Nigeria Can Learn from Eritrea,
The Soul Is Under Siege
By Abba Mahmood (Nigeria) Oct.8, 2009
A week ago, Nigeria celebrated the 49th anniversary of her flag independence
from British colonial rule. It was an occasion for sober reflections and
critical assessments. It afforded us an opportunity to search our souls, and
attempt to look at the journey so far covered. It was also a very auspicious
time to ponder these questions: Where are we coming from? Where ate we now?
Where are we heading to? Answering these questions will go a long way in
resolving some critical issues surrounding our present circumstances and how
we arrived at the present point.
Forty-nine years after independence, rising expectations among Nigerians
have given way to dashed hopes and heightened discontent. The poverty rates
are up, the streets are more insecure and ever more children are growing up
in broken families. Our beloved country is headed in the wrong direction -
fast. Nigeria is falling behind, it is losing its way and all we are getting
from government is status quo paralysis, neglect and selfishness, not
leadership and vision.
Government has been reeling out statistics to buttress the point that there
is economic growth. But which growth is it that is not creating employment?
In the last 10 years, four million youths have graduated from various
institutions. But the private sector is comatose while the public sector is
retrenching. Consequently, unemployment, particularly among important groups
such as graduates, is acute, and real wages are stagnant. Many urban centres
are on their way to being locations of endemic anarchy, violence and
alienation. Everywhere, the gulf between the rich and the poor is
increasing.
Crime cannot be controlled in the absence of employment, morally-oriented
system of education or in a society ruled by swindlers and luxury-loving
cliques. The other day at the airport, I was watching when a top government
official came off the plane drunk. His aide told me that he had flu - green
bottle flu would be more like it. Crime and corruption are primarily the
products of unfair and unbalanced distribution of resources and of a
calculated policy to deprive the poor. It is a pity that, in this regard and
many more, the Yar'Adua regime will be remembered for bequeathing to us a
legacy of inefficiency.
Again, if a Nigerian woman is expected to educate future generations and
prepare them for their future life as good human beings, she must be given a
basic training and a basic experience of what public life is and what public
interest is all about. At present, the Ministry of Women Affairs is only
operating an elitist code in which women have few rights and men few
responsibilities. We know that many men have no power except the power to
oppress women, which invariably deprive our nation the critical
contributions of our women who constitute half of our population. This is
very retrogressive in any society desirous of progress and development.
Similarly, there must be real reorientation of our values. As it is, it is
dangerous to save anything, because everything must immediately be shared.
Our social system works to level everybody down to the same standard, which
works against ambition. In addition, there must be justice in society and we
perhaps will, then, realize that the prostitute is driven into impiety by
social deprivation; the thief by poverty; and the gambler by prolonged sense
of helplessness.
If a society is not in reasonable health, democracy can be not only risky
but disastrous. Because both a middle class and civil institutions are
required for successful democracy. Nigeria, which inherited neither from the
military regime, remains violent, unstable and miserably poor despite its
great potentials. There is general anxiety that unless the middle classes
are enlarged and institutions modernized, the wave of democratization will
not be consolidated.
As it is, the soul of the nation is under siege. That is why even our
football teams have stopped winning. There is extreme religious militancy
among both Christian and Islamic adherents. As far as religions are
concerned, progress will depend on the emergence of genuine religious
scholars who interpret their religions in a realistic way taking into
account contemporary social trends: good religious education with real
spiritual content; depolarization of the religious sects; strong religious
groups, the activities of which are peaceful, sensitive to the feelings of
others and the heterogeneous nature of our society; and the replacement of
luxury-loving, parasitic, corrupt and materialistic religious leaders with
pious and genuinely spiritual ones in all groups.
Education is the key to the future. No one needs to belabour the point that
the Nigerian educational system has almost completely collapsed. The public
schools have decayed and the private, exorbitant ones teach our children how
to memorize and not how to think or how to analyze. Again, instead of
functional education that will make the products self-reliant, the system
makes for young men and women who head straight into the saturated labour
market. Consequently, you use your savings to educate your children, who end
up in your home depending on you for survival because they are either
unemployed or unemployable.
