By: RICE E.DAVID ZULL (Sardauna)
rycedy@gmail.com
15th July, 2024.
In this era of the 21st century, we as a society and nation have become habitual to criticize and blame the government for our every problem. We blame the government for corruption, for dry taps, for load shedding, for illiteracy, for poverty, for unemployment, even for mosquitoes, and many more. The reason
behind it is that we live in a democratic country, whose constitution gives us some fundamental rights for the expression of our thoughts, and hence we blame the government. Before blaming the government for our problems, we need to realize our civic responsibilities and duties. We blame the government for illiteracy but first, we need to realize that we are the people who do not send our children to schools and thus the case of out of school children in most northern states. We blame the government for uncleanliness, dirty roads, and filthy public places but we should think about it as to who threw the litter. Surely authorities are responsible for daily cleanliness but civilians are responsible for that dirt and uncleanliness when they throw garbage instead of putting it in a dustbin thinking that sweepers are responsible for that mess when they don’t do their duty.We blame the government for territory, but do honor killing ourselves as in the case of the young girl Deborah. We blame the government for corruption but we give bribes to police and officials, we use pirated movies, software, and music, we don’t pay taxes, we hide our income during the calculation of income taxes and we prefer to buy exam papers and grades of studying the whole year. Directly or indirectly almost every person is involved in corruption but we have a problem with only corrupt politicians. So, before blaming officials and politicians, we need to correct ourselves and realize our civic responsibilities.Playing the victim is a card many people choose. In reality, we are the masters of our fate, good, bad, or indifferent. We do things, and when they do not turn out as we expected, all to many blame someone else, when the fault lies with them, for going in that direction. Self-responsibility is not high on a lot of people’s list. Every citizen have the right to ask questions of the elected government but similarly they should act responsibly and do their part with utmost honesty. Every citizen should do the seemed little things as to take care of their surroundings, treat others with compassion, maintain their hygiene and refrain from doing any illegal activity in the first place.
Government does not make the country but we the voting and non voting citizens do. I therefore ask the question "Do You Have To Protest?". Because of the hypocrisy in this protest with current events carrying the hashtag #ENDBGIN I fail to understand what is truly the desire of a typical Nigerian.Though I totally agree with the roots of this "cause", But I fail to understand why protesters will plan to act contrary to success and refuse to give, and be, the very things they demand. It's situational stupidity.
OK. You can color this article if that makes you feel justified in hating, or, you can see it as the colorless plea for sanity that it is.I want better policing, Education, Workable subsidy, Low taxes, affordable tariffs, and I really want bad governance and high cost of governance to go. These are beautiful demands and only a mad man won't want that. These are easily gotten via a constitutional election for instance, when Goodluck Ebele Jonathan got retired for Buhari Muhammadu.( Wow, Nigerians and unbelievable choices)
Most people already support the cause of justice, fairness, equality and good governance. The people we must reach are those who feel comfortable with the ills of the land or are indifferent. You can't legislate emotion if truly one of the demands is to make the national assembly enact a law to compel INEC to electronically transmit results. It's already illegal to act prejudicially, but that hasn't stopped it nor make the hardship in Nigeria stops. We must address those roots; which is voting in the right personality with foresight and empathy. We must desist from allowing religious leaders who get paid billions to direct our conscience prior to elections. We must ultimately, derail from accepting spaghetti,Omo, Wrappers and data giveaway from these elites. In a quest to do so, I must reiterate that Protests of hypocrisy will not accomplish the aforementioned desire of better education, lower taxes/ tariff, Reliable security and sound economic policies, but rather it will plunge all mighty Nigeria into a practical Somalia or Sudan. We need real individualistic change, not face paints and chants of "Soro soke and we no go gree". We as citizens can get what we desire by being right, punctual, lawful. etc. But if we wish to preserve a democratic and reasonably fair government (since we already have one in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu), we need to tolerate and support the things it does right. The greatest danger to a free state is not any specific act of the government, but a conviction within the population that the government is so bad that it cannot be trusted in any way.
A government will never be perfect, since human beings are not perfect. But some governments (Yaradua's, Goodluck's & TINUBU's) are better than others, and if you have one of the better ones, it is smarter to keep it and try to improve it rather than to allow it to fall into the hands of those who would destroy it because they opposed all governments that do not follow their exact wishes.
Suppose we consider the case of Adolph Hitler. Lots of people wanted to croak him, albeit not always for the nicest of reasons, but then the newsreels made it appear that Germans adored him and there were lots of men prepared to march stiffly up and down in front of and for him. It takes some sophistication to realise that open dissent could have cost us our lives. Politics itself is a process of simplification if not outright oversimplification. In almost any country there must be an enormous variety of opinions and attitudes. Even in the small village (ZULL) where I live it's impossible to accommodate everyone's wishes. Politicians represent countries by various forms of deceit and prevarication, etc. In this way they can make it appear that the countries they stand for have uncomplicated characters. Could it be that all along it was a case of campaign strategy and all you protesters fall for it only to be truly mad at yourselves now that the wind has blown? Is it truly a one year old government's fault that things are these bad and they weren't since 2015? Over the weekend I noticed in a comic manner, constituents in a particular northern state decided to return the spaghetti and detergent given to them prior to the 2023 general elections which was used at the time to buy their conscience and I asked, is it possible to restitute for such error this late? Will such action recall the legislator or will it make issues instantly better? Prayer and protest will certainly not turn things around in an instant and to be fair it might just give a very temporal solution but what ultimately matters is the utilization of our constitutional rights (power to vote credibility). Protest is constitutional too and should have began since 2015 unless if it is an issue of double standard or regional cascade to destibilize the government of the day.
As a citizen, I hope things get better soon and I wish trust, utmost regards be accorded to the president with a hope that by his 2nd year anniversary, Nigeria will be the envy of all.
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