Daniel Ibrahim

Where Nigeria Stands on the Global Scale of Development

Nigeria ranks very low on the scales of international development which is an irony for a country that has such enormous potential and wealth. We have resources in ample variety but we are beset by bad leadership, bad economic oversight and the misuse of these resources. We have been conditioned to think that the oil wells of the delta will always flow and petrodollars will always come in, no matter what. The key obstacle to our growth has always been bad leadership. A leadership that always seeks to follow the well beaten path that leads nowhere. Economic policy and the general scope of governance in Nigeria leaves much to be desired. Policies are mostly a mere exercise in window dressing. They are conceived at the whim of our leaders and their cronies to create a façade of action and process, while in essence they are very shallow prescriptions for selfish gains which includes graft, kickbacks, crony-stuffing and other forms of corruption in the corridors of power.

We seem to be jinxed when it comes to leadership and the reasons why the country fails in leadership is collective. For a country that places mediocrity and ethnoreligious bigotry above merit, it cannot thrive beyond its shortcomings. It will always perform within the orbit of the sort of leadership the country can afford. And the sort of leadership the country can afford is the sort that satisfies the whims of ethnoreligious bigots far above the essential needs of the nation, which are those of sustainable and scalable development. Collectively we are scared to break free from the dark shades of the ethnoreligious subjectivity that colors the light of our social reasoning dark. We want to break forth into a new dawn as a global leader in the comity of nations but under the direction of the ethnic or religious hero, whether he knows his onions or not.

As a result of our collective failure as a nation in leadership , we are always burdened with nepotistic governments who are compelled to persistently oil the blundering social machinery of the religious bigotry and ethnic chauvinism that brought them to power in the first place. The resulting effect is a dire price the nation has to pay for playing along with divisive forces. The dire price is underdevelopment and stagnation . Ethnicity and religion are the major culprits firing the blunderbuss of failing leadership in our national life. Both cultural strands of life in their thoroughly misguided forms overreach themselves in our public space, when they conceive with shallow logic that the only panacea to our national problems is to pick the most suitable bigot and dump him in the corridors of power, in fulfillment of a blind sense of duty, that blinds itself to reason and sees the nation and its prospects as subordinate to narrow sensibilities, above all else.

For all our avoidable flaws we are compelled to put up with governments that cannot curb unemployment, curtail infant /maternal mortality or provide adequate security for the citizens of our nation. We have institutions of higher learning that are nondescript and dilapidated clusters for joyless and fruitless learning. These institutions are certificate mills that pour out by the thousands an army of undereducated graduates who are intellectually and professionally armed with only a smattering of basic knowledge. On top of that most of these ill-educated graduates have a very strong sense of entitlement that is merely credentialist. They feel since they have the certificates even without competence, they must be gainfully employed by all means foul and fair. This is what leads to the trysts and bribes that throw incompetent but ill - favored persons into our national workspaces, sometimes even to very sensitive positions that need no mediocrity, not even in the passing.

As we continue to fertilize crassness and mediocrity in our corridors of power and public institutions the country will continue to sink to Lilliputian depths, free falling, God forbid, into an abyss of irretrievable and irreversible ruin. This is a fate we must avoid at all reasonable costs because we all stand to lose collectively, if the ship of state sinks. The panacea we need at the moment is to get our acts together at all levels. We may still retain our obvious differences in tribe or religion but within boundaries of identity that do not cross the line of common sense. We may differ when it comes to identity but not when it comes to common sense. We must unite with a higher sense of national consciousness that puts the essential needs of our nation far higher and clearly above our parochial identities. What are the essential needs we have collectively as a nation : Development, Growth and the Intellectual progress of our nation. Cultural identity and positive spiritual aspirations will thrive in a progressive social climate. What can help us to satisfy these needs: Competent, Clean (Corrupt Free) and Collective governance that is nationally inclusive. The only problem is, who will bell the cat, by being the first to give up his or her parochial sensibilities for the sake of our collective progress.