Recently, a lady who was not of voting age in the Second Republic (1979-1983) engaged me in a discussion on the benefits of a democratic system of government.
When I told her that democratic rule confers certain rights such as freedom of speech, association, rule of law, and more importantly, checks and balances in the affairs of state, the lady got angry.
She told me that what the suffering masses need are not the “intangible benefits of democracy.”
In her thinking, the so-called intangible benefits are simply what Nigerian leaders use as tools to hoodwink the people mentally and psychologically before killing them slowly, physically.
After assessing what we have today as a civil administration, democracy dividends in juxtaposition with the sufferings of the masses, the lady (now in her mid-40s) then concluded that there is no reason to say that military regime is inferior to democratic government.
She added: “Except we are saying that those who are running Nigeria’s democratic rule are beasts or people assembled from the community of lower animals.”
She argued that having experienced the workings of military government from her early days in the secondary school in 1983 when she was just 14 years old up till 1999 when Nigeria returned to civil rule, with additional 16 years of unbroken civilian administration, she finds it difficult to believe that civilian rule has impacted the lives of Nigerians more than the military did.
She said she has heard Nigerians say that most of the infrastructure in the country were built by the military regimes or conceived by them.
The lady, like many others her age and whose first experience of democratic rule is from 1999, will be difficult to convince that our own brand of democracy ought to be the same with what they see in other climes.
Nigeria has great potentials. It is endowed with huge human and material resources and is the only hope of the black man, if the endowments are properly harnessed. I will illustrate with another story.
Last week, my wife removed the carpet in my room because she thought it was “old”. The following day she got to know from her nanny that Nigerien security guards on our estate who run errands for residents had hijacked the carpet and were planning to travel to their country with it to show their people that they have “arrived”.
Some Africans in Nigeria believe that when they go back to their country they would be respected as rich men, even with a faded carpet; because, as the nanny reported, “such commodities can only be seen in the homes of rich people.”
I had a conversation with one of the guards about their country and how they feel about Nigeria. After the conversation, I almost wept, not because of the level of poverty in entire Africa but because of its leaders who see nothing wrong in leading their people to perdition.
I also discovered that some personal effects I no longer need which I give to the guards are taken to their home country where they celebrate them as symbols of affluence.
To many African countries, Nigeria is the overseas they look forward to travelling to and any opportunity to come here is grabbed and cherished.
Perception is a serious thing in brand management. It could make or break a business relationship, service, or even destroy a product, whether already existing in the public domain or about to be launched.
The two instances above are clear cases of what perception can do in the life of individuals or a nation.
To the lady, military rule is better because of how bad leadership has ruined all of us and messed up our own civilian regime. And that is quite unfortunate. Even the experience with the Nigeriens has a lot to do with how Nigeria is perceived by the outside world, mainly our close neighbours.
Leadership is the major problem with most African countries, Nigeria especially. Locally and internationally, that perception is deep. But the more attention paid to Nigeria’s leadership, the worse the system gets.
In the past two weeks, Nigerians have been subjected to the kind of hardship that questions the existence of any responsible leadership today. The suffering is horrendous. Life has become so difficult that the patience of Nigerians is daily being over stretched.
On Wednesday, May 13, Channels Television aired the story of how it has become increasingly difficult for Nigerians involved in small and medium scale industries to function because of unstable power supply.
When you visit such businesses run mostly by artisans, the owners are either sleeping during working hours or their shops are shut because they neither have electricity from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) or those the government sold the facility to nor could buy fuel to power their generators.
More businesses may fold up in the last days of the Goodluck Jonathan administration because of the disconnection between the government and its agencies responsible for providing the facilities citizens need to run their businesses to eke out a living.
I wonder how the over 3,000 You-Win jobs which the Minister of finance
and Coordinating Minister for Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, boasts this government has created will survive if the beneficiaries depend on epileptic electricity supply and a generator-powered machinery without fuel to run it.
Which country treats power supply with levity and expects the economy to grow? Which country allows citizens to grapple with the challenges of sources of power generation for factories, offices, and homes and expects the positive results obtained in other countries?
Last week in Lagos, fuel scarcity was made worse by the nuisance disposition of the fuel tanker drivers who blocked all the arteries linking Apapa from Oshodi and Ijora axis.
That was not the first time such a thing would happen. But last week’s situation got out of hand because it compounded the fuel shortage facing Lagos residents.
Those whose businesses are located in Apapa have closed shop or are planning to do so. Yet, this does not look like a big issue to the government at the centre which knows that the major sea port of the country is in Apapa and that thoroughfare should be taken for granted.
If the situation has now improved, it must be because of the 48-hour ultimatum Governor Babatunde Fashola handed down to all fuel tanker drivers to quit Lagos.
“No tanker should be seen on Eko, Liverpool and Coconut, among other bridges. By Thursday (May 14), the tanker owners must make one lane available for motorists to use pending the expiration of the ultimatum for enforcement to begin,” said Transport Commissioner, Kayode Opeifa, who briefed the media a day earlier.
While Nigerians in general and Lagosians in particular are groaning over the biting fuel scarcity, tankers whose drivers claim they had gone to lift petroleum products at the wharf took over the whole of Apapa Road and shut it down.
How else to make life a lot more miserable for ordinary Nigerians? How can one not say military regime is far better than democratic rule?
How can Nigeria serve as the overseas of poor African countries whose citizens see Nigeria as their paradise on earth? Will the incoming administration of Muhammadu Buhari allow this mess to fester? God forbid.