As far as functional state is concerned, Eritrea is a very good example in
sub-Saharan Africa. It boasts one of Africa's best government health-care
networks, an agricultural extension service, an education system and a
well-documented record of safeguarding human rights. Its guerilla capital in
the pre-state days of the 1980s featured a large underground hospital
powered by wind and solar energy, providing its own aspirin and anti-malaria
tablets, intravenous solution, and sanitary napkins for women. Eritreans,
who are almost 50-50 Christian and Muslim population, transformed the ideals
of self-help and group cohesiveness into a new kind of ideology. All these
happened in sub-Saharan Africa, proving that nowhere is totally hopeless.
Neo-liberals continue to tell us that for us to move forward economically,
government should hands off every thing for the private sector. The current
global financial meltdown has conclusively proven this belief to be
erroneous. With population growth, urbanization, soil deterioration, air
pollution and the contamination and overuse of water all afflicting our
country, what else but the state would hope to manage the delicate
relationship between man and his environment?
With regard to foreign direct investment, it must be noted that favourable
legal framework for foreign investments does not necessarily guarantee that
foreign investments will come. There are other factors, not least the profit
motive, which drive foreign investments. These include the degree of
political stability, the place of the rule of law in the legal system, the
availability of critical skills as well as clear evidence that local
investors invest locally. Where most of the financial capital is invested or
lodged outside, it will prove difficult to convince foreign investors,
except perhaps in the extractive industries such as oil, that their
investments are worth it.
Principles and values in politics should not be compromised but strategies
and tactics must be flexible enough to make progress possible, under the
difficult conditions we are in. If we must achieve our objectives as a
nation, government decisions and actions ought to centre on policies that
would build community, expand opportunity, demand responsibility and reward
honesty and hard work. That is the path to true greatness. God save Nigeria.
Nigeria Can Learn from Eritrea,
The Soul Is Under Siege
By Abba Mahmood (Nigeria) Oct.8, 2009
A week ago, Nigeria celebrated the 49th anniversary of her flag independence
from British colonial rule. It was an occasion for sober reflections and
critical assessments. It afforded us an opportunity to search our souls, and
attempt to look at the journey so far covered. It was also a very auspicious
time to ponder these questions: Where are we coming from? Where ate we now?
Where are we heading to? Answering these questions will go a long way in
resolving some critical issues surrounding our present circumstances and how
we arrived at the present point.
Forty-nine years after independence, rising expectations among Nigerians
have given way to dashed hopes and heightened discontent. The poverty rates
are up, the streets are more insecure and ever more children are growing up
in broken families. Our beloved country is headed in the wrong direction -
fast. Nigeria is falling behind, it is losing its way and all we are getting
from government is status quo paralysis, neglect and selfishness, not
leadership and vision.
Government has been reeling out statistics to buttress the point that there
is economic growth. But which growth is it that is not creating employment?
In the last 10 years, four million youths have graduated from various
institutions. But the private sector is comatose while the public sector is
retrenching. Consequently, unemployment, particularly among important groups
such as graduates, is acute, and real wages are stagnant. Many urban centres
are on their way to being locations of endemic anarchy, violence and
alienation. Everywhere, the gulf between the rich and the poor is
increasing.
Crime cannot be controlled in the absence of employment, morally-oriented
system of education or in a society ruled by swindlers and luxury-loving
cliques. The other day at the airport, I was watching when a top government
official came off the plane drunk. His aide told me that he had flu - green
bottle flu would be more like it. Crime and corruption are primarily the
products of unfair and unbalanced distribution of resources and of a
calculated policy to deprive the poor. It is a pity that, in this regard and
many more, the Yar'Adua regime will be remembered for bequeathing to us a
legacy of inefficiency.
