by Farouk Martins Aresa @oomoaresa
Changee of entitlement mentality must start from the grassroots all the way to the top. If youths want a lasting impact in the country, especially in a presidential system, they have to get involved at the grassroots level shaping and wrestling primaries away from pillagers. Use local universities as staging grounds. Changes a president can make without support in both Houses at the Federal and states levels is limited; a benevolent dictator can be impeded or impeached.
Jungle justice shows how angry you are but on the wrong types of folks. The cry of Onye oshi, Ole and Barawo may be getting louder. It is just a start. Not only do youths have to vote, youth must watch the ballot boxes from being stolen! We also have to watch out for those cunning politicians hijacking the crowd by paying them to shout OLE. The story of robbers disappearing into the crowd that is pursuing them; only to push someone else in front as the Barawo has been told and witnessed, but not enough to draw caution.
It is not sufficient to vote out the looters and replace them with youths. Those youths must demonstrate how they are different from the likes of former Speaker Bankole that just wanted an opportunity to chop. However, the youth have less entrenched sense of entitlement, baggage of godfathers, born to rule mentality, parties of kickbacks and resource allotments or king makers. If we can really start afresh, youths will have opportunities to change mentality.
Spent old politicians without vigor and vitality need to go to retirement home. Account for past previous achievement in the first place, after many false starts. They all wrecked the economy while celebrating false sense of grandeur with little accomplishment. We are so poor a country, yet politicians cancel contracts and pad up the costs of new ones without any consequences. Right in our face, their projects of roads, bridges or hospitals are the world most extravagant.
So, who has ethnic leadership helped (epp)? Indeed, the whole country is a mess! Look at the environmental disaster in Niger Delta and the rate of poverty in North-West and East and tell us what their leadership have accomplished to alleviate people’s needs above subsistence living. Fishermen have lost ways of making a living and poverty is still concentrated in the North while the number of oil millionaires claiming arduous digging for oil increased in the North and South.
We are already witnessing thugs, riffraff and political jobbers maiming one another or snatching boxes in the party primaries. This is not only to intimidate opponents but also to eliminate rivals and youths competing for the positions. This was how all militia started before they turned into religious and political terrorists that could no longer be controlled by their sponsors. Boko Haram was put on steroid to make Jonathan’s reign ungovernable. It came back to haunt us all.
Ironically, it is the turn of Fulani herdsmen to make Buhari’s reign ungovernable. If Jonathan could not control Boko Haram, he deserved what he got and since Buhari could not control the Fulani herdsmen, he would get the same changee that kicked Jonathan out. Indeed, the recycling of sick old politicians by cabals that only care about self-interest, devoid their leader of control over their cabinet. Lack of peace and security is not conducive for economic growth or civilized activity. Buhari saw, hear and learn nothing from Jonathan’s changee?
It was embarrassing that Buhari, in front of the President of United States that has more intelligence on the activity of Fulani herdsmen than him, said these were Libyan terrorists and Fulani herdsmen do not carry AK47! Instead of confronting Fulani herdsmen mayhem head-on, he was giving excuses for the destruction of life and properties as historical events. He became an apologist for perpetrators of havoc on innocent folks. So historical atrocities must continue?
Let us face it; those retarding the growth of African countries today are Africans. It is a shame that we are still looking for one successful African country that can manage its resources for the benefit of their country instead of looking for the biggest kickback to declare our resources open to all comers for abuse. They pay us meagerly for our land and resources, take back the money in exchange for arms to suppress dissents or start more civil wars.
Not comfortable anywhere. Youths jump from fry pan inside African countries into fire outside.
Most African countries got their Independence about fifty years ago. While the number of schools and hospitals have increased compared to the colonial era, the increase in the number of industrial, housing and agribusiness have not kept pace with population. Indeed, the vision of the leadership that fought vigorously for Independence as youths has been shattered, replaced by vagabonds that facilitated rapacious rape of Africa’s resources and people.
The next election in Nigeria will determine if the youths that make up sixty percent of most African population will determine Africa’s future with votes they can get, not only from their cohorts but also from the grassroots that must be convinced that business as usual is working against their interest and future generations. It is not enough to cry that parents are losing their children and grandchildren to foreign countries and cultures: do something about it at home!
Canada has joined many countries that have had enough of Nigerians. The projection is that by 2050, there may be more people in Nigeria than in European Union. Actually, immigration has become the bogey needed across the European and American countries to scare voters. Any country that does not take a hard line against immigrants will have its government changed. Asian countries have always been hostile to immigrants, even from fellow Asian countries.
Nigeria is too blessed with brains to be stuck with so many bad leaderships. If we can only apply those brains to legal productive enterprises instead of crowding out political process as the only way to success, other avenues would be discovered. Brains that should be busy competing with youths worldwide are being wasted in unproductive and defeating endeavors across the world.
There is nothing wrong with attracting foreign investments, as long as you understand that you get what you negotiate, not what you deserve. Like the slave trade, it is very doubtful if these renege politicians understand the art of negotiations as they are still exchanging uranium, gold, cobalt, and diamond for mirrors exercising their consumer mentality. Not only must we become producers, we must have affordable prices to compete and patronize our own goods.