Posted By TheScoop on March 21, 2013
by Emeka Nobis
Dear unborn President,
It’s usually customary for us in Nigeria to start letters by asking about family. But the urgency of what I want to tell you will make me skip that believing that your family is just fine. Let’s get down straight to the issues.
Just like the many visions we’ve anticipated to become reality, I do believe you’re cocooning somewhere within your cells, even in the faintest form. It seems the goal posts of our Nigerian visions are shifted because of size or because our top scorers in government are never able to score the multifaceted agenda goals. Don’t be surprised Vision 2020 may assume a new tag, probably Vision 2035.
I don’t know where you are – in the womb, in a run-down factory hunched over bags of Dangote cements, in the primary school receiving peanuts while building the magnates of tomorrow, in the car park – wherever you are, I believe that dream in your heart shouldn’t fade. That vision should be strong enough that it wouldn’t be shifted like all previous visions our nation has had. Just like Obama dared to dream, yours is a lofty dream too. Hold it dear.
Know that the seat is a hot one, hotter that the one opposite Frank Edoho of the famed “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” To be millionaires, some of those folks had to piss on that chair. However, brave hearts can always sit in fiery cauldrons.
In your fight to get the roadmaps straightened out, your nose may be bloodied by psychopaths who wouldn’t want our nation to stand firm. Boy, so many issues are lining up for attention. They are so many – unemployment, insecurity, falling educational standards, Medicare, cabals, foreign relations – they’re indeed a legion.
Most painful is the truth that corruption has pierced gaping holes in the fabrics of our prized institutions especially the educational institution. Many English graduates can’t spell correctly and your heart beeps with morbid fear at seeing a young Nigerian doctor attending to you in a general hospital. But there is hope!
The challenges are gargantuan but not unconquerable. A look at them all, I’d suggest you start with a 4 point agenda instead of lumping so many points together and achieving so little.
Start with power, roads, education and Medicare. If you want to take them in that order, fine, but don’t tackle them with kid gloves. It takes the willpower of a willing man because we’ve done it before. I didn’t believe okadas would be banned in my state but it happened. However, the power sector is much more powerful. The cabal in control is equally as powerful as those in the oil and gas sector, but they can be dismantled. They’re the ones happy that there’s a budget for generators in the Aso Rock villa where you will live when you become president. They’re the same people who will come shouting that witches and wizards are responsible for the darkness. Understand that with power and good road network, so many small and medium scale businesses will spring up to boost the economy. This is what is happening in China and other countries we are often apt to compare Nigeria with. Power and good roads will aid the production, storage and distribution of farm produce.
Our top ranking status in agricultural exports of the sixties and seventies has now been occupied by countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Venezuela. We are a rich nation but our sole dependence on black oil which seems to be waving the magic wand has blinded our eyes that we can’t see the goldmines in other sectors. We’ll smell the whiffs of prosperity soon. Surely, there is hope.
Our elections in the past have largely been won and lost based on stomachs. The poverty level has stung our brains so much that we perpetually throw our votes or snatch the boxes based on two major factors
- The man who is able to quench the immediate pangs of hunger gnawing at our intestines by the crumbs he doles out on campaign grounds.
- The man who is our paddy man because he is from our hometown even though he is a skank.
Ethnic bias and sentiments have largely kept us the way we are. Largely, godfatherism seems to be snowballing into an archaic concept. I don’t hear much of it these days especially with the demise of some iconic godfathers. I hope it will breathe its last breath soon. It has been a culture of imposition. The godfathers yearn for eternal relevance, so they foist persons who work according to their unprogressive, old manuals. The cycle of doom continues. But there is hope!
I don’t usually write long letters, so I will stop here. Till next time I write you again, keep ruminating over this piece. God bless you and God bless Nigeria.
http://www.thescoopng.com/emeka-nobis-letter-to-my-unborn-president/
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