With all due respects for all Nigerians, especially those of us that have tried to do their best in seeing other persons as well as the country well and prosperous, evenly, I make bold to say that many times, I no longer feel sorry to say the Nigerian things as they truly are – very silly indeed! For how can God and nature endow us with so much good, and yet we are living in such abject misery, such defects of affect for one another and the growing capital of the world’s poverty? We are also the fastest world’s centre of insecurity, inter-ethnic hatred and bigotry, ethnic and religious cleansing rising to genocides now and again; and some people are even treating it as business as usual, or even things to celebrate? Now and again, one hears people talking about a Yoruba presidency, a Fulani presidency, and Niger Delta presidency, South-East or Igbo presidency and such other truly silly terminologies. One even hears the worse of this as “their turn to produce such a president”! Now, if one may ask, what does this mean? For those who say such things, how intelligent do they think that they are when they say it? Who needs presidents in Nigeria that will be or should be so? What will they do?
On the whole, why does anybody who uses such terminologies not feel in his or her very bones, the stupidity of such a term or of indeed using it? Why do Nigerians not recognize the persons who say such things as part of the problems of Nigeria; as part of the tribalism, the injustices, nepotism, lack of progress, peace and development that we need; but are not making in this country? Over the past development of the world, we have all come to know that when group organisation and governance (the meaning of politics) came into place, it invariably started with the autocracy, survival of the fittest, bush or animalistic man governances of “the winner takes it all”. Then it developed into all types of small group governances as plutocracies – including feudalisms, oligarchies and aristocracies. Then, finally, it arrives at the all-participatory politics that we have come to know it today, as democracies? So, democracy is the modern man’s way of governance or politics. To do it otherwise, is to look for trouble that no sensible person should be doing!
Therefore what Nigeria needs is not a South-east president, a South-west, North-central, North-east, Niger-Delta, South-south, Fulani, Kanuri, Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen, or any such other president. Anybody using such a language or trying to make people to think in that way, must be recognised for the retrogressive, silly and unreasoning fellow that s/he is; an agent of the continuation of this present Nigerian silly political state. S/he should receive from any and all of us, the just treatment due for such a behavior, namely, take him/her/them away privately and educate him/her/them on the foolishness or otherwise, bogey, of that statement. If they would rather use it again, we must learn to treat them as the obvious wilful perpetrators of this present Nigerian silly political situation; and if nothing else, prayerfully hand him/her/them over to God to sort out in His own good time and manner.
Now to put it as exactly as it ought to be, what Nigeria needs now as any other time, politically and leadership wise, is a competent democrat, who understands and obeys the rule of law! That person, that Nigerian leader needed now, is some non-religious fanatic, non tribalist, non ethnic cleanser, mentally and physically healthy person who is able to harness of all the rich endowments of this country, evenly, without any laws to be needed for him/her to do so! Nigeria needs a leader now who is able to build bridges of fraternal and human love, mutual respect and of harnessing the potentials of all the good people and natural resources of this country, for everybody’s good; but not of some few of us. We need a president that is able to build a nation from “the 1914 mistake” as described by Sir Ahmadu Bello or “a mere geographical expression but not a nation” according to Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Any other president, howsoever else described, can only be a bogey, a monster considering for how long we have been waiting for this proper thing to happen, or such other silly alternative to the real thing!
We must therefore learn, as Nigerians, to refuse to accept any of these other stupid alternatives that the perpetrators of these Nigerian primitivities are forever trying to sell to us for our continuing non-development. Let us all put an end to it all; and look for the true alternative to all these political jingoisms, whether at this present time of elections or in the shortest possible time. I can only conclude by saying that those who refuse to join in this needed true change in the way it should be, as well as to encourage others to do the same, can only be treated by us for what they are – the enemies of progress! I invite everybody else to do the same so that we can get out of these our present political wilderness. May God Himself help us to do so, individually and corporately! Amen.
Asuzu is Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Ibadan
