On the occasion of the 53rd anniversary of Nigeria’s independence, I will like to address some pertinent issues relating to our common destiny.

It has become fashionable for anyone and everyone to blame all the woes of this country on our political leadership. They are said to be eternally corrupt, irredeemably greedy, hopelessly inept, and miserably filled with nepotism. Fair enough, these problems have remained unsolvable and, have seemingly resisted every form of reform since independence. In fact, they seem to be mutating by the day and defying prescriptions of many experts. So, should we give up our search for national renaissance?

Maybe, we should refocus our attention and try to resolve what I will call the “following question” before returning to the issue of leadership? How often do we stand before a mirror and truthfully describe what we see, or at least embark on a journey of self-assessment? It is true that our political leadership is fraught with myriads of inadequacies, but we ourselves are not to blame; what about our following?

At the 53rd anniversary of our nation, I thought it would be wise not to give in to the known and conventional search for solutions for a way out of our national quagmire, but to try to refocus it a little bit.

Is it not true that whosoever became a leader today, perhaps by an accident of fate, was once a follower? It is axiomatic that you cannot continue to do the same thing and expect a different result. It may well be instructive that the quality of leadership you expect tomorrow is directly related to the following you exhibit today. How then can you lead well if you did not follow well?

As followers, we must learn to focus on the consequences of our own actions and inaction, on the little things that matter very significantly, on our value systems as individuals, as a family and as a community. What do we celebrate? Whose tune do we dance to? Who are our role models? Do we perhaps live a lie? Is Nigeria fast becoming a nation of dishonesty, of fake people; where we justify corruption and, differentiate it from stealing? The importer who brings in sub-standard materials, the customs officer who takes bribes to clear them as genuine and the mechanic who buys them to cut costs and deceive his client; they are all guilty of the same offence: Corruption.

And the costs are huge: Market distortion for genuine importers, laziness and negative competition among customs officers, sudden vehicle breakdown and possibly death. You can see that it is a chain reaction. The simple action of a dishonest importer has led to a fatal motor accident on the road. And you can say this for every national malady we face today. Like a seed, it is sown and it germinates and branches out.

Our dishonesty has spread to every sector, even to our security systems. Two security officers from two different religions or ethnic groups will report the same incident differently; blinded by the religious or tribal lens. What a country!

We falsify records with ease, and we go to bed and expect a better Nigeria. People walk around in the civil service with fake credentials. And we pay for examinations to be written for our wards and spouses and we pay huge bribes to secure admissions to secondary schools for our children. When they leave secondary schools, they either sort their way through university with more money or they can go for Sexually Transmitted Degrees, apologies to Prof. Okey Ndibe. And when they emerge in the society, they become both unemployed and unemployable and, so another round of bribing and lobbying begins.

When we displace the qualified and less connected and get slotted into our bureaucracy and private sector, what you see is what you get – isn’t it? A nation that sows dishonesty will harvest national decay.

We can all point the fingers to the political elite; true and so easy. Talk is cheap. Anybody can criticise, but who amongst us can synthesise and innovate? What about amongst ourselves –in the media, the civil society, churches, mosques, and in families? You, yes, yourself!

We are a religious nation without an iota of humanity. And I ask for the umpteenth time; where have our better values gone?

Life has become so worthless in the country over the years. Taking innocent lives, kidnapping, and suicide missions have now become things that either are permissible or dismissed with a wave of the hand or solved with amnesty. Institutions have been invaded by scavengers; and impunity has been elevated to state policy. I am worried and distraught. We are a nation of pretenders. We pretend to be bound together by what? Ideology? Oil money? If not, what else? We may see reasons to grow older as a nation regardless of how loose, as far as there is a bounty to share.

Nonetheless, at 53, it is not all a tale of woes and a litany of lamentation though. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I have a hero. He is a 60-year-old man, far away in that troubled city of Maiduguri. He stole my heart when he turned in his own son, who was a Boko Haram member, to be shot by the Joint Task Force. He who lives by the sword will go by the sword. But I am also a parent, and I know what it means to contemplate handing your child in. Many of us will not do that. I hope that one day I will meet my hero, but even if I don’t, he remains a shining example of a nascent national renewal. Of patriotism and the pain that comes with change.

Shout this out to the many of you out there who dare to be different despite the costs. I wish your selfless deeds can be emulated by the wives and girlfriends of kidnappers in the South-East, by the associates of oil thieves and militants in the South-South, and by the acquaintances of cross-border hoodlums in the South-West. These hoodlums; we know them, don’t we? They are in our midst, but we have deliberately taken that path of anomie and villainy, unlike my courageous friend in Maiduguri.

In the final analysis, the new Nigeria we dream about is still possible, but only if it starts with ourselves – you and me. We are in many ways architects of our national destiny. We could begin to make one tiny little difference as mere followers, with the hope that it will gradually and incrementally cascade until it becomes significant enough to either purge our political leadership or force their hands for the better.

Happy 53rd anniversary to those who can still see any real or imagined reasons to be celebrating! I guess another Nigeria is still possible, but do not take my word for it. But after night, morning comes. So, let’s all join in, do the right things, and make the nation’s period of darkness last no more!

 -Punch