This is not the best of times for Nigeria, as our country’s economic fortunes have nose-dived to an abysmally low level, causing millions of Nigerians to be reduced to sub-humans. The prices of food commodities and fuel, electricity tariffs, and transportation costs have skyrocketed, which have increased the economic hardship of Nigerians. So this is a difficult period for Nigerians in our country’s chequered history.
It is believed that the prevailing economic hardship in Nigeria is a direct corollary of the measures that President Bola Tinubu has executed to revamp our near-comatose economy. No sooner was he inaugurated into office as the president of Nigeria than he removed the fuel subsidy, the incubus that has held Nigeria down for a long time. He floated the naira, too.
The measures that he executed to solve our economic and other problems have not yielded the anticipated results. As a result, the middle class has become extinct. And millions of Nigerians who belong to the lowest rung of the economic ladder scavenge in the refuse dumps for leftovers. Is the economic situation in Nigeria not dire now?
In addition to Nigeria’s deteriorating economic condition, she is hobbled by security challenges, infrastructural rot and deficit, and the problem of disunity. While the north is still trapped in the throes of terrorism and insurgency, the observance of the Monday sit-at-home in the southeast is a poignant reminder that all is not well in the area regarding the security of life and property.
And some of the major roads that link Nigerian cities to one another are in a state of disrepair. More so, Nigeria’s disunity, which is underlined by the Igbo-Yoruba soured relationship, is deepening. The situation is causing ethnic tension in our country.
However, Nigeria’s current woes and underdevelopment are attributable to past successive governments’ maladministration of Nigeria. So it is an indisputable fact that President Bola Tinubu inherited a fractured and underdeveloped country whose economy is in the doldrums. Muhammadu Buhari, who is President Tinubu’s predecessor in office, left behind a disunited and technologically backward country whose economy is in ruins.
But the time for trading of blames has passed. Rather, President Tinubu should focus on uniting the diverse peoples of Nigeria, carrying out economic reforms, and executing developmental initiatives, which will have positive impacts on Nigerians and Nigeria. But it is saddening to note that the economic policies recommended to President Tinubu by international monetary organisations, which he religiously implemented, have worsened our dire economic condition.
Now, it has become obvious to us that President Tinubu has not got it right regarding fixing our economic problem, addressing our infrastructural rot and deficit, combating our security challenges, and uniting the peoples of Nigeria. It seems that this government is at its wit’s end. as to offering us purposeful and goal-orientated political leadership that will alleviate the people’s suffering and set Nigeria on the trajectory of economic prosperity and technological advancement.
Consequently, poor Nigerians, who bear the brunt of our country’s dilapidated infrastructure, technological backwardness, economic regression, and disunity, poured into the streets of our cities to protest against the bad governance that obtains in Nigeria. The protest, which had the hashtag “endbadgovernance,” highlighted the people’s anger at the bad state of things in Nigeria. Scores of people died in the bloody protest, which raged in different parts of the country.
In the midst of the bloody nation-wide protest, ‘The Patriots’—a group of eminent Nigerians led by Chief Emeka Anyaoku—tabled their recipes and/or solutions for Nigeria’s hydra-headed problems to President Tinubu. Among their recommendations is the constitution of a Constituent Assembly that will be charged with draughting a new constitution for Nigeria. The constitution of the Constituent Assembly falls within the purview of the National Assembly.
Over the years, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former commonwealth secretary general, has been making relentless calls for the discarding of our flawed constitution for a new federal constitution that will address our national conundrums and challenges. What Chief Anyaoku and other members of The Patriots are agitating for is not a political moonshine. If we have a new federal constitution that addresses our national questions, it will deepen our unity, expedite our economical and technological development, and transform Nigeria into an industrialised country.
When I interviewed Chief Anyaoku before he celebrated his 91st birthday, he stated unambiguously that pluralistic countries like Switzerland and Canada are progressive and united because their respective leaders produced constitutions that addressed those countries’ religious, linguistic, and cultural peculiarities. And they developed templates and modalities for managing their countries’ diversities.
But sadly, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Sudan, which are heterogeneous countries, disintegrated because of the egoism, indifference, and political myopia of their founding fathers and political leaders.
Now, Nigeria is at the crossroads of the economic crisis. And it has been sucked into a maelstrom of violent protest resulting from the people’s disenchantment with Nigeria’s ugly situation. The protests that seized the country in an asphyxiating chokehold are portents of doom for our country.
So it behoves our political leaders to change tack regarding their leadership of Nigeria owing to the failures of many of the policies they executed. They should also study the proposals articulated and formulated by ‘The Patriots’ for solving our country’s multifarious problems and implement them.
Chiedu Uche Okoye, Uruowulu-Obosi: Anambra State. 08062220654. Okoye is a poet.
