By Prince Charles Dickson
There is this African Riddle and I think it is most appropriate today and for the few words I have. The riddle asks, if you are in a dream and you encounter a Lion about to attack you, what do you do? …Run, defend yourself, or attack the lion, certainly no and much easier, just wake up, WAKE UP!
Some years back I recall being brain washed that it was all going to happen in the year 2000, health, road, education, shelter, everything would be free. I still see the vigor with which that phrase was pursued…Education for all by the year 2000, health for all, housing for all, everything was going to be free for all.
The closest we got to was the millennium bug and all the noise that followed it. Before the year 2000 magic, former dictator Gen. Abacha assembled the best of the intelligentsia, business community and more and for months it was Vision 2010. 248 of them, the wise, the very wise and the not too wise, after 10 months…
An elaborate document, and two years away from 2010, what has become of it, is it that we are a people of limited patience or that we have patience in large dozes that we swallow everything. I was privileged to know the entire bazaar that followed both the inauguration of the group and the submission of their report, the gliterazzi and the resources that went with it.
Apart from these visions which brings to the mind, the Prophet Jeroboam Trials of Wole Soyinka. In the midst of these visions, we battle the realities of that all these may yet be what they are, dreams! So like Jero told his congregation, pray, pray, pray…but we need at this point more than that.
The Millennium Development Goals is supposed to terminate in 2015, and we are still far from it. I spoke with one of those ‘boys’ in power and I asked him if he knew that for Nigeria to be amongst the 20 developed nations in the year 2020, it only needed to pursue the MDG positively and with both commitment and political will…He smiled.
It’s comically how even amongst those that are supposed to know, or question the establishment; everybody is part of the bandwagon effect. Mr. President calls it the seven point agenda, then Governors copy, in Plateau, it’s a ten pint agenda, Delta three, and each state to its number but the trials of Prophet Jero is a reality that we are yet to confront.
Malaysia has become an over quoted example, but there is India with almost the same peculiarities as us. Then small Singapore, also places like Cyprus. Here in the Continent, what can we truthfully say of Egypt, Tunisia, or South Africa, then Ghana, or how do we argue the rapid growth after years of war in Angola. Visions and dreams pursued and either realized or in the process of being realized.
We have tried SAP, PAP, NEEDS 1, SEEDS, and more will come, but neither has been the vehicle to a home grown strategy to poverty alleviation or the provision of the basics of life for Nigerians. None of these dreams have created a Nigeria for Nigerians that we are grateful to belong to.
We are not Africa’s largest economy, we are a player but are we really a major player, and we are 95th on the World Economic Forum global competiveness index ranking, a figure that is far from the so called top 20 nations.
We are behind the likes of Trinidad and Tobago, Libya and even Namibia, the fact about our vision is that we are yet to get anywhere in poverty reduction, education and healthcare, manufacturing capacity utilization is below par, several sectors of the economy is in a free fall or have collapsed.
The vast majority of the Obasanjo reforms that were hailed are being re-reformed or thrown out the door. And I am amused, wondering how the contents of all these visions can ever be realized.
I was trying hard to remind a friend that there was the KURU Declaration of Obasanjo’s administration, and then also today there is Governor Jang’s Kuru declaration. Also Yar’Adua had his own retreat, in which I recall him telling his aides that we knew the problem and all that regulars but six months on, there are shadows of it may not be well after all.
In the latest UN human development Index Nigeria ranked158th, the index which measures countries' achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and real income had Nigeria Last year, the country as 159th.The HDI for Nigeria at 0.470, which gives the country a rank of 158th out of 177 countries in the report.
In all our plans we forget the past; we break our today and destroy tomorrow, with all these plans can someone explain that despite the racist, flawed and neo-colonial feelings that trail some of these reports, how the likes of Sao Tome and Principe, Botswana, Cape Verde are rated higher than Nigeria, how Solomon Island and Togo are ahead and Mauritius is a in a Princely 65th as a high human development index nation.
Do we need these dreams and visions like fake Prophet Jero to tell you there is a problem, that our leaders have mortgaged the future of this nation? To tell us that the Wilbros arrangement was not a function of a vision but corrupt leaders, that Siemens is just one out of the many visions they saw for themselves?
That their vision had Etteh in it, Adeddibu as an indispensible, Ibori, Alams, Odili, Dariye, Bode George, Nyame and the likes, that vision which they planned was only for the benefit of the Jeroboams in our midst? And while they saw things, we are left wandering in the dark and lions of hunger and want chase the masses in their dreams and we can hardly wake to reality.
I end reflecting on a part of the vision…Education, with N64.7 billion spent in 7 years the vision for an improvement in the Unity Schools in the Nation could not be met, and in 2008 alone N23.7 billion will be spent and we still do not know the status of the schools, only that government has jettisoned the private-public-participation-privatization vision.
The vision of our Jeros has seen that despite all these monies only their children get into the unity schools, they steal our money and still siphon the scholarships meant for the indigent for their kids. With all the billions we are still way off the mark for the UNESCO target on education funding, we better wake up.
The dreams, the visions whether 2020, 2010, 2070, as long as the ordinary Nigerian is the focal point will almost never work, if there is nothing in it for the prophet Jeroboams then we better forget it. The dream for a better, strong and virile nation lies in our hands. We need to start to recite the national anthem in practice, and that is if we have a nation. We need to start tasking our leaders, those that we have given public trust need to be held accountable or else Almighty Allah help us, as the journey is far and we have hardly began.
Prince Charles Dickson is the Assistant Editor/ Jos Bureau Head for Leadership Newspapers Group and wrote from Jos, Plateau.
