Nigeria has the 4th worst health care system in the world according to the World Health Organisation. We rank 168 out of 173 countries in the World Bank Human Capital Index 2020 (down from 157 previously). We have the worst police force in the world (rank:127 of 127 countries measured by the International Political Science Association’s World Internal Security and Police Index in 2017). We rank 125th out of 137 countries in the quality of primary education, and 128 out of 153 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index, both assessed by the World Economic Forum.
We don’t seem to understand how truly deep in doo-doo we are as a country. If we choose to reward those who brought us here with leadership in 2023, instead of taking this opportunity to move in a completely new direction with a visionary, modern and 21st century leadership, it would say much about us a people and whether in fact we value our very humanity as God’s children, entitled to a place under the sun.
I sometimes ask myself: “why are you stressing yourself so much for Nigeria when it looks like many people are in love with their chains, worshipping the thieves and oppressors who steal their commonwealth, because they are in ‘big’ political parties?”
But I truly can’t stand the rape of our future that is going on, the valuelessness of life itself in Nigeria, poverty, the unemployment, the tribalism, all because of visionless, incompetent and corrupt leadership by the traditional political class.
There is no messiah, and I’m not one. It will take all of us (or, more accurately, a majority of us) to first understand what is happening, this perverse psychology that has held our country down, and then DO SOMETHING about it in 2023. We must wake up and break free! I agree with Paulo Freire in his classic book “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” that in order to regain our humanity (for what is happening to us is a process of dehumanization), we must first gain knowledge on the nature of oppression and how it works insidiously on our minds to accept and even endorse it, and then resolve to ACT.
This calls for massive political education and organization. This is our task in 2022, in every village, polling ward/unit, in every city and urban slum, and, yes, on social media too. Will you be a soldier for our freedom, or will you be an enabler of oppression and evil?
