Despondency, like its opposite, joy, is a matter of choice. A lot of people across our country feel very despondent at present. They feel pessimistic about the future and what it portends. They also see no possible positive outcome from the coming elections. For my part, I choose to be joyful and optimistic. You can call me naïve or whatever. For me, it’s a matter of existential choice. The collective wisdom of the ages has taught me that it is not what life throws at us that ultimately determine what happens to us; rather, it is how we respond to what life throws at us.
Of course, from a purely objective standpoint, there is quite a lot to be despondent about. The economy has been in protracted doldrums, with a recovery that has been shaky and fragile over the last three years. The UN world poverty figures tell us we are now the world capital for poverty, having recently overtaken India for the dubious prize. Some 88 million Nigerians – about 70% of our population — live in destitute poverty. To put it in perspective, India’s 70 million poor constitute only 21% of its total population. Some 13 million of our children are out of school while 22 million Nigerians, most of them young people, are either unemployed our grossly under-employed. Crime and nihilistic violence have become the order of the day. Kidnapping and ritual murders are the norm, in addition to the insurgency and rampaging murderous herdsmen militias. There is a general feeling that the country is going in the wrong direction, morally, politically and developmentally. This is not helped by the gross incompetence of the government in power, with its nepotism, privatisation of government and rule by secret cabals.
In spite of all this, I choose to be joyful and optimistic. I pitch my hope in the innate goodness and generosity of the Nigerian people. My current involvement in the drama of electioneering politics has enabled me to visit the nooks and crannies of this country. I have spoken to traders, farmers, market women, youths, students, elders, disabled and all. I have discovered that Nigerians are a great people imbued with an indomitable spirit. They have an extraordinary spirit of courage and endurance. While the organic solidarities of clan and kinship are diminishing, the bonds of family remain strong. Nigerians of all faiths are a very prayerful people. Faith matters a lot to us. It is that faith, born of hope, which has kept our people going.
My greatest source of optimism is our young people. I have lectured on university campuses from Lagos and Ibadan to Port Harcourt and Abuja. I have spoken to okada riders, many of them under-employed graduates. Our elders have called the youths all sorts of names: lazy, 419, cultists and what have you. Our youths have their own challenges, but you can never take away from them their innate creativity and can-do spirit. When you go to the GSM villages in Lagos and Abuja, you see our youths – most of them self-taught — doing things in ICT that will amaze you. And they have never received any help from government or the banks. You also see a lot of that can-do spirit in the creative industries – in Nollywood and in music. Our youths have learned how to transform adversity into opportunity.
On Wednesday 13 February, the political parties, led by the two gladiators, signed a second Peace Accord in the full glare of national television. The solemn event was also witnessed by none other than the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth the Rt. Hon. Patricia Scotland QC and a gaggle of international observers. They seemed unfazed by Governor Nassir El-Rufai’s threat that they might all go back “in body bags”. Both Atiku Abubakar and President Muhammadu Buhari made the right noises committing themselves to respecting the rules of civility and peace. I congratulate everyone who was present on that occasion, including the 71 political parties that signed the Peace Accord. I also congratulate the National Peace Committee led by former President Abdulsalam Abubakar, his deputy Admiral Ubitu Ukiwe, Bishop of Sokoto Diocese Most Rev. Matthew Hassan Kukah who all made it possible. Sitting in that ornate building of the International Conference Centre in Abuja and looking at all those faces gave me hope that we as a country can still make it.
One message that came through is that the Africa and the world look up to Nigeria. If Nigeria makes it, there will be hope for Africa. However, in the unfortunate event that we bungle it, our glorious continent is doomed.
Tomorrow Saturday 16 February will decide whether our country will indeed live up to its promise and whether the government of the people by the people for the people shall prevail on these blessed shores of our venerable ancestors. There are those who see it largely as a contest between the ruling APC and the principal challenger Atiku Abubakar and the PDP. What I do know for sure is that the future is pregnant with possibilities.
What is at stake is clear. What the electorate want is a leadership that has the capacity and political will to respond to their most pressing development challenges. They want to live in peace and they want to see their future and that of their children go forward. They demand a leadership that can effectively tackle the evils of insurgency and random nihilistic killings. They demand a government that invests in human capital and expands the possibility frontiers of welfare, jobs and economic opportunities.
The Nigerian people wish to live in a stronger and more secure union. The word “restructuring” scare a lot of people. Some politicians have used it as a stick with which to bludgeon the North and their perceived historic privileges, while for others, it is the pursuit of Biafra by other means. I do not believe in that kind of politics. I am persuaded that a good statesman is one whose primary focus is on the Common Good. I believe that voters will be asking who among the candidates is best placed to pursue the task of nation building in a way that makes ours a fairer and more prosperous union. I believe that the majority of Nigerians wish to remain together as one united, eternal community. But they need power to be devolved to the regions and they want greater say in how they and their children are governed. Whoever wins the elections will have to be a statesman or woman of courage who is ready to take the bull by the horns and effect the necessary reforms that will save or federation from irredentism and centrifugal collapse. It is the only hope we have to serve our federation from ultimate dissolution.
Equally important is the question of the physical, mental and intellectual preparedness of our future leader. It was former American Secretary of State Henry Alfred Kissinger who once famously noted that “political office taxes intellectual capital”. It is only in Nigeria that anybody can wake up any day and claim they want to be president of the country. In a democracy, anyone in theory can aspire to become the occupant of the high magistracy of the state. But we have to be realistic. Statesmanship requires skills of the highest order. An effective leader at the minimum must be familiar with the arcane arts of statecraft. They have to be once historian, economist, scientist, manager, and practical fixer — rainmakers with deep intuition that accurately reads people and context. They must also have mastered Machiavelli, Hobbes, Kautilya and the great military commanders; ready to go to war to defeat evil while cherishing peace and pursuing it. Nigeria will fulfil her destiny as a land of hope and glory.
Obadiah Mailafia
