In the days of Solomon as we are told in the Bible, gold was in abundance, food was plentiful; every man lived in his own home, under his own vine tree and under his own fir tree. Everybody had more than enough to eat and drink, and to celebrate. There was peace, prosperity and progress.
So the Bible is telling us that it is possible for things to be good, wonderful. It is possible for there to be prosperity all over the place. The only reason things have not changed in Nigeria is because we Nigerians have not agreed on change. Some of us do not even believe change is possible anymore, and so we just resign to grumbling and complaining.
But we must all agree that there must be change. We keep believing that somebody else or some phantom leader must bring about the change.
Yes, it is possible for God to bring a leader, and He might, but the day we all agree that there must be a change, change has begun. Life must no longer be so tough, and for many of us, it has been tough for a long time. It has been so tough to live and to survive, to get ahead. It is tough to make it in life in this land. It is tough to become what you’re supposed to become. It is tough to do good things by working hard in this nation. Things have been so difficult for a lot of us. The least qualified and the least capable have taken control of our nation, our economy and politics.
I spoke at an interactive session to a group of people and one of the questions that came forth that day was from a lady who had just relocated from abroad. She lamented the frustrations she encountered every time she tried to do things properly in her place of work. She kept on meeting resistance and frustration from people who didn’t want to do things right whenever she insisted on due process, control and progress. Somebody somewhere would say, “Look, we don’t do things like that here”, “accept the bribe”, “give the bribe”, “turn the other face, look the other way”.
We have found a lot of people that have disrupted and destroyed good things by their bad character and behaviour. We have found an enthronement of mediocrity and non-performance. We have found people doing things for the wrong reasons and mainly for personal gain and for graft. People have frustrated decency and order, destroyed the environment, wrecked public corporations and ran organisations to abrupt end just for personal aggrandisement.
Somebody was telling me some time ago that in a bank in Nigeria, they were having difficulty with power so they kept running their generators all the time. So one day, the boss got angry and went to the office of the power company to complain bitterly. You know what he found out? He found out that it was his head of procurement that kept on bribing officials of the power company to cut power because they were making so much money from the supply of diesel. This is the level of criminal dishonesty and corruption in private and public places in Nigeria. This is the way we abuse and misuse collective resources that should serve our corporate good. We are having challenges in power supply because those who import generators must remain in business; as far as they are concerned, the nation can live in darkness. We are having challenges in the oil and gas sector because some people enjoy the disorder and lack of accountability that is the epitome of the sector. We are having challenges everywhere because some people somewhere enjoy the breakages and disruption of our normal life. Our health facilities are replete because some people have hijacked the hospital supplies and politicised the system.
One of the most painful things that have happened to me happened about 10 years ago. I got a call that one of our girls, a teenager in the church, 18 years old at that time, was ill; so I ran to where she was. There she was with her mother and everybody was praying. We took her from this hospital to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). When we got there, they said they didn’t have space to admit her, and indeed they did not. There were about a dozen patients on a single doctor. The doctor, a smallish man, was sweating as he was torn among the patients, some of who were in crisis. There were nurses who couldn’t care less or were just confused.
When our girl was eventually attended to, they said she needed blood transfusion urgently, but we were shocked the blood bank had only two bags of blood. We bought the two bags and transfusion began. They informed us to go get more blood because she needed more. We combed Surulere area of the city of Lagos looking for blood, and came back with four bags. And again, she would need more bags of blood.
At this time, some of us were ready to donate blood, only to be met with another rude and annoying shock. There were no blood bags in the hospital. We had blood donors but no blood bags. We felt a little relief when a smallish nurse approached us that she could help us get some blood bags. We got the blood bags, but not until we went to Mushin area of the city, climbing several gates, following this little nurse to her house. She eventually produced the blood bags from underneath her bed. She had been keeping blood bags underneath her bed. This was around 3am.
Finally, somebody was giving his blood at 3.45am when the call came that the girl had died. It was one of the most painful things in my life. We lost a whole human being because people decided to frustrate the system. Some people would rather loot and deposit funds meant for our medical institution in their foreign accounts. That day, I made up my mind that in this country Nigeria, as long as I was alive, things must change. And, I have been fighting that battle from that day. In fact, before that day, I had been fighting the battle; I just knew that I had to fight a lot more to get things to change. I want to tell you that things must change in our nation in the name of Jesus.