The Audacity of Hope in Nigeria???
I don’t think we understand the speed at which Nigeria is heading towards settling in the category of one of the World’s ‘failed states’. We won’t even need a civil war to get there, the Government is more than capable of delivering on that mandate. The statistics and reports are there for us to see, the high levels of lawlessness, illiteracy, corruption on every level, lack of primary health care and so on. How can a country in the 21st century function without primary education and healthcare?
We can deceive ourselves all we want that the Nigerian economy is moving so therefore the country is getting better. Better economic indices doesn’t necessarily translate to better standards of living for the average Nigerian. Its so sad that no Administration in the third Republic (from 1999 till date) has seen it fit to declare a state of emergency in our educational and health sector (its been on a steady decline). Our Doctors are moving out of the country in droves, our teachers are paid the least and owed the most, The Private alternatives available cater for at most 35% of our population, so what happens to the other 75% of uneducated/half educated population 10 years from now?
Is this the country we want to raise our children in? A country where about 35% of us send our children to the private secondary schools and universities and the remaining 75% of children attend the comatose public educational institutions, what happens where more than 80% of the educated society are half baked graduates, what happens in a society where an appendix rupture can send you to an early grave because our hospitals are sparse and lack the qualified man power. What happens to a society where more than 60% of qualified doctors up their families and relocate to better countries (not excluding African countries).
This Country would never progress if we don’t take deliberate steps to construct policies that would put our schools on the global map in the nearest future. What do we do about our federal secondary schools and universities? whats going to happen to our primary health centres and teaching hospitals? Are we going to put pressure on the Government to make more funds available in the budget for these? or should we stand behind the next candidate whose manifesto outlines the reforms that the Government would drive in these sectors? Please NO, enough with the Government!
One thing to understand at this point is that the hands of the Government is the Civil Service, no administration can better the lot of Nigeria without the buy-in of the civil service. I’m pretty sure we know a little about the ineptitude, incompetence and wanton waste that permeates the Nigerian Civil Service on all levels, the befitting adjective to qualify the structure of our civil service would be ‘cancerous’. When cancer cells are present in a system, left unchecked, the system withers and dies. A weak civil service would rubbish the efforts of a strong government administration, while a strong civil service would cover up the ineptitude of a weak administration. But as it currently stands in Nigeria, our civil service operating under the present structure is beyond redemption and reforms, the cancer has eaten too deep. And in light of this, it would be silly for us to keep hoping for a messiah like administration to strong-arm the civil service into implementing their fantastic budget. Nah, its not going to work.
So Whats the way forward? How can Nigeria avert the disaster of becoming a failed state in 20–30 years?
Nigerians have to start clamouring for policies that seek to trim the over-bloated and ever growing civil service (in my opinion the only sectors where Government workers should exist is in regulations, tax and security) privatise or concession all federal secondary schools and universities, outsource the management of our primary schools and privatise or outsource the management of our primary health care centres and teaching hospitals. If the money the Government spends on obtaining foreign degree for the benefactors of its various scholarship schemes (Nigeria reportedly spends an estimated 8 billion USD on foreign scholarships, source can be found here) and the budget currently assigned for the management of schools were used as student loans and scholarship grants for the under privilege in our privatised or concessioned schools and no politician would come up with the arguments of “we cannot privatise our schools because the poor would not be able to afford education”. We need to push for systems that would pay the best salaries to have the best brains in regulation, taxes and security, Policies where we enter into partnership with other African nations for the proper development of the region through trade and manufacturing.
Nigeria has had enough of Government funding and maintaining public infrastructure, we cannot continue with the slow pace of lip service and incompetence in project management (the maintenance culture in the public sector is puke-worthy). A radical approach of shifting all infrastructural project from the public sector to the private sector should be considered and pushed for. Let the private sector come in and build these projects using a project finance method that works for Nigerians and the private company, Nigerians would pay for good services that improve their lives in as far as we are not exploited. Give us light, we would pay, build roads, we would gladly pay 500/1000 Naira toll for every 200KM of federal road that would be built and maintained by the private sector. Lets pay the bloody taxes to the private sector instead of enriching a government that has shown its thorough incompetence in performing the most minute task. When mega projects are no longer in hands of Government, some of the avenues for money laundering in the Public sector automatically closes alongside a sharp decrease in sub standard or shoddy projects, and overtime contract inflation/delays would become a thing of the past. Once the Government gives way for the private sector to thrive, half of Nigeria’s problems would be surmountable and there would be sustainable growth in the Economy.
We must find ways to discontinue this faulty system and redesign, lets give our unborn children just a little hope that this country can work. We cannot entrepreneur, tech startup, conference or seminar our way out of infrastructural deficit, educational and health backwardness or can we? Maybe we could, by pushing for policies that takes business and projects from the Public sector to the private sector.
The past generation has failed in pushing for far reaching and sustainable reforms, maybe they are happy to dwell in heady euphoric achievement of transitioning from the military system of government to a democratic system. Its up to us to step up and do something about this rot, the world is not big enough to accommodate us all if we fail, we are not Lebanon. How long do we want to keep going abroad to give birth to our kids, how long are we going to keep going to india for a bloody kidney transplant, how long are we going to keep killing ourselves because of politicians and elections, how long are we going to ignore the pains of the jobless graduates and how long would we continue to ignore the teeming mass of uneducated and unskilled youth? We have to fight or die fighting for the socio-economic soul of our nation.
Nigeria is hard, yes, Nigeria is really hard. The problems that the average Nigerian faces on a daily basis cannot be quantified and there is no end in sight for this hardship, but, we can push for hope.
