By Adebayo Ojo-Iyara
The ultimate challenge confronting humanity will be the cooling down of the sun as it becomes a red giant. With that, the sun being the singular sustainers of all life on earth, the end of humanity is sure; unless of course we do something about it ahead of the 5 billion years deadline.
To feeble minded men and women, 5 billion years look like forever and ever. However, leaders of men, in nations that have leaders, are already working on various options today, as they are doing on the possibility of a giant asteroid hitting our earth, with catastrophic consequences, which scientists think is a likelihood in about a hundred years’ time, having recently had one that passed close by, million mile close, yet, dangerously close.
The most elementary challenges facing mankind, which should have been a donedeal everywhere since ages, are food, clothing and shelter. However, here we are in Africa and Nigeria especially, as we are, battling with these basics. We are all living witnesses to our historical conditions in the 21st century, today, and I need not bother readers with the pathetic details and all the sordid whys.
Still, at these challenging and unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic times, the big vacuum of foresight and creativity in leadership, governance and policies in our land becomes extremely worrisome. If only for enlightened self-preservation interests, one would think most of our elite in decision-making positions should have done better.
The Yoruba have a proverb, “Igi ganganran ma gun mi loju, okere la ti n wo,” literally means you must see far ahead the path if you don’t want a protruding twig to smack your face. Foresight, simply put, is seeing ahead correctly, while creativity is doing something new, differently, and positively.
Vision and innovation are fundamental needful for effective and efficient decision-making and impactful actions in government. Good leaders do not wait for things to happen before reacting. For meaningful progress and development in their society, leaders analyse realities minutely and comprehensively, anticipate emerging realities and innovatively plan ahead to get the better and best of it.
This does not immune them and society from emergencies, but those patently unforeseen or unforeseeable developments and force majeure will be few and far between. A credit to their deep vision, creative plans and anticipatory policies and actions.
On April 16, 2020, at the daily Presidential Task Force Briefing on Covid-19, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola spoke about the Tropics and how heat and humidity, especially considering the housing type of the majority of citizens, make outdoor life compelling and protracted Total Lockdown difficult.
He then enunciated that since such lockdowns are presently inescapable, one component of the needful to make it successful in getting rid of the virus is mass production and enforced usage of the face mask nationwide in public places, complimentary to all the other guidelines and rules of hygiene; that if done and rigorously enforced, the virus can be contained within 2 weeks of total lockdown thereby making way for easing the lockdown. He even postulated on the
FORESIGHT AND CREATIVITY AS GOVERNANCE TOOLS IN DEFEATING COVID-19.
Mudasiru Oguntola Toogun, having appointed the Seriki Fulani for Osun State, Alhaji Oluwatoyin Sule Muhammed as Personal Assistant to the Governor on Peaceful Coexistence Between Fulani/Bororo And Crops Farmers in the State. The result of the bold step taken by Ogbeni Aregbesola was recognized and popularized through the Publication of a Research Conducted by JOHN’S HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, MARYLAND, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA) on NIGERIA SOCIAL VIOLENCE DATABASE (NSVD) in relation to death from HEARDSMEN AND FARMERS CONFLICT (2016).
The report showed that Osun is one of the few States with no ‘DEATH’ at all in the Country during the year under review. Whatever happened later was after his exit as a governor for reasons that are open.
The award-winning “Opon Imo” Tablet of Knowledge launched in 2013 is another such exercises in foresight and innovation. The portable touchscreen Android powered e-learning device, first of its kind in Nigeria and unique globally, contains all the books in every subject needed by Senior Secondary School Students.
It has written and audio-visual teaching/instructions by teachers in all those subjects and WAEC and UTME past questions and answers from inception till date. With 900 minutes of virtual classroom lessons, it has self-learning tools and exercise platforms as well as other materials on civic and general knowledge. You don’t have to be online to access its contents and it can be solar-charged when there is no electricity supply.
The import of the deployment of this powerful learning tool is already manifesting in the performance of Osun students in the last 6 years as they produce award and scholarship winning feats as some of the best secondary school graduating students in WAEC/UTME results.
How good, pleasant and effective it will be if all terminal Senior Secondary School Students in Nigeria today have these tools in the era of Covid-19? The Online alternatives being touted in a country with woeful power supplies and network services even if parents can afford data charges are simply turning out as exercises in futility.
Clearly, good intention and a given quantum of strong commitments to the general good is a precondition for exercises in foresight and innovation in governance. As patently seen, it is not a lack of access to wisdom, even by those in government who don’t have it but need it for a good and timely decision that is the issue.
It is said that the difference in today’s world is not between one ideology or the other but simply a difference between those who care and those who don’t! Our tragedy at home here appears to be a preponderance of careless elite who intensely seek and muzzle their ways into public offices for private reasons.
Now, we are at a time of creativity in search for long term solutions for remedy and vaccines for Covid-19 in order for the world to go back to normal. So many Nigerian and African options are being passionately mentioned but with little or no sincere response or care from our key decision makers.
Equally, life after Covid-19, in terms of the structure of our mass housing for the populace is key, along with the structure of the informal, daily earning productions engagement. There is no telling that emergencies with the like of impact of Covid-19 will not recur in the foreseeable future.
This is innovative thinking and action time for governments. There is a leaf to borrow from the ideas, thinking and policies of several men and women of good intent, deep thought and deeds in Nigeria, one proven example of which is still a serving minister of the Federal Republic and a member of the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19.
There is no need, in private life but much more in governance, to be taking one step forward and ten leaps backwards in this age of knowledge. Our elite must find a way in which the pursuit of their private pleasure and prosperity does not conflict with commitment to the basic good of the majority.
No time teaches that need and lesson better than this Covid-19 time, when commonality and solidarity is key to the survival of one and all without any immunity. Let us hope it is a lesson they sincerely take away into the Post Covid-19 Era.
In the meantime, there is still plenty of room for foresight and innovation in timely and smart decision and policy making before we can say it is over, even as the easing of lockdown now proves a tougher challenge to survival, for the discerning, more than total lockdown.
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