What hope Nigeria? First the politicians increasingly tolerated bad eggs going mad for power at any cost by scheming and implementing criminal, undemocratic political strategies embracing and using ‘Any Means Necessary’ including blackmail, thugs, violence, mayhem, intimidation, bribery and billion-dollar budget, contract padding and theft. Politics has minimised such crimes as unpunishable and even amusing and laughable mere ‘political antics’.
What hope for Nigeria when the neglected youth, unsupported dropouts or misdirected unemployed youth, instead of being supported to become something in business, are abandoned for three years and picked up by politicians and political parties with questionable morals enticing youth into anti-democracy violent activities.
What hope for Nigeria when in-between elections the youth, already violence-prone and with party backing, are starved of a living and funds? They take to bank robbery and intimidation of traffic and local populations protected by their political and police godfathers in and out of power, feeding off the citizenry. This would have been avoided if there was a better safety net system to nurture school dropouts to pick themselves up and try again, increase school attendance and better small business opportunities. Today we have 6-12 months to correct this before the youth again fall victim to the temptation of the coming 2022 cycle of political money from the 2022 election war chests of politicians and political parties.
What hope for Nigeria after the economic catastrophe characterised by the continued fall of the naira in the midst of plenty of income and plenty of mismanagement and plenty of theft at a time when plenty of banks made plenty of money while plenty of poverty exploded across the violence-scared land? Fifty to 100 Nigerian $ billionaires can save $1b each in CBN, $50-100b, show faith, and shore up our Naira. But will they??
What hope for Nigeria as the political landscape was bereft of morality, failing to pay salary and pensions ruining the banks and the ‘Extended Family’s moral and monetary authority and truncating prosperity and potential for the nuclear and extended family thus morally and monetarily pauperising entire generations? Our amoral commercial traditional get-rich-quick mechanisms including a sadly misdirected corporate driven ‘instant millionaire madness’ were held up by social media to the youth who misread it as inspiration to shun normal jobs.
What hope for Nigeria when the traditional but often unpunished heinous crime of ‘ritual killings’ for money rituals or political advantage has escalated with little government pushback to fight the scourge by campaigns against perpetrating traditional ‘healers’ and even pastors.
What hope for Nigeria against the ever-growing, increasingly violent and huge demands for unrealistic sums of money, under the name of kidnapping? So many innocents from grandparents to babies have even been murdered even when the ransom has been paid out of vindictiveness, hatred or because the victim knew the kidnappers of the contact person.
What hope for Nigeria with a new violence in town. A mother gets thugs to beat up a teacher who caned her child. Thankfully she is facing a court case. A child slit the throat of a junior. The terrors inflicted on the more than five million registered and unregistered IDPs, including rape by carers, who are also essentially kidnap victims as they are taken a place not of their choice. The murder of a five-year-old much-loved kidnapped child by a known face is a terrible crime and a terrible lesson for all families. Sadly, we must do what we were not taught by our grandparents. We have already but must reinforce, for family survival, a marked reduction in the level of responsibility, faith in and trust that we have in others. This is because there are too many examples in the media of brothers against brothers, friends selling out friends, workers exposing employers, boyfriends mutilating girlfriends and teachers kidnapping infants, many strangers waylaying passers-by, just because they were passing by.
Today, sadly from hunger, neglect, greed or natural hatred or just ‘I heard’ or ‘I saw’ opportunistically, anyone can turn against you and your loved ones when you are just passing by or when you leave your loved ones in their care or near where the evil can hear of you and your loved ones.
In my many trips since 1967, it was a responsibility and patriotic duty to assist the police by stopping to pick a needy policeman going to Lagos to get his salary or to help stranded travellers. Now any of them could be a killer. I have also been victim of expressway stoning and murderous terrifying terrorists. Hopefully, the stories are real that the increasingly dangerous Ibadan-Lagos Road is being secured by Oyo and Ogun and Lagos Police Commands.
Every governor must fulfil his Oath of Office and work to their last day in office, a complete four-year contract with the citizens.
Governors’ good works will provide an ‘Election Chest of Good Deeds’. Nigeria must not stop working during election year. Citizenry will be swayed by Good Governance works.
Mr. Governor, work till election day. Invite parents and all concerned citizens to pre-emptively call out potential thugs and traditionalists with political-favour and money-making ritualists among their ranks to redirect them and retrain them away from crime. Upgrade the youth through programmes to truncate 2022 violence.
Good Governors and honest political parties can change Nigeria and bring civilised elections. The USA, land of millions of guns lost no life during election day. Why should we?