Eleven days from now, Nigerians who are fortunate to live up to 12 midnight on December 31 will say good bye to 2015.
They will also be full of praises and thanks to God and not get tired of dishing out Happy New Year messages to family members, friends, well-wishers and colleagues.
They will look with great expectation to 2016 hoping it will be full of goodies compared to this year.
Many Nigerians say it has not been easy for them, particularly since May 29 when the government of President Muhammadu Buhari came on board after sacking the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which held power for 16 years.
Everybody is complaining about how tough it has been trying to eke out a living with the change in government from the PDP to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The big, the small, the rich, the poor, the high, and the mighty are all lamenting about the “undoing” of the Buhari administration six months in the saddle.
Those who reportedly stole our country blind prior to the coming of this government – as feelers from the national security adviser (NSA) office’s arms deal probe make us understand – were even louder in their complaint that this administration was killing everybody gradually.
What a country! What a people!
Unfortunately, most Nigerians who are not perceptive enough have got away with the impression that the hardship now is a product or by product of Buhari’s old administration.
They have not asked themselves where all the billions of naira we heard of six months before the 2015 general election have gone to.
Instead, you hear comments like: “This is not the change we bargained for”, “Is this the change we voted for?”, “This change is killing everybody”, “What manner of change is this?”
I am not surprised at the comments people make over the biting hardship. In a normal country it is supposed to be uncalled for going by the enormous human and material resources at our disposal.
But unfortunately, over the years, Nigerians have done things the same way. We laud those who use their positions in the public and private sectors to steal what belongs to everybody and by so doing, institutionalise a cult followership that sees everything they do as celestial.
Things will be tough in this dispensation led by Buhari. For the APC government to make a desirable impact, it needs to demystify a nauseating system where government is the only industry that works (epileptically though) in Nigeria.
Ours is a system of government that throws up super rich persons who in turn are dependent upon by less affluent persons who also are the livewire of other human segments of the society.
In the process, every rung of social/human ladder owes its sustenance to the government, its ministries, departments, and agencies.
It is therefore easy to see all Nigerians, including the super rich, bemoan the hardship erroneously linked to Buhari.
Without prejudice to the dwindling state resources due to global crash in oil prices and the vagaries in the money and capital market, this is the first time in a long while that Nigerians are beginning to think outside the box on how to live without depending completely on the government and its apparatus.
That on its own represents the change we love to resist.
As Aristotle would say: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”
Mahatma Gandhi said: “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” That must apply to Nigerians of all ethnic hues, including the rich and poor, big and small, or we slip back into the status quo that devastated us without mercy in the past years.
Nigerians who believe in the change slogan must realise now that though whatever they do may be insignificant or unnoticed, it is important they do it after all, in so far as it is the right thing that will propel the desired change.
It will be preposterous to think that Buhari’s administration will not thrust discomfort on our laps going by the rot in the system.
Rather than recline to the wailing chair on the drawbacks of his leadership style, we should reflect on Arnold Bennett’s thought that: “Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.”
There are big lessons to learn from developments that shaped the fading year positively or negatively.
One of them is the arms deal probe and the startling revelation of how Nigerian leaders and politicians reduced money to nothing going by the amount that changed hands in the office of the NSA that is supposed to be treated with a high degree of secrecy.
My assessment of what is trending from the investigation is that all politicians are simply dastardly, inhuman, selfish, greedy, and careless about the future of Nigeria and the welfare of its citizens despite what they tell us.
It looks like our politicians are resolved to keep Nigeria perpetually down and underdeveloped, and consequently, a laughing stock to the outside world. This is not a habit to take to the New Year if this country must change for the better.
Fortunately, Senate President Bukola Saraki has come to appreciate what damage the political class has done to Nigeria and has offered an apology for how irresponsible it has been in discharging its responsibility to the people over the years.
On Tuesday, December 15, Saraki said the National Assembly (NASS) failed in its oversight functions by failing to uncover the $2.1 billion arms scam before the matter was blown open.
Saraki did after Senator Suleiman Nazif alleged in a motion that 11,886 federal projects valued at N7.78 trillion have been abandoned, which he blamed on the failure of the Senate to keep to Section 16 (1b) of the Public Procurement Act.
But Saraki remarked that the failure to do effective oversight was more to blame for the abandoned projects hence need for the lawmakers to make amends.
He said: “I want us to make a difference, that we should really carry out our oversight functions and we will put a system in place where we will be asking the committees to give us the situation of their functions and the oversight that they are doing so that these should be things of the past and we should move forward in providing a new way by which the National Assembly carries out its functions.”
Though Saraki is realising this late, it is always better late than never.
Politicians do not know that Nigerians are aware they have not treated them fairly. This is because politicians are more concerned about their interest than the interest of the people they represent.
Is Saraki telling us what we do not know about how the legislators do their work? We should have known that oversight functions of our lawmakers are about how much money will satiate the greedy and selfish appetite of politicians and leave the society prostrate and decaying.
Now that Saraki is making restitution on behalf of politicians, Nigerians with a forgiving heart can only tell them to go and sin no more but to use the coming year to make an impact in governance and the economy so that the change we crave will be realised.
Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!
