Democracy requires a political environment that grows interest in politics and awareness of issues affecting communities. Democracy provides opportunities to mobilize and belong to problem-solving groups.

Democracy isn’t just an empty word in the mouths of infants who babble, burp, belch, and have hiccups. Democracy is not the insane cry of followers of boko haram. We must struggle to have a democracy, or we will lose it, depending upon what we do with what we got.

Remember that as we use the firewood, we had gathered in dry season to cook when the nights are gloomy and rain falls during the day making it impossible to gather wood during rainfall, so do we build a democracy with worn-out hands and tested tools.

We either shape up or ship out, and that’s the bottom line. If one cannot stand the heat one should step out of the kitchen.  

If one cannot do it, one ought to step aside and let another step in. We are simply saying this: a farmer who plants a crop he cannot gather at harvest time, wishes to have his family starve.

The Good Book says the people perish for lack of knowledge, knowledge about governing ourselves. The trouble with us is that we lack knowledge, which is the information, data, facts about government. The best knowledge is knowledge of self, that is, realizing we do not know the power that we have.

While on the topic about knowledge, we do not know what we have until we lose it. Must we lose our democracy to know we are fools or lose our minds to realize we are mad?

Must we throw the bath water with the baby, and why don’t keep what we have and build upon it for our children’s sake, for our legacy?

That Africans are accustomed to being subjugated by tribal chiefs and persons obsessed with authoritarian rule is clear from our history. The American colonists refused to be second-class British tax payers when they swore; “Give me freedom or give me death.”

There is something better than life. Dying for what you believe in is more precious than life. Living under slavery is no bliss, and if you doubt it, you are invited to exchange places with one of the of the Chibok girls whom violent men captured from a schoolhouse and raped and sold into slavery.

One who is in enslavement does not experience bliss if one defines bliss as ecstasy, heaven, paradise, enjoyment, or happiness. The point here is that Nigerians have been captured, raped, and enslaved by people we expected to care for the masses.

Nigerians had elected and continue to elect leaders who often place a yoke more burdensome than enslavement upon Nigerians’ necks. Where do yokes come from and why were the yokes there in the first place?

Were the yokes there because the Nigerians willingly submit or did the Nigerians unwittingly stretched their necks out for the metal yokes to be comfortably placed?

There is a difference between yokes placed willingly and unwittingly.   Willingly means the act was done freely, readily, eagerly, keenly, enthusiastically, or devotedly. Did the Nigerians willingly accept oppression? No.

Unwittingly means the act was accomplished while the people behaved innocently, unsuspectingly, trustingly, unintentionally, accidently, inadvertently. Were the Nigerians innocently cajoled to accept the yoke of oppressive government?

A yoke means many things. A yoke is oppression, burden, bondage, encumbrance, incumbrancer. The yoke is placed on many Nigerian necks of men, women, and even young babies sucking their mothers’ breasts.

Consider Musa, a university graduate with First Class Honors in computer engineering who has a yoke because he is condemned to underemployed in a job that doesn’t enable him to make valuable contributions to the society that nurtures him..

As a result of the yoke of underemployment, Musa the brilliant graduate settles down to tend to the chicken farm of his uncle who paid his university fees. The yoke intensifies and makes a full circle around Musa’s neckline and threatens to choke the life out of him.

One of the deadliest, damning, and darkest aspects of politics in Africa is that the politicians do not love us and do not have knowledge about playing politics. Politics is about people. African politics is oppressive, exploitative, dirty and deadly because it is lethal, poisonous, fatal.

Nigerian politics ought not to be a do-or-die undertaking consisting of religious oppression, pious domination, violent coercion, tyranny, cruelty, or subjugation.

Nigerian politics ought to be a give-and-take mutuality, a do-unto-others-as-one-would-like-to-be-done-to. Why are the Igbos condemned to second-class citizenry in a country they have helped to build?

Politics, as it is played in Nigeria and some African countries, has ceased to be the fun it is meant to be.  Let’s make government to be I am-okay-and-you-are-okay game in which there Is no permanent enemy and no permanent friend.

This essay is about broadening political participation so that our people shall be free from oppression. Let’s remember politics is based on gentlemen’s agreement and compromise for the benefit of the citizens we represent.

We defeat the purpose of good government if we cannot help solve our people’s problems in meeting their needs.

Allowing citizens to get involved and have their voice heard is what a government is all about. It also is what has been denied to countless Nigerians. The Nigerians have historically been denied political freedom and participation. It’s time we changed that.

Let’s eschew political exclusion, Let’s make political inclusion global and change the attitude of greed that plagues our leaders. Political participation should be world-wide, international, universal, comprehensive, total, and everywhere in Nigeria.

Without political involvement, how do the people know their rights, and the stakes they have in their organization, or what role they ought to play?

Political participation enables a government to work better, to serve the people in more efficient ways  than when acts are done chaotically[D2] , randomly, arbitrarily.

Political participation is a process which enables private citizens to influence their government. Without citizens’ active participation, a government stagnates, flounders and deteriorates.

Political participation comes in many shapes and forms, including voting, running for offices, campaigning for candidates, monitoring elections, and working hard to change unpopular laws.   

How do we encourage political participation in Nigeria? Specific ways will include creating a welcoming atmosphere[.

Nigeria shall have a psychological environment that is conducive to development of self-efficacy, civic responsibility, and esprit de corps.

Nigeria shall be a social environment that has no alienation, no authoritarian tendency, with adequate opportunity for education, without discrimination on the bases of tribe, sex, age, sex, or income level.

Nigeria shall have a political environment that stimulates a growing interest in politics and awareness of issues affecting communities, and opportunities to mobilize and belong to governmental groups.

Submitted by Dr. James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com

Saturday, May 25, 2019

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