Again, if a Nigerian woman is expected to educate future generations and
prepare them for their future life as good human beings, she must be given a
basic training and a basic experience of what public life is and what public
interest is all about. At present, the Ministry of Women Affairs is only
operating an elitist code in which women have few rights and men few
responsibilities. We know that many men have no power except the power to
oppress women, which invariably deprive our nation the critical
contributions of our women who constitute half of our population. This is
very retrogressive in any society desirous of progress and development.
Similarly, there must be real reorientation of our values. As it is, it is
dangerous to save anything, because everything must immediately be shared.
Our social system works to level everybody down to the same standard, which
works against ambition. In addition, there must be justice in society and we
perhaps will, then, realize that the prostitute is driven into impiety by
social deprivation; the thief by poverty; and the gambler by prolonged sense
of helplessness.
If a society is not in reasonable health, democracy can be not only risky
but disastrous. Because both a middle class and civil institutions are
required for successful democracy. Nigeria, which inherited neither from the
military regime, remains violent, unstable and miserably poor despite its
great potentials. There is general anxiety that unless the middle classes
are enlarged and institutions modernized, the wave of democratization will
not be consolidated.
As it is, the soul of the nation is under siege. That is why even our
football teams have stopped winning. There is extreme religious militancy
among both Christian and Islamic adherents. As far as religions are
concerned, progress will depend on the emergence of genuine religious
scholars who interpret their religions in a realistic way taking into
account contemporary social trends: good religious education with real
spiritual content; depolarization of the religious sects; strong religious
groups, the activities of which are peaceful, sensitive to the feelings of
others and the heterogeneous nature of our society; and the replacement of
luxury-loving, parasitic, corrupt and materialistic religious leaders with
pious and genuinely spiritual ones in all groups.
Education is the key to the future. No one needs to belabour the point that
the Nigerian educational system has almost completely collapsed. The public
schools have decayed and the private, exorbitant ones teach our children how
to memorize and not how to think or how to analyze. Again, instead of
functional education that will make the products self-reliant, the system
makes for young men and women who head straight into the saturated labour
market. Consequently, you use your savings to educate your children, who end
up in your home depending on you for survival because they are either
unemployed or unemployable.
As far as functional state is concerned, Eritrea is a very good example in
sub-Saharan Africa. It boasts one of Africa's best government health-care
networks, an agricultural extension service, an education system and a
well-documented record of safeguarding human rights. Its guerilla capital in
the pre-state days of the 1980s featured a large underground hospital
powered by wind and solar energy, providing its own aspirin and anti-malaria
tablets, intravenous solution, and sanitary napkins for women. Eritreans,
who are almost 50-50 Christian and Muslim population, transformed the ideals
of self-help and group cohesiveness into a new kind of ideology. All these
happened in sub-Saharan Africa, proving that nowhere is totally hopeless.
Neo-liberals continue to tell us that for us to move forward economically,
government should hands off every thing for the private sector. The current
global financial meltdown has conclusively proven this belief to be
erroneous. With population growth, urbanization, soil deterioration, air
pollution and the contamination and overuse of water all afflicting our
country, what else but the state would hope to manage the delicate
relationship between man and his environment?
With regard to foreign direct investment, it must be noted that favourable
legal framework for foreign investments does not necessarily guarantee that
foreign investments will come. There are other factors, not least the profit
motive, which drive foreign investments. These include the degree of
political stability, the place of the rule of law in the legal system, the
availability of critical skills as well as clear evidence that local
investors invest locally. Where most of the financial capital is invested or
lodged outside, it will prove difficult to convince foreign investors,
except perhaps in the extractive industries such as oil, that their
investments are worth it.
Principles and values in politics should not be compromised but strategies
and tactics must be flexible enough to make progress possible, under the
difficult conditions we are in. If we must achieve our objectives as a
nation, government decisions and actions ought to centre on policies that
would build community, expand opportunity, demand responsibility and reward
honesty and hard work. That is the path to true greatness. God save Nigeria.
1 comment:
i loved your article
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