Musing on Anthony Akinola's latest three (youths could be lazy, // grooming Nigeria's future ,// rebuilding Nigerian Senate from scratch
Some people start with "Bismillah". I start here with, May the Lord have mercy on me...
As di buk pipul dem seh, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride"
Three wishes
Oh for a muse of fire, that would ascend. The highest heaven of invention! Oh how we wish for a trajectory that would transcend the ridiculous and deliver us, so that we arrive safely at the feet of the sublime!Oh that we would stop talking shop about Darkness at Noon or Arrival and Departure !
It's still being asserted but not yet officially confirmed by either referendum consensus or any other litmus test known to mankind , that " Every country gets the government it deserves". From that controversial viewpoint and well aware that leadership is not produced in a vacuum, it's obviously not a matter of injecting or importing wholesale, a few Nigerian PPE Oxford graduates as suitable presidential material because they have been processed through that Oxford education factory ( which for sure is more than just a library – they often do succeed in transmitting some of their culture and some of the manners that go along with it ) - and because I well remember Eboe Hutchful my neighbour at the South Legon Chalets in Ghana, fuming ( you may ask him) , telling me that his Prime Minister Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia of Ghana , (formerly a professor of anthropology at Oxford), " must have left his brains in Oxford!" This was soon after Eboe had accosted his Wabenzi Prime Minister in down town Accra and asked him, I imagine with some contempt in his voice, " And why are you driving a Mercedes Benz? " It was around the time that Kofi Busia was challenging the Ghanaian judiciary, but that's another story.
This Oxford thing! When I was in the first form in Freetown, Sierra Leone, (I lived at number 37, Westmorland Street now renamed Siaka Stevens Street, opposite the Sierra Leone Museum and the fabled Cotton Tree and my friend and neighbour Michael Clinton - a few years my senior at school, lived at number 41 Westmoreland Street, now Siaka Stevens Street. Michael and I used to order books ( Literature) to read at our leisure, among the books a series written byAnthony Buckeridge mostly about two English schoolboy characters, Jennings and Derbyshire . Fast forward: Michael's dream was to go to Oxford, which he eventually did., to study law just as his hero Desmond Luke did. I'm given to understand that Michael now lives in Accra, Ghana. The last time I saw Desmond Luke was in 1970 when I spent a pleasant two hours with him at Kotoka Airport in Ghana, waiting for his plane to Bonn, in West Germany, where he had been appointed Sierra Leone Ambassador.
True: Oxford does produce some good people, so does Cambridge and so does life's university of hard knocks...
True : If music be the food of love, play on...
True : Leadership is not produced in a vacuum – and I think of the current state of affairs in Nigeria more in terms of a crucible of compelling factors such as Boko Haram - flesh and blood breaking down , nomadic or itinerant Fulani Herdsmen and cows on the rampage in search of rich foliage / Nigeria as a pressure cooker of competing ethnicities no longer at ease with each , probably has never been completely at ease with each other - North – South – East-West -Centre cannot hold /a centrifuge for nuclear fission, more than as a vacuum; in any case grass-roots people ( 180 million of them ) are never expected to be thought of as a vacuum , and as people they probably want to be led, but not as sheep to the slaughter. As a people or peoples they have their own social structures, obas, ezes, kings and underlings who want to be kings or descendants of prophets and kings.
The grooming of future Nigerian leaders is a noble agenda, maybe even a positive sine qua non requirement for future Nigerian leaders who should have acquired at least a diploma from " The Academy" , the Nigerian Academy Training for future Leadership roles. I envisage the creation of this future Academy ( like a trainings school for would-be professional footballers) possibly to be named after some great Nigerian Oga who espoused positive democratic values, who lived and possibly even suffered and died for such values. Admission requirements ? All Nigerian citizens should be eligible for admission the main requirements being fluency in the mother tongue and Nigerian English. Any Distinctions in Her Majesty's English would also of course be a distinct advantage – as would be fluency in spoken and written Arabic. And then of course there could be the various levels up to the post-doctoral the Doctor of Letters level. (Which reminds me, George Weah the president of Liberia has just been awarded a honorary doctorate )
"Rebuilding the Nigerian senate from scratch", invoking the once upon a time good example of "The American founding fathers" etc. is alright, may sound highfalutin, but alright, even if Nigeria's foundations are very different from that of the United States. Maybe, an equal emphasis should be placed on the education of Nigerian citizenry at the gross level, about civic responsibilities, about the law ( what is lawful what is a crime) about the Nigerian constitution , about how the country is governed, about what to look for in choosing or voting for those they want to be their representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate and in the Presidential Palace; this should also contribute to Nigeria getting the government it deserves. I certainly think that Sweden currently has the government it deserves and this is because Human Rights are being fully observed there's social justice and everything is running as smoothly, as it should. After the September Elections in Sweden , whether there's a change of government or not, I'm sure that I'll be saying the same thing, that we have the government we deserve, but as to perfection, well it's still , "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"
You may think it preposterous , but at this point in Nigeria, a national sovereign conference would still be a good idea and before that a symposium that would bring together the President of Nigeria, to iron it out face to face with Dr. Obadiah Mailafia, Dr. Biko Agozino, Chinweizu Ibekwe , Dr. Bolaji Aluko, Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde , to discuss the future of Nigeria , the urgent problems of what must be done before the next presidential elections and why it's not being done now. With the TV cameras ready to transmit live and direct – no censorship , what these august gentlemen have to say.
The women ? Some of them know where they mostly belong : their bedrooms ( king size bed) and their kitchens...
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