For Effective Change To Evolve In Nigeria

By Dan Amor

There is a lamentable and disturbing magnitude of violence in Nigeria. So is crime. The country is constantly on the boil. The at­mosphere in the country has been nothing but a tawny volcano. The situation conveys at once the chief features of the Nigerian spirit: it is vertical, spontaneous, immaterial, upward. It is ardent. And even as tongues of fire do, it turns into fire everything it touches. What we are experiencing today is induced by poverty, hunger, frustration, apa­thy and desperation. There is no more thermometer to measure the degree of frustration and des­peration in the land than the spate of student unrest in our tertiary institutions. As we write, not less than five universities have been shut down by their authorities as a result of protests by students. These protests are precipitated by absence of amenities and utilities that would make life comfortable for learning on our campuses. In some of the campuses, water is now a very scarce commodity. In the midst of the misery and lack that is the lot of our youth and other Nigerians, a few Nigerians are still swimming in affluence and under the best security system and protection one can think of. It hardly seems a time for timidity and restraint.

In fact, unbridled activities of fraudsters, narcotics couriers, swindlers and the emergence of a class of billionaire idle politicians, have diminished our international stature to an embarrassing level. The net effect of this has been the sorry spectacle we have cut for Ni­geria and Nigerians in the international arena. The reality is that the corporate image of the country is almost irretrievably steeped in cri­ses. It is therefore no more news that the high rate of criminality in the country is traceable to the endemic corruption which has enveloped the land. Nigeria’s name is synonymous with corruption and crime all over the world. It is agreed that with the emergence of General Muhammadu Buhari as President since May 29, 2015, given his much vaunted integrity and principled stance against cor­ruption, the international image of the country would be redeemed. But it seems, from the reality on ground, that the change mantra of the APC-led Federal Govern­ment is fraught with contradic­tions and ironies. Ten months into the regime, Nigerians are gasping for relief. There is discontent in the country as hunger and lack rule the land. And one can sense the fear of the unknown. The signs are not difficult to see. They are the signs of internal decay; the dry rot of apathy and indifference within the ruling party. Nigerians have mistaken a baboon for a monkey.

The whole scenario is unwhole­some: the decadent social institu­tions, the comatose and despond­ent state of the once vibrant economy, the decaying infra­structure, and the unnerving bout of fuel scarcity in the six largest producer of crude in the world. All this could not have been mere speculation by whatever standards. Indeed, it was speculated recently that more than 80 per cent of Ni­gerians are living below the pov­erty line. Economically, there can never be anything more humiliat­ing and even frustrating than the current exchange rate of the Naira. Anyone who had witnessed the strength of the Nigerian currency against the dollar in the late 1970’s would realise that the slightest tinkering with the economy spins off a frantic palpitation which may lead to a cardiac arrest. This is why wiser nations often fix their gaze on the enigmatic ups and downs in the stock market. They are wise and experienced enough to know that an ostensibly inconsequential drop in the currency rate of a na­tion may precipitate a phenomenal fall of any government. How does President Buhari feel when he sees the Naira exchanging for 350 to the US Dollar? Does he ever remem­ber his campaign promise to Nige­rians when even the Dollar was ex­changing for N165, that he would make the Naira at par with the Dollar within his first six months in office? This is not all. Hundreds of thousands of our graduates and school leavers still trudge the streets of our cities in search of jobs that are not in sight, and the com­munal bonds that once held our various nationalities together have been rendered taut by the forces of annihilating and devastating pov­erty and inter-tribal wars.