TO WHAT END?
We begin this year confronting the issues that matter!
A few months ago, the world witnessed the trial, impeachment and acquittal of Donald Trump. The American citizens and how America should be seen posed the real center of the discourse. People have their reserved view on what should be or not be, whether the discourse was political or religious, at the end of the day the citizens were the main focus.
Hitherto, in Nigeria there are so many discourses on going, but where is the center?
The essence of government is that everyone be protected from the state of nature which Thomas Hobbes described as brutish, nasty and short lived because violence and oppression to gain absolute control was the order of the day.
Scholars perhaps saw a glimpse of the future and came up with theories they believed to be instruments necessary for a humanity enabling environment.
Today, the Nigeria political system says we practice democracy; government of the people, by the people and for the people. This is vague in practice and in describing the true essence of democracy; hence I like to elaborate democracy in Rousseau’s theory, ‘general will’.
Rousseau in his discourse said: “I give up my will, that every man gives up his will, and we all have a collective will. We have an all-powerful sovereign whose main aim is to express the general will, and each obeys himself, thereby obeying the general will and everyone is free.” (paraphrased)
Consequently, the idea is to provide constitutional stability legitimacy through universal participation and every country who adopted democracy, cannot feign ignorance to the implication of this. It includes lives and properties!
New business policies that do not favour the tax paying businesses are made.
Ranging from the ban on foreign goods without enabling factors to encourage local made goods to rejection of Nigerian made cars and vehicles over foreign made cars, to a monopolizing and a competitive cement market. Today, there is a value added tax attached to phone calls and text messages.
Apparently, it seems the 2019 elections remain inconclusive in some states, and that the electoral rules and what the constitution says about elections are not quite clear considering the interpretations and application or that perhaps in Nigeria, Oligarchy is the practice and democracy, a mere name.
In states like Anambra, citizens who have paid for road worthiness are made to pay for the loads in their tricycles, vehicles and even trucks. Failure to do so, the driver becomes a victim, and the vehicle or items become subject to destruction as the oppressor claim to be following the directives of the government.
More so, the charade that takes the cake is the issue of security. Heads keep rolling, pools of bloods flood around the streets of both the northern and southern protectorates. During the killings of Nigerians in South Africa, only the victims and refugees were heard wailing until Allen Onyema of Air Peace came to their rescue. The government or the voices of the Nigerian diplomat to South Africa and the Federal government were not clear on the issue.
To what end is the will of Nigerians trodden and neglected? To what end is the rising insurgency?
Chinua Achebe could be right in asserting that the center cannot hold!
One of the aims of the government is to secure the territory and protect her people. If the government cannot do that, if Nigeria is drowning in imperialism, her citizens need to know!
Nigerians try to get by everyday with the little value attached to naira. The least the government can do is to provide security since making good business policies are hard and the devaluation of naira seems to irreversible.
Get Nigerians security on all sides and watch her industrious nations grow!
To what end do we lose lives to insurgencies?