NIGERIA IS CHANGING...REALLY??! 🙄 | One of the reasons why I visit developed countries is that I'm fascinated by good. I am captivated by people who value beauty, knowledge and order for their own intrinsic worth. #Thread
Like Aristotle once argued, knowledge can be an end in itself and can provide joy in itself. Developed nations get that. Libraries are not wasted spaces. They exist to both delight and train minds. Museums, galleries and parks are not optional. People fight to preserve them.
When things break down in those countries, the default response is to repair them. Things work because they should work, not because there is always a financial reward. The people have embraced a value system that makes it so.
Education then becomes the capstone; training, liberating and moulding minds to do the work of nation building - whether in public or private service. It is so called soft values that produce a working society - courtesy, love, tolerance, thirst for knowledge etc.
Hard values like vision, discipline and drive then ensure that those values are enshrined in processes and repetitive predictable outcomes.
In Nigeria, the absence of widespread values in the public sector for instance, means Nigerians are depending on a few rare public servants to change the collosus called Nigeria.
We're waiting for the few conscious and well educated citizens to run for office. We're waiting for "critical mass".
We wait for rare personalities who don't primarily work for money, but instead do so because they desire to serve. God knows public service in Nigeria doesn't really pay when you're not corrupt.
We're waiting for people to work for national pride, but what exactly produces pride in Nigeria? What fuels it, so we can produce many more of these selfless souls?
As we wait, patients die because not enough great doctors exist. Public works go unfinished because there are not enough honest civil servants and contractors.
Without values as the operating system of got, we'll keep expecting Nigeria to get better through draconian anti-corruption tactics. People will simply wait for the next regime and then return to status quo. No one bothered to engage their hearts. No one paid attention to values.
No one reformed education - the pipeline for critical skills.
People say Nigeria is changing, yet we seem so skilled at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. We forget that we've heard the change noises before. We've witnessed our capacity to move two steps forward only to then move three steps back.
We all know what incremental change looks like when it's offered by tainted hands, incapable of excising the rot from the root.
"Human" numbers don't lie. We hype GDP yet downplay GDP per capita. We shout infrastructure yet ignore unemployment. Who exactly will build and run our infrastructure. The unskilled? Expats? Repats?
Meanwhile, Nigeria seems focused on being first in the race for child mortality, poverty and out-of-school kids. We really think we're changing because our individual stars succeed globally DESPITE Nigeria? We think we're changing because of infrastructure? Really?
I don't have silver bullet solutions. But I do know focusing on education and values will help. I do know fundamentally reforming our political structures is a given.
The truth is, many of us know someone or a platform that is making great strides in these areas. The question is, if you don't know what to do yourself, can you support others who do? Can you volunteer your time, money and voice?
Perhaps, instead of guilt tripping people into doing "anything", we should point them in the direction of people who are already doing "something", so they can help. That's how critical mass is built. Split efforts won't help Nigeria.
It's really sad, but sometimes we forget that nations are simply inanimate spaces outside of hearts and minds. Nations last for millennia. If Nigerians don't get their act together, Nigeria will wait for the next generation and then the next. It will outlive us and our nonsense.